Dim sum @ Crystal Jade Golden Palace

The dim sum here (290 Orchard Road, #05-10 The Paragon, tel: 6734 6866) was pretty good. Comparatively with the recent Shang Palace, I liked this much better. The latter location was a third more expensive than this place even with the early bird discount of 30% off. Food didn't pack as much omph as the one Crystal Jade Golden Palace did for the price. To be fair, there was also some creative differences as to how the dim sum dishes were interpreted.

Some of the noteable mentions included the light and crispy baked skins of the char siew sou; tender glutinous rice; creamy carrot cake with a crisp exterior and the delicious salted yolk prawns which were from the a la carte menu. Those prawns were much better than the ones in Xi Yan. The only let down was the goose liver pastry which while buttery, wasn't very tasty had barely any flavour from the goose liver at all. I'll have to remember to avoid that if I ever come back. There was quite a bit of the stuff which we haven't gotten the chance to try from the dim sum menu alone.

char siew pastry

siew mai

chee cheong fan with prawns

some goose liver pastry

har gao

pan fried carrot cake

some banana and prawn pastry

char siew bao

glutinous rice in lotus leaves

battered prawns pan fried in salted yolk

egg tarts

mango pudding

pan fried shredded taro, sweet potato and pumpkin with sugar

Didn't have much room for desserts so we settled for a ubiquitous mango pudding and a pan fried bunch of vegetables in sugar and ground peanuts. You read that right. Pan fried vegetables for dessert. Which came in surprising large portions considering that everything else was in small servings. Ended up feeling a tad too greasy to finish.

This place is worth a return visit though.

A tofu cheese skewer

These were being sold at the Sky Garden level at Suntec in some temporary booths that were selling snacks for $2. It was mainly the cheese that made me curious. It turns out that, the "tofu" exterior tasted like a soft fishcake and there was enough cheese in it to make this thing rather delicious in a savory way.

Damn it, I forgot to ask for cheese!

I haven't walked into any Burger King for quite some time and didn't realize that they have a triple Whopper on the menu now. Must be trying to reassert their position as the king of fast food burgers by unleashing this monster with 3 whopper sized patties. This outgunned the quad deck cheeseburger that I attempted at McD but also costed almost twice as much. The cheeseburger tasted better because it had more cheese and BK's patties seemed to be quite dry. I wouldn't say that I won't consider this whopper again if I had to eat here once more. I just have to remember to ask for cheese then too.

Baileys Irish Cream Tea Cake from The Cookie Museum

This place (8 Raffles Avenue, #01-02/04 Esplanade Mall, tel: 6333 1965) was previously known as the V Tea Room. I've always been curious about them but haven't walked in until today. It all started with just sampling some cookies that they had on sale and while looking around, I decided to try their Baileys Irish Cream tea cake - something that I recall from seeing here some time back. 

This cake sure was pricey. Then again, so was everything else on menu. The fairly generous portion of single serving dessert was a squarish log of dense butter like cake filled with bits of hazelnut, sitting in a pool of espresso/Baileys mixture. The cake was heated up before adding four dollops of cream and upon serving, had a shot of Baileys poured over the top. This was not bad but I guess most of what made it good was the Baileys.

Jaggi's, Kopitiam @ Bras Brasah

Short story was, I was happening by the area a couple of weeks back and by chance saw this stall by Jaggi's in Kopitiam (No. 51 Bras Basah Road, #01-03 Plaza By The Park, S189554). Having liked their food at their main branch at Race Course Road, I wanted to try this one out. As I had suspected, due to the limited area which the store had as a unit in a foodcourt, the variety was much lesser than the main restaurant. That didn't stop me from ordering some of my favorites of their smokey and creamy butter chicken, cheese naan, palek paneer and some chicken tikka.


I was expecting some differences since this foodcourt stall didn't look like it had the space for the facilities as the original place. To my relief, the butter chicken was still good and the cheese naan still as loaded with cheese. Though the cheese didn't quite melt as well. The palek paneer wasn't too bad as well if not for the fact that it wasn't well heated like everything else and there seemed too be too little of those paneer. There was even their usual onion salsa which one could help themselves to. Altogether, it felt like a fast food version of the original Jaggi's with a smaller variety.

I'm still favorably disposed towards them and having such an alternative outlet is good news for me.

Botan revisited

I ordered the kaisen don based on a recommendation and I thought this turned out pretty well. Thanks! Basically this was just a donburi (rice bowl) layered with sake, maguro, ika and generously topped with ikura and ebiko. There was also another white fish which I couldn't quite identify. Apart from some cucumbers and a couple of slices of lemon, that was pretty much it. It felt almost like some sort of chirashi with a lesser variety of sashimi. I thought that the eggs alone brought sufficient flavour to bowl that sesame sauce on the side and grated yam was not necessary at all. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the lemons though.


It didn't take much (or anything at all for that matter) to decide on a couple of orders of their uni gunkans which were good as I recalled from the last visit. Or also the steaming hot umaki tamago. And there I was being quite determined to try something else new while ending up getting the bunch of same stuff all over again. Now this wasn't exactly a bad thing since I found out that some of the accompanying side dishes for their chirashi bento changes so you'll not be getting the same stuff all the time.