Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve Extension

When the Nparks announced the opening of the extension, I was fairly excited. So one afternoon I went there only to discover that it was the former Kranji Trail which I had visited before and which sadly is now "sanitised to become the new Sungei Buloh Extension. The former nice trail has been partially replaced with a concrete path and there are now more beautiful viewing structures but somehow it seems more like a park now than a nature reserve.

Board Walk with shelters

Rope walk including one that goes partially into a pond

Nice looking shelter. There are a number of them all over

Didn't spot many birds. Some of the things we spotted in the short time that we were there

Common Nerita snails

My first hornbill photo

Mud crab

Tree climbing crab

Mudskipper

Of course the monitor lizard

Golden Orb spider

 Waterhen

A slug

Full of Crab

I have been reading a lot of these new no cutleries, eat with your hand seafood joints like Crab in the Bag and other cajun seafood places. And after more than a year, I finally get to eat at one. Full of Crab at East Coast Road!

The place is pretty small and there are only a few items on its menu. The friendly waitress recommended the combo for us. Each combo serves 2 - 3 and since there were 8 of us, we decided to have 1 each of the combo. Each combo comes with 500 gm of prawns and a choice of corn or mashed potatoes

This is the best of the lot - the King crab.

This is the Sri Lanka crab

Crayfish

Snow Crab

The food comes with 3 different choice of seasoning - cajun, garlic butter or a mixture of both. Most of us like the fully loaded house special which is the cajun and garlic butter mix.  And it also comes in 3 different level of spiciness - mild, medium or hot. Because we have all set, we tried everything. The hot was hot but not so hot to be intolerable. Mild is too mild. The medium is a good compromise and most people should be able to tolerate it. 

Our party of 8 spent slightly over $400.00 for the food which includes drinks and bread (must have) which works out to a reasonable $50.00 per person quite worth it considering the amount of seafood we had.

And the place had some quirky decor so do check it out when you there.

Good Food in Scotland

Let's just say Scotland is not exactly known for its goods other than fish and chips, haggies and black pudding. Good Chinese food is hard to get and most outlets serves a mixture of Italian and basic Western cuisines like steak and fish and chips. But yet somehow, we managed to uncover some gems and surprisingly all were seafood!

The first place is this little shack at Oban.

We chanced upon it while on our way to Isle of Mull. There was a long queue and reviews on Trip Advisor were pasted on the wall. So it has to be good right? This little shack sells local freshly caught shellfish. Its speciality appears to be oysters and mussels caused everybody seems to be eating those. But both of us don't eat oysters so we contend ourselves with this cold dish of seafood:

There were prawns, squid, crab, mussels and more mussels. And it was real good and cost only £20. 

On the Isle of Mull, there wasn't much option but what we found was probably the best deal ever. At Tobermory

there was this little restaurant, Cafe Fish - the only one that was opened at the time.

But what it lacks in size it more than make up for in this super giant size seafood platter

This platter cost £30 and just to be clear - it is only for 1 person. Can't tell exactly how huge this platter is? Just look at this next photo:

That how much food there is. Crab, prawn, scallops, squids, oysters, lobsters, langoustines. So this was the catch of the trip. The best meal ever!

Last but not least, up in the Highlands, the proprietor of Camus House recommended this joint, Lochleven Seafood Cafe for dinner:

Situated right next to Loch Leven, it serves seafood as well. For this meal, we decided to spurge a bit and ordered 

1) Another seafood platter for 1 at £40

2. A plate of small scallops for £10.50 although I certainly won't describe it as small

3. Brown crab for £12.95

Another sumptous meal. And this place is listed in the Michelin guide wor.... 

There you have it. 3 of the best in Scotland. If you ever there, die die must try.

On a side note, no place is worth visiting without tasting the ice cream and this place Nardini's, we went to at Largs has apparently the best ice cream in the whole of Scotland according to several websites. 

But frankly I think the ice creams here pales in comparison to what we have back in Singapore like those at Scoopz and Udders and all the little ice cream outlets sprouting up all over the country. But hey if you ever visiting in Largs, this is a must try of course!

Crab Buffet at Brizo Park Hotel Clarke Quay

Last year I went for the crab buffet at Park Royal at Beach Road. There was supposed to be at least 14 variety of crabs dishes. Unfortunately, the night we were there, we only counted a few. Apparently they do not serve all the 14 at one go and the dishes are rotated so depending on the time and day, we will not get to try all the different crab dishes. Despite these, it was still good value for money as on top of the crab dishes, there was the usual buffet food including the popular sashimi and roti prata. 

Well the crab buffet is back and the crowd are flocking to it and we couldn't get a table on the night that we wanted. In the end, we ended up at another crab buffet at what we thought was a sister hotel but which was actually a competitor. And which was where we ended up at what I think is possibly the most value for money crab buffet with not 14 but 19 crab dishes! And mind you, all 19 dishes are laid out at the buffet table without any other food to distract. Really a crab lover's heaven!

Let see - there is the cheese crab or is it the salted egg crab?

 One of the best - steamed crab with egg

Fried rice with crab meat

Flower crab cooked in some Italian way which nobody at the table like. Too unconventional for our taste bud

Cold crab, Alaskan crab, scallop and mussels

Soft shelled crab, crab claw and baked crab in shell

All in there were supposed to be 19 crab dishes including crab laksa, steamed crab, cheese crab, salted egg crab, chilli crab, black pepper crab, baked crab, In fact there were only 3 non crab dishes - a vegetable, a chicken and a bak kut teh and of course the  dessert section. Speaking of dessert, they don't serve the usual scoop ice cream. Instead, they have mini magnum, mini cornetto, potong ice cream and magnolia sherbet ice cream in a mini tub!

So you can gorge yourself silly on all the crabs and got no other food to distract you. And it only cost $55.00++ with a free parking throw in. That is really value for money considering that nowadays most buffet is priced from $68 ++ onwards. There is also some credit card promotion to sweeten the taste and for those who drink, throw in another $35.00 for free flow wine, beer and soft drink. Seriously worth it!

Chinese New Year Makanathon

Over the course of the Chinese New Year period, I had the opportunity to eat and eat and eat. From super expensive to totally forgettable food, from Chinese to Western, set meal to buffet I tried them all. Luckily in the lead up to my race next week, I had lost some weight and so after all these foods, I put back what I lost without any gain.

Here are highlight of some of the nice food

White Pepper Alaska Crab - This was definitely the highlight of the season and also the most expensive. This single crab alone cost $370.00! Usually Alaska crab is served steamed and chilled but this one at Long Beach Seafood was cooked in white pepper and I must say this is real yummy! The mix of the white pepper and the sweetness of the crab goes so well. This has to be the highlight of the period!

There was this day when a few of us went to Edge at Pan Pacific Hotel. I was totally bowled over by the variety of food available at the buffet spread. Too bad my stomach couldn't take in everything. They had everything from Chinese to India to Italian to Japanese. And all the food are cooked in small amount at the open concept kitchen but my favourite was definitely the dessert corner especially the chocolates and pralines.

 

Another place that I went to and have always enjoyed the food was Sze Chuan Dou Hua. They have this special section called the Tian Fu Tea Room where they serve dim sum and tea. During the Chinese New Year period, they have this wonderful tea set menu at $32.00 per head. Except for the roasted chicken which I felt didn't go well with the tea theme, the rest of the food were good. Unfortunately, I was dining with friends and I didn't think it was nice to take photos.  But here is a very nice review of the food with wonderfully taken photo.

And last but not least, another place that had good food was an old favourite Rama Thai Shark fin Restaurant. Unfortunately I am trying to reduce my liking for shark fin as I felt rather guilty about eating shark fin but hey how to go to a shark fin restaurant and not eat shark fin? Even though we had the most basic (read cheapest) set on the menu, the shark fin still impress. Poor shark though. The only other thing that spoilt the dinner was the pushy waitress who tried to first get us to take the more expensive set and when that failed, every time she walked by our table, she tried to get us to "upsize". First it was the shark fin from a shared portion to individual bowl, then it was to change the crab in the crab vermicelli from the small Indonesian crab to a Sri Lankan Crab and finally asking us to get the Yu Sheng! Again no pictures for this food session. 

There were a few other places that I went to during this period but the food ranges from average to forgettable so I shall not mention them here. But here is a photo of a giant size pizza that we had on one of these occasion:

Langkawi Food Street?

Ok I be frank. I didn;t found one on my recent visit. Not something like Jonker Street in Malacca, Gurney Drive in Penang or even Jalan Alor in KL. But we did stumble upon a street in Kuah where there there a number of seafood restaurants which was as close to a food street as we could find. Maybe like Seri Selera Seafood Centre in Kota Kinabalu or the Top Spot carpark in Sarawak.  Most of the people eating here are locals. So they can't be wrong. Right?

We ate there on both nights ordering seafood from different restaurants each night

The restaurant where we had our dinner on our first night

Place where we had our dinner on the 2nd night

What did we ordered? Seafood of course and prices were very decent. The following photos are what we had for the 2nd night and they cost us less than RM150 and that is including drinks and beer.

Mixed vegetables

Black Pepper mantis prawn

Cheese crab

Steam egg flower Crab

Squids

I think the seafood wasn't fresh fresh but it was good enough. For the price we paid, I really cannot complain.

New Ubin Seafood

The name Ubin naturally brings to mind Pulau Ubin, the island but this little place called New Ubin Seafood is nowhere near Pulau Ubin. It is not even remotely near any sea or island. It fact it is tucked away in the heart of an industrial park in Sin Ming somewhere in the north. And its most famous dish is not seafood but beef!

But to us that was not a problem. Seafood and beef - 2 of our favourite food! So off we went. Luckily we had the foresight to make a reservation cause it was so packed that those without reservation had to be turned away. Absolutely no waiting.

There was a crab promotion  going on - order 2 crabs and get 1 free so naturally we went with that.

We had the salted egg crab (pardon the blur picture). I still haven't master the art of taking photos with the phone.

Pepper salt crab

 Bee hoon crab

Verdict on the crabs? The typical coffee shop zhi zhar standard. Nothing specially to shout about but really value for money.

Then we had the beef. The serving comes with fried rice and potato wedges and was supposed to be enough for 4.

How to describe the beef? Certainly it wasn't restaurant standard. Neither was it those kopi tiam western food standard. It was a little bit overdone or maybe we left it on the table for too long while we tackle the crabs and it got over cooked.

I liked the fried rice though. Traditional dark soya sauce type of fried rice that nowadays we cannot find outside. Apparently, it is fried with the fats from the above mentioned steak.

Would I go back there again. Probably so since it is not really that expensive but then again the hassle of going all the way there and having to make reservation.........