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.