Le Chasse

It's been quite sometime since I found the motivation to really write a food review. Hehs. Partly was because that nothing was that fantastic. And partly was because I found a lot more reviews more interesting! Haha. But. I. Have. To. Talk. About. Le Chasse.

Hehs.

Even though the name sounds or looks really 'ang moh', it's definitely not one. It's actually a very warm Chinese restaurant. When I say warm, I'm not saying that it's very hot, it's the warm feeling that the shop gave me!

Look at their plates!

When you enter the restaurant, you will see all the food they offer on the walls. A note is that, the stars does not mean that it's highly recommended! It just their way of covering their old prices! Haha.

If you google Le Chasse, I believe that the most raved about and the most reviewed has to be their claypot rice. It's like a gem in the middle of Singapore! My goodnessssss! It's been a really loooooong time since I last had a claypot rice that has the smell and taste of the claypot. The claypot really paid a huge role in their wonderful taste! Plus, everything in the whole pot is evenly cooked. The chicken was tender. The sausage was good. The salted fish added some flavor to the entire pot of rice. Slurps. We had 5 pair of thumbs up!

 Whenever we go out with mama, there must always be a plate of green vegetables. Haha. We still ordered it even though mamas are not around. I like the chilli and the favor of it. Very nicely cooked!

Their BBQ prawns. Woo. Very fresh. And juicy. The beauty of live prawns!!

Who say that we have to go to Phuket or some beach area just to have great BBQ seafood? We can actually have it right in the middle of the town! Haha! Slurps. The sauce they used added a lot of favor to the cuttlefish. Their charcoal must be some good ones because the aroma that came out of the cuttlefish is realllllly sluuurps. The best part are the tentacles. Very barbequed and so it is the BEST!

Herbal chicken's herbals were good. The soup was very rich and the chicken was very tender. But I think the herbal taste haven't really enter the chicken that much.

The coffee pork ribs was really different. Haha. Usually when we go outside and eat, it's just some pork ribs that's in a black sauce. But here, we can really taste the coffee! Haha! I overheard the chef explaining the dish to one group of customers! He told them that they actually steam the ribs for 2 hours and use one whole cup of expresso coffee. (That explains the strong coffee smell and taste!) The pork ribs was oh-my-godish kinda tender. Haha. You just have to tug a little and the meat will come off!

This tou suan. Has to be the best around. Very very very good! The dough sticks that's BBQ has to be eaten together. The lady boss (I assumed) told us that we have to scoop out the dessert so that our saliva don't break down the thickness of the gravy. A lot of knowledge involved eh. Haha. She also explained to us that they cooked it only after the customer ordered it. So, it's not a big pot waiting for you in the kitchen! Freshly made!

 

Lemon juice and aloe vera goes well together! Hee.

 

Note their business hours!

 

If you think that this is in some ulu ulu part of Singapore, you are wrong. It's directly opposite Central (Clark Quay)! Just cross the overhead bridge and you should be able to find the restaurant very easily!

Address: 31 New Bridge Road

Paradize Dynasty

Probably not the ideal place to have our valentine's day dinner. Ha! BUT! Fulfilling our tummy is much much more important than having a nice romantic place. Ha!

But well, not that the place is too bad. It's actually pretty nice to me. =D A very Chinese place to me.

Okay. Like I said, the environment is not the most important factor. Haha.

Free flow of pu er tea! =D The attentive waitresses/waiters will fill up your cup before you finish the cup. Talk about attentive staffs.

The famous thing of the Paradize group! It's the colorful xiao long bao!!! Woohoo! As to why is there so many colors, it's actually because there's 8 different favors. My advice is to try all of them if it's your first time at the Paradize. After that, pick your favorite one and just order that. You never know until you tried! (For instance, I'm pretty shocked at tasting cheese in a xiao long bao.) The soup in the xiao long bao is really very nice! You definitely taste the favor that you are supposed to taste. In addition, the meat inside was tender and the skin was good. I am ready to boycott Crys**t J*de after tasting them. =D Plus, the xiao long bao was of a good size too. The one-mouth-bite-size.

The cold duck was really tasty. The coldness of the dish was actually a refreshing taste after the piping hot xiao long bao. Love to order them whenever we are at CJ. Meat was tender and not too salty. Done up to my liking!

The soup that was famous for their ramen has to be the pig bone soup. Very fragrant. The noodles was very well done. Not too hard and not too soggy. There's a lot of different types of pork they put in. There's sliced pork, pork chop lookalike etc. I felt that they were pretty generous with the pork serving.

Heh. My favorite dish in restaurants that offers them. Hahaha! It was the best that I have had so far (please tell me where to get even better ones please!) I love the way the chili, oil and the dumplings merge together. I cannot stand it when the dish gets too hot but this was just nice for me. I had to make sure that the entire dumpling is covered with the chili sauce before putting it into my mouth because the sauce tasted real yummy to me. Haha.

Ah. This is the gou bu li bao zi (translated into the dog don't care about the bun). Urm, so, does it mean that even dogs also don't want to eat this? Hahaha. So, I had to order it to see what is this about. I mean, I've heard about this bun since forever, but I had never had a bite of it!

So, it's a bun with loads of meat inside. Hahahaha! Not as salty as the normal meat bun that I buy. Probably, the skin is a little different too. But, I have no real liking towards it because it had not manged to stimulate my taste buds in a way that they love. I prefer the juicy meat buns we buy at coffee shops. (I'm sorry, little buns.)

At the rate we were eating, we were totally bloated beyond words. BUT BUT BUT! The desserts on the menu looks pretty good to me. I have to order them. Haha.

So, this is the aloe vera in osmantus lemon juice. Something like that. The osmantus is really very fragrant! You can find them real in the dessert. It's definitely not just the favoring. Plus, the lemon gave a tinge of sour to the sweet dessert. Aloe vera was crunchy. I LIKE!!

My favorite. Pumpkin slices. From the photo of the menu, I guessed that it's going to be something like grilled pumpkin. Well, I ordered it because I always liked grilled pumpkin when I'm at a Japanese restaurant. But heh, I was pretty shocked when I bite it. It's nothing like just grilled pumpkin AT ALL. Instead, it has the texture of the nian gou or mua chee (that's a little sticky chewy). But the pumpkin smell was not to be mistaken. What's more, the semi-crispy skin was to die for. Haha. It's the combination of crispy on the outside and chewy in the inside. LOL! Top it up with the fact that the dish is warm. My conclusion is that I like warm chewy desserts. =D

I had never gave thumbs up for desserts in a Chinese restaurant before. Ha.

Give it a try! I've really decided that I'm going to boycott CJ from now on. LOL! It's a little pricier than CJ and Ding Tai Feng itself. But, I don't think it deviated a lot from them. Pay a little more for the better food? However, brace yourself for a crowd during meal times. We escaped a queue because we went in earlier (6pm). By the time we came out of it (around 8pm), the usual crowd had gathered in the usually empty ION.

Address: ION Orchard. #04-12A

Por Kee Eating House

I had always enjoyed zi char with a bunch of people because we can always order a lot! And the plus point about it is that we don't have to pay a lot of money for the amount of food we order. (I'm comparing to shopping centers!) But of course, most of the zi char places are not in air-conditioned places. Well, there's nice breeze at times. =D

So, Por Kee eating house. I had no idea what is this and where is this until I was brought there. Haha. One look at the area, I have to say, I think it's probably quite a famous place. Just look at the crowd! My goodness. And the first question that the auntie asked was "did you had a reservation?". Oh wells, it has to be something goooood!

So, we ordered one of my must-order dish - toufu. Most zi char places offers home-made toufu which are really nice. What differentiates them is the way they cook it. I kinda like the way the toufu was cooked. The sauce made the bland toufu into something delicious. And I like to eat the sauce with my rice! Haha.

Another signature dish is the champagne pork ribs. My goodness. It's really good! Tender, flavorful. Yummy! But one sad thing is that, it's not easy to bite it off. So, I almost burned my tongue while trying to eat them up. Hehs.

A direct translation for this will be 3 cups chicken. Not that they used 3 cups of chicken, but more of the 3 different types of spices. My parents tried explaining to me what the 3 cups were. I'm so sorry. I really cannot understand all the chinese words that they are bombarding me with. Hahahaha! Well, the dish is nice, but I find it a little too oily for my liking. Hmmm.

Woah. My favorite vegetable. Haha. Okay. Not that the vegetable is my favorite. It's more of the way the vegetable was cooked is my favourite! They actually used fermented beancurd to cook it! I haven't really ate this kinda vegetable before! My mama told me that we cannot cook it at home because our stove is not hot enough to cook it nice. The waitress auntie agreed so whole-heartedly that I have to believe it and not try it at home. Haha! Aiya. Just go there and order it okay? Haha.

Har cheong gai. Too oily for my liking. Maybe it would be better if we didn't ate it so quickly. I had an instant sore throat following it.

I wouldn't really use my life to endorse this place. Yes, there are dishes that are really good. But, I don't think that I would want to wait that long and travel that far just to have that few dishes that are really nice. It's somewhere tucked in the middle of Tiong Bahru. Plus, it's not as cheap as most of the zi char places you can find around. But of course, it's way better than most of the cheap cheap zi char stalls you find around Singapore. I have to say, even though it's not too difficult to find nice and cheap zi char stalls, it's equally easy to find a lousy or a mediocre one. Don't waste your calories on them!

Address: 69 Seng Poh Lane #01-02

Black Canyon Coffee at Batam Megamall

Remember that I once talked about the Black Canyon Coffee sometime back? Well, if you don't, click on the link to refresh yourself! Hahahahaha!

Black Canyon Coffee was actually started in Thailand and it was one of the more popular coffee place. And this place does not just sell coffee! They also sell THAI FOOD! And also some western cuisines of course. But the thing is, THAI FOOD!!! Hahahaha! I repeat again, THAI FOOD!!! Lol. I was so elated when I saw this at the Batam Center Shopping Center when I went there for a short weekend with my parenets and the man the other time! *BEAMS*

Very refreshing juice.

Loooove their lime juice!

Okay. Mango salad. If you look carefully at the mango salad, you will realize that it looked a little different from the usual green hard mangoes you find in mango salads. The mango they used was really pretty special to me. It's sweet and soft! The entire dish was really very appetizing. What made it perfect was the sauce they used for the salad. YUMS! *A word of caution. The spring onion look alike is actually chili padi!*

I had been giving raving reviews about their phat thai. PHAT THAI PHAT THAI PHAT THAI! This dish is actually a thai styled fried kway tiao. It is sweet and is a little wet. From what I see, most of the phat thai was served with a tray of several different toppings like sugar, dried chili and a seasoning. I tend to add them all into the phat thai and it raised the fragrant of the entire dish. I have to say, they did it pretty well and I love it. It's definitely not up to the standard of what I have had in Thailand, but it's definitely better than any that I had had in Singapore! YUMS!

Fried rice was really fragrant! This was the salted fish fried rice. Pretty nicely done for just frying rice with some simple ingredients which we can find at home really easily. I like eating the rice with the peanuts. Hehs.

Tom yum soup was really good. It was not that spicy (okay, I admit, we ordered the less spicy version and thus we have no chili padi added). But the nice thing about it was that it is not like most of the tom yum soup that is just spicy and spicy and sour. It has the tom yum taste. Like, we can taste the fragrance of the spices that they had added in. Tom yum is not just about being spicy and sour! It has to give us the aroma of the things that they had added in too! This was good!

Lamb chop rice was pretty normal I have to say. But it was really pretty. Haha. Heard that it was one of the best seller. Of course the lamb chop was nicely done. Not smelly and it was tender too. It's just that it dimmed in comparison to the other food that we had ordered. Haha! The soup that came along with the rice was really normal beside the tom yum soup. Lol.

I was really very happy after the lunch at this place. The moment I came home, I started looking for a branch in Singapore. Yesh. There is one in Fushionopolis!! Woooohooo! But. The sad thing is. The dishes are not as fantastic as the ones I had in Phuket and Batam. Even though it was still pretty good, it's not good as I had remembered. Hehs.

Desserts at Shin Kushiya! (Part II)

I'm sorry but I have to write another post of the desserts at Shin Kushiya again. Haha!

Please remember that there is this offer! It's still going on!!! Hahaha. But of course, this price is exclusive of GST and service charge (like always).

So, you get 2 green teas,

You will have 2 desserts!! Hahaha! This time round, we tried the parfait. (And it was the most expensive dessert on the menu. So, this means, we chuan dao la~)

Unlike most of the parfaits I have ate outside, this one totally stand out from the crowd. Goodbye to all the synthetic feeling stuffs (kanten jelly, nata de cococ etc) and say hi to all the good quality stuffs. Even the chocolate waffles stick is really nice! Haha. And this parfait has something new. Sesame cream (greyish thing on the bottom of the green tea ice cream). Eating it with the green tea ice cream was a really brilliant combination. However, I find it too sweet when I just eat the cream alone. I guess, the cream was born to go along with some ice cream. Hahaha!

Another thing that was really nice was that they add chestnuts! My favourite chestnuts! Hohohohoho! All the beans, jellies were totally different from the ones I have all the time. I LOVE IT!

I know I know, I've raved reviews about this mochi before. BUT! I have to do it again. If you are not interest, skip it. LOL!

Have you ever been in a situation before? Like, you remembered this particular thing as heavenly but when you went over to have it the second time, you realized that this is not as good as before? And then, you start blaming on the change of chef, on the fact that you have over rated it the last time. We did a check. No, this was as good as we had both remembered! Hooray!

I'm serious. This has to be the best mochi ever. Haha. Okay, the best I have had so far. Lol. I may go to Japan and realized that this has to be one of the lousiest there. LOL!

Addresss: 1 Harbourfront Walk #02-120-122 VivoCity Singapore.

Nandos at Plaza Singapura

I've heard loads of stories about Nandos. There's good ones, there's not too good ones. All in all, there's a lot of people talking about Nandos in a way or another. So I finally gave it a try!

The thing about the Nandos is the Peri-peri. It's actually chili in layman terms (ha!). And since it's the thing at Nandos, there's actually varying degree of peri-peri level (4 of them to be exact). Well, different levels will touch your tongue in different ways. Hahaha! As a su-la (singlish term for scary-cat, yet another singlish term, or a timid person), I chose to go along with the first 2 levels. Haha. Okay, back to the Nandos, so, on top of the Peri-peri, it is of course famous for the grilling. They grill the chicken with the sauces that they must be really proud of. And tadang! That's Nandos chicken for you.

Which means, we have to order the chicken somehow isn't it? So, I ordered the meal for 2 since there is 3 of us. I totally regretted that because unlike most places, the meal for 2 is seriously not enough for 3 people! *Disappointed*

Another disappointment about the meal for 2 is that there's a lot of stuffs that are not exciting at all. For example, the salad. I cannot appreciate the sauce and the vegetables they chose are the ones that are really raw and really bitter. I'm so sorry but I was thinking of the sushi teh sauce when I looked at the salad. Haha.

The drink that came along was good. It's some orange soda in layman terms I guess. Pretty good. Yum.

Wedges was good. Crispy and it wasn't very starchy inside. The reason why I usually prefers fries over wedges is because when the wedges were not done well, the insides gets real starchy and digusting while the outside remains crispy. But Nandos did it well. =D

The bread was good. Hard outside, soft inside. Haha. The butter was a little special. I believe olives were added into it. But then come again, I really prefer butter. Give me one thick stab of cold butter. Wooooo~

There's also this breast chicken strips. Too oily for my liking. And I never really fancy breast meat anyway.

 

And finally, here comes the main thing. For the meal for 2, the chicken comes in 2 pieces of 1/4 chicken. If you are lucky, you will get the drumstick. If you are not, there comes the breast meat again. But seriously, I have nothing against breast meat sometimes. There are really places which are able to cook it really tender and I love them! But for Nandos, it's pretty obvious that I don't exactly fancy the breast meat. 

  

I have to say, be it the lemon and herb or the mild peri peri, I love them all! The sauces were really good and it made the chicken taste really nice. But the thing is that, the tastefulness stops at the skins. It doesn't really get into the chicken. And that gets a little upsetting when the skins are gone and you are left with just the chicken. Ha! Thank goodness that the sauces that they place on the table are pretty good. It made up for the fact that my chicken skins were eaten up!