Chin Mee Chin Confectionery

Probably the last of its kind left in Singapore, Chin Mee Chin Confectionery or CMC as it is popularly called in Katong is a old style Hainanese coffee shop serving beverages and bread served the traditional way.

 

Inside the 2 old style glass cabinets are trays of freshly baked buns

Authentic custard tarts.

And custard buns. These are good. Soft and the custard literally oozes out.

And they sell kaya too. Sickeningly sweet kaya. Damn shiok but don't eat too much though. Its really really sweet.

Its most famous item has to be the butter kaya bun where instead of the usual 2 slice of white or brown bread, the kaya and butter is spread onto a sweet bun.

And we not talking of a small thin slice of butter either. It is a thick thick slice right on top of the kaya which is spread on both sides of the bun. Yummy.

Another hot favourite of theirs is the lucheon meat bun but it was not available on this occasion.

Go try it if you in the area. Before the old owner retires and the shop makes way for another new style coffee joint.

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!

Cheng Teng @ Amoy Food Centre

Many people have lamented that hawker food are going the way of the dodo bird but there have been a mini revival of sort in recent time with many hotel trained chef setting up their own hawker stall. Over at Amoy there is the Singapore Noodle and now there is a new Cheng Teng stall started by an ex-chef.

Good cheng teng are hard to find nowadays and so finding this one right next to my  work place is super great. The cheng teng here is not great great yet. It has some time to go before it can meet the standardof those at Bedok Corner or Commonwealth. But what it lack in taste, it make up for in its ingredient. It uses only traditional ingredients and no preservatives or refined sugar. 

 There are no cheap ingredient like barley, jelly strips. Instead there are dried persimmon, dried longan, gingko nut, red date, sweet potato, sago, winter melon,white fungus, pong tai hai which is the brown seaweed like stuff  and rock sugar.

The stock is a bit thin, very light in color and not as sweet as I would like. There are too little pong tai hai but overall this is pretty good stuff. Light and clear very good for cleansing one palate after a heavy meal.

The stall is on the 2nd floor of the Amoy Food Centre. Each bowl cost $2.50 a bit steep but in my opinion well worth the money. And in case anyone is wondering, the chef didn't pay me to do this write up.

115 Dessert

Singapore is like dessert paradise. We have Malay dessert, local dessert, Hongkong dessert, Taiwan dessert and of course Western dessert. But my favourite is still our local dessert and my all time fave outlet is 115 Dessert at the Chinatown Food Centre at Smith Street.

The dessert here are still made the traditional way. There is an old fashion mill which they use to grind the beans. The dessert they sell are all the traditional type like green bean, almond paste, black sesame paste, corn paste, barley ginkgo  red bean etc. No fancy ice kachang, no snow flakes or modern type of soup. A bowl cost only $1.30 and delivery is available for a fee. 

This stall is probably the best there is around town. Better than Zhen Jie or ErGu or those Hong Kong Dessert place. Maybe Chew's Dessert at Liang Seah comes close but that cost much much more per bowl.

Give this stall a try when you are in the area. 

Durian Brulee @ Pepper Bowl

Previously when I ate at Pepper Bowl, I did not had the chance to try the Durian Brulee. I figured it couldn't look and smell good back in the office but what the heck, I couldn't resist today and went ahead.

At $3.50 a pop, it wasn't cheap but it was definitely worth it. It was so smooth not like those available at the many hotels' buffet offering which is so lumpy nowadays. The durian wasn't that over whelming just nice for back in the office conversation.

Durian Soya Bean Pudding

I normally don't have high regards for those durian flavour soya bean curd selling at the shops and hawker stalls. But still I quite kapoh and got to try when I see a new stall. The other day was at my usual lunch haunt and there was another one of those new craze, soya bean pudding stall. 

The stall owner got not much business so she was sitting at our table and we got to talking. The very glib lady - she was praising my colleague no end. So when we finished our meal, we paiseh and decided to buy the soya bean pudding. But I changed my mind when I saw they have a variety of jellies beside the usual soya bean. And they had durian. I decided to try that.


Imagine my delight when I opened it to find this:

Yes real durian on top and also inside. Most other I tried only have durian flavoured pudding. Hardly any at the economic level ie stalls and shops sell it with real durian. But this one did, Packaging wasn't that nice unlike say, the Goodwood Park durian desserts. But at $2.00 a pop, it was well worth it!

The stall is at Maxwell Food Centre, somewhere in the middle right next to the Taiwanese Porridge stall.

Todai Restaurant

This is a mouth watering post. Be warned!

This is an offshoot of the popular Japanese restaurant. I have been to this place twice. So far, I like the food although it is somewhat predictable. Service is acceptable. Price is a bit steep but it comes with free flow of oysters, Alaskan crab, all sort of sushi and sashimi, Korean food, Italian food and of course Japanese food. Enough of words, let the pictures speak for itself.

Tanjong Katong

Tanjong Katong Road after Dunman Road in the direction of East Coast Road was supposed to receive a new lease of life and become just as popular as its more illustrious cousins East Coast Road and Joo Chiat Road but somehow along the way, it ended up a bit lost I think.

Like the other 2 streets, it comprises mainly food outlet but there are many more coffeeshops and food courts and a sprinkling of dedicated food outlets including a Donut Empire, Punggol Nasi Lemak, 3 pizza outlets (Pizza Hut, Dominoes & Canadian).

In the day, the place is bustling with students from the schools nearby but at night, it is a tad quiet with hardly any pedestrians.

I like this English looking condominium. It always reminds me of those houses in Hugh Grant's movies like Notting Hill; Love Actually and Bridget Jones.





There is this supermarket which boast of premium foodstuff but comes with a weird name. Do they think beggar can afford to buy the stuff there?





We wanted to have dinner at this nice cozy looking place with this interesting name but unfortunately it was closed for a private function. The food should be pretty good judging from the number of newspaper articles on its door.

Instead, we went to this 3 months old French Pizza joint, VIPizz.

We ordered a cream based smoked salmon pizza and a spicy meat tomatoes based pizza. I believe the pizza were prepared by a French guy in the kitchen. I hope it stayed open long enough though cos at 7.30 pm, we were the only customers there which was kinda a shame cos the pizza wasn't half bad - certainly much better than Pizza hut!






After the pizza, we went over to this ice cream outlet very seductively called 'Lick'. The place was pretty busy with customers walking in and out.

We order 4 different flavour of ice cream, strawberry for M; water melon for the Princess and Earl Grey/Kaya Toast for myself. I love the kaya toast best. Not too sweet and not too overwhelming in favour. Price was $3.20 a scope. I think I'll be back for more.

There were a Korean restaurant which looks rather good but we got all excited later when we passed a Japanese restaurant offering ala carte buffet.

We'll be back!

32 Degrees Fahrenheit

Suaku Uncle finally knows what is shaved ice or at the shop they call it Snow flakes ice.

Basically it is ice that is not crushed but 'shaven' so that the texture is very fine. The ice are flavoured and is topped with topping of choices.

Verdict - damn shiok especially in our hot weather.

Milk with strawberries and mangoes

Milk with Cococrunch

Chocolate with orea and nuts

Cold Rock Ice Creamery

Hopped over to Holland Village. Felt like a tourist there. Stood there gawking away. Been to HV before but always in the day and never know the night scene there so happening.

Looking for some thing to eat. The food at the hawker centre didn't look very enticing and didn't want to spend too much money on the fancier places (which were mostly packed anyway) so just walked around until saw this ice cream outlet.

Place was also packed but managed to get a table. Their unique feature was choose flavours, the topping and the staff will mix them together on a cold rock hence the name Cold Rock Ice Creamery. Went to order and this is what we had:
Not very cheap though. Regular cup (2 scoops) was $6.50. Each topping is $1.00 even the house concoction was priced the same way.

The ice cream was a tad too creamy. Not really worth it. Give me all the local made ice cream anytime!

Another more detailed review of the place here

Tong Shui Cafe

Went to the Tong Shui outlet at Zion Road. After hearing so much about it, was surprised that it was practically empty when we walked in. Only 2 other tables were occupied and when they left, we were the only one left.

We ordered a thick toast with durian puree. Felt that the durian puree was very sweet. Did they add sugar to it?
We also had the mango pudding which I thought tasted rather ordinary. And why is it that everybody nowadays die die must add those irritating tasteless 'pearl' thingy?
The last order was a hot black and white dish - the almond and sesame paste. I think the paste from the Chinatown stall is so much better. This one is too thin and more like a soup than a paste.
So maybe now I know why it is so deserted.