Dim sum at Shang Palace

Headed down for some morning dim sum at Shang Palace (22 Orange Grove Road, Lobby Level Shangri-la Hotel, Tel: 6213 4473) after hearing about the early bird discount of 30% for the early seatings. I suppose that I had expected more of them since they were a restaurant located in Shangri-la Hotel, but I left without being impressed. Honestly, it wasn't bad at all. I was just hoping that it might have been something noteworthy. Apart from the pretty delectable custard and salted yolk bun which tends to burst and spill their scalding contents if you took a bit too big of a bite, I couldn't really say much about the food. Here're most of the stuff that we had...

J.Co Donuts

These donuts were so incredibly soft and light, I could actually down three of them pretty easily. I guess that's the dangerous thing about them since they felt almost like nothing and true enough as they say, one is never enough. Tasted better than I had expected. I suppose what made the regular glazed one a winner was that it wasn't excessively sweet like Krispy Kreme. So despite of being a fan of the old school grease and sugar coated rings, I thought these new generation of lightweights stood up well for themselves. Sure wouldn't mind getting more of them from time to time.

Miso ramen from Santouka

This bowl with miso broth from Ramen Santouka wasn't memorable at all. The flavour wasn't as full as I had been expecting and I much preferred their shoyu broth which is probably my favourite after having tried the shio the last time round. This set which I got came with a mini charshu don. The soft and thinly sliced pork cheeks were still as good as I remembered them from the last visit.

They are not marshmallows....

They're are actually some kind of freeze dried strawberries coated with white chocolate which a friend got from Muji in Hong Kong. They taste pretty good if you don't eat too many of them at a time. What one gets from these were a tart interior of the dried strawberry which have somehow gotten a texture like meringue that's mixed with the creamy sweet white chocolate shell. Pity I can't find them here.

   

Edit 19/07/08 I found these at Muji at Paragon.

Akashi, Orchard Parade Hotel

I've been to Akashi a few times, but this is the first visit to the new outlet (1 Tanglin Road, #01-01A Orchard Parade Hotel, tel: 6732 4438) located just next door to their Inakaya Robatayaki place at Orchard Parade Hotel.

I noticed that there is this strange relationship that I have with my visits to Akashi. It was always an impromptu decision. I have never really planned to visit them and still ended up here on last minute decisions.

After some moments of back and forth with the menu, we finally managed to decide on what we wanted and sushis were something that I decided were a must have. Though this time round, we pushed it a little bit more for some of the premium items which served as a gauge for the standards in this outlet.

uni gunkan

otoro

aburi toro

botan ebi

anago

ura maki

There is something about raw slices of seafood that is appealing. Their chilled creamy uni with its earthy sweetness and subtly buttery otoro left nothing in the way of gripes except for the fact that more would have been great. That was further met by the explosion of butteriness in the aburi-ed version of the tuna belly. Oil from the melted fats seeped into the rice and onto the plate. This stuff is amazing.

The botan ebi was plump, sweet and firm. I'm having anago for the first time as I can remember. These salt water eels wasn't as oily as unagi but they were tender and tasty the same. And quite a mouthful as well.

crispy grilled heads from the botan ebi

fried prawn ball

mategai in some mayo miso

fish noodles

sweet potatoes

pumpkin ice cream

The rest of the items were a bunch of this and thats from the menu. Of note were the fish noodles which actually had texture akin to fish cake rather than noodles. That wasn't bad at all but I wished the portions could have been bigger for what they were charging. The bamboo clams were the usual, but the miso mayo made a whole lot of difference to it by adding an aromatic sweet and savory creaminess. That being said, the miso mayo made up pretty much most of the flavor. Unfortunately for the prawn ball, it wasn't very spectacular. It's simply as you see it, a ball of minced prawn.

I was thinking that the sweet potato would be grilled, but they arrived steamed. It wasn't a bad thing but I feel that Kazu's method of grilling them and serving with butter is the better way to go. If you like pumpkin, the ice cream here was a creamy one with bits of pumpkin in it.

Circular Sumptuous Square, Circular Road

This eatery has a pretty interesting name if one were to disregard the fact that it's located at Circular Road (14 Circular Road). Haha....certainly has nothing to do with circling any squares and such. It's actually about roast duck. And talking about roast ducks, there's a very short story on how this dinner here came about. We were actually locating for the newly opened Ohsho outlet in the vicinity and didn't see it despite making a couple of passes down the road. And we had only managed to find it after dinner. I could have sworn that we did not see....... so chance was pretty much what made roast duck dinner tonight.


The place does serve a small variety of cooked food (tze char) but we didn't go for any of that. We ordered a half roast duck ($18) which turned out to be quite good in spite of the slightly messy appearances. I suppose it might have been the fact that they had to debone the bird. The duck came with slightly crisp skin and just a little bit of fat under that skin was about just right. Meaning that enough of that fat was present for a nice greasy flavour without being too excessive. An order of the roast pork turned out pretty good as well as unexpected. It was deep fried. Crispy deep fried roasted pork belly. Circular sumptuous square. And nothing but lime juice and a few strips of cucumber to save us from all that cholesterol.