Street Food of Tokyo

Tokyo was not some place where we expected to find street food but we did came across some gems.

Like while stumbling around in Shunjuku one night, we found this back alley where there were a whole lot of small little outlet selling Yakitori and noodles. These are really small outlet like this one here which can only seat at most 6 persons in front of the counter.

There were a few variety of skewered meat wrapped over different sort of vegetables and mushroom.

 

Nothing really spectacular about the food except for the below bowl of curry like food filled with what I believes are the left over from the making of the Yakitori. This was really good. 

Just a short walk away from the above was a soba stall which had a perpetual queue. One reason for the queue was that the place can only sit 8 persons so everybody wait their turn for some one to finish, sit down, order and gulp down the gigantic bowl of noodle and then goes off. 

  

Of course, we being food loving Singaporean, we got to join the queue and wolf down the bowl of noodle despite us just finishing the Yakitori. By the way, the bowl of noodle only cost Y300!

Just before our hotel, there was this little mobile truck selling Sweet Potato. M bought 2 to try. She said they are very soft. I think they have been cooked to death!

At Asakusa, there were stalls after stalls of snack food. Most time we don't know what they are but that did not stop us from buying everything that looks good which practically mean every stall.

Some sort of pastry which comes in different flavours like green tea and strawberry.

This store had the longest queue

 And the Princess with their produce - a huge polo bun

 Master chef making some sort of hot dog.

And M enjoying it

Another Chef doing something else

And that me with the result.

Not really a lot of street food but what was available was good although I think they are not too healthy. But heck, I will have regretted it forever if I didn't try any of them!

Bangkok Street Food

The last time I went Bangkok was in 2006. This time round we went for a short trip over the weekend to celebrate our 22nd anniversary. We stayed in the Pratunam area. The old Pratunam wholesale centre is still there but there is also the new Platinum Mall. MBK, Siam Paragon, Central etc all gigantic and packed. Looks like the Thai are doing well despite all the political problems.

We didn't visit the temples. Instead we went to the Safari World, a very beautiful place and yet a very miserable place. More of that in a later post.

But in addition to the shopping and massage, we went gaga over the street foods. Just look at them:

All sort of barbecue and roast meat

Different colour of corn

Salt covered barbecue fish. This one die die must try

Beef Ball Noodles

Beautiful Mung Bean kueh in the shape of fruits

Cuttlefish

Mini crab

Crabmeat

Kueh!

More mini crab

Prawn

Glutinous Rice

Braised duck

Duck Noodle

Some sort of sponge cake

Waffle with corn filling

Tom Yum noodle 

Phai Thai

Grilled banana

Satay

Dumplings

Water chestnut kueh

Some kueh

Fried curry century egg

Glutinous rice

Sunnyhills Pineapple Cake

Was reading the Sunday papers on Tuesday and came across this review of the Sunnyhills Pineapple cakes. Pineapple tart is something I must have during CNY and this year unfortunately my lobang for the Le Cafe golf ball pineapple tart is no more. So I was pretty keen to try this import from Taiwan until I saw that it was located at Raffles Arcade in Raffles Hotel which means it was going to be expensive and true enough it was going for 10 pcs for $25.00.

But somebody up there must like me a lot cos the next day back in the office, a box appear on my desk!

And in less than 10 minutes, 3 quarter of it was gone. Okay so I shared it with the colleagues but I still kept half for myself and I rationed myself to 1 pc per day.

This pineapple cake is very international. The pineapple and eggs are from Taiwan, the flour is from Japan and the butter from New Zealand. So how was it? It wasn't too bad but different from our local version. And 10 pieces for $25.00? Way too overpriced. I think we paying more for the packaging and air freight!

Swatow Seafood Restaurant

After watching Buffet Buffet 2 on Channel 8, decided that since I was going to Toa Payoh, to check out the dim sum buffet at Swatow Seafood Restaurant. That despite the rather negative review on Hungrygowhere.

  

We were early and didn't qualify for the high tea buffet which starts at 3pm. But since we were there and we reckoned we can't eat that much, we went in anyway. The place is old style in design but aesthetically it was rather modern. There were waitress pushing the traditional dim sum trolleys and service was fairly decent despite the reviews on Hungrygowhere. Maybe it is because it was not the dim sum buffet time and the crowd was not that big.

We started off with several trays of unusual looking steam dim sum.

Pierre Herme Chocolate

I love chocolate but I also stingy old man. Only eat Kit Kat, M&M and Kinder Buenos. Once in a blue moon, maybe Royce or some nice one from Sins or one of those little outlets in the mall. Definitely no Godiva or anything fancy. And then somebody gave me this.

A whole box of Pierre Herme chocolate. Specially flown in from France. How does it taste? Like chocolate lah!

臭豆腐

There this Taiwanese stall at Lau Pah Sat selling 臭豆腐 and my curious colleagues who had not tried it was interestingly turned off by the smell yet curious to try it. So one fine day last week, they decided to finally brave the smell and try it but not before dragging me along to split the food just in case they can't tahan it and cannot stomach all the food!


So the 3 of us sat down in front of a plate of 10 small little tofu served with a side of pickled vegetables. Well they said curiosity kills the cat. It didn't quite kill them but I could see one of them having a real difficulty swallowing it but still he gamely took his share while the other lady took another 3 and the rest went into my stomach!

Just how good or rather bad is it? Compared to the one I tried in Hong Kong, this wasn't really good but maybe the Taiwanese version is different but me think I will pass the next time round!

Royce Potato Chip Chocolate

Normally I don't eat potato chips. Not a lot anyway. Just a few slices. But somebody had to give me a box of Royce Potato Chip Chocolate.

Sigh. I can hear the cholesterol guys jumping for joy but then really die die must finish the whole box. At one go if possible. It is that good.

M&M

Was walking around one of the supermart one day and came across this:

Can you believe it? A whole packet of orange M&M! Yummy!

Tofu Chiffon Cake

This has got to be the most expensive chiffon cake I will ever eat. Read in last week's Urban about this place, Glace at Icon, a patisserie (noticed they don't call atas cakeshop a confectionery or bakery?).

Anyway, since the wifey works nearby, got her to get one to try out. She came back with this small beautiful white little box containing eight small slices of the mango chiffon cake. The price? $10.80 which makes it $1.35 a mouthful. Was it worth the money? Well, with tofu as its main ingredients, I supposed it was something different and justified the high price. The bad new is, you can't taste the tofu. The good new is, you can't taste the tofu. Ha ha I can't imagine eating a true tofu cake - it will probably be very bland and I loves my dessert sweet. But if you can't taste the tofu, then what's the difference between this and the other chiffon cake in the market? Okay, it is rather soft, not too sweet and very light and smooth as tofu(pun intended) so one can eat a lot (in fact I think I can finish the whole thing) without feeling guilty.

Final opinion, I think I stick to Yummy Chiffon or Bengawan Solo's Pandan cake.

Smallest Kong Bak Pau

Paus have been getter bigger like the Gozilla bao or smaller like this one but kong bak pau (stewed pork bun)?

Was at Toa Payoh and went and got the miniscule pau and saw that they have this whole tray of what looks like the yong tau foo roll. It turned out to be the smallest kong bak pau I ever see.

Just how small is it? Look at the picture. It is about the length of the cashcard and about 3/4 of it. That's how small it is. 1 pop and its gone. At $0.50 a pop, it is a bit costly but hell, it taste good despite the not so flattering picture here.

But anyway, all the paus there are good. Just look at the queue. Or maybe it is just that the small size made it seem more palatable?