Cuisine | Lizzaeh

Spainless weekend.

April 19, 2010 § 1 Comment

So we missed our flight to Madrid on Saturday because of the epic volcanic ash situation here in Europe.

It’s not as major news back home I know, save for the stranded passengers in Changi and fully booked hotels. But here in Europe virtually every airport is closed and seems set to stay that way till Monday morning at the very least. It’s not visibly crazy here in little Lugano or anything, but the news network coverage in this region definitely gives it more airtime than its probably receiving back in Singapore.

STILL. It meant we didn’t fly into Madrid, and therefore had to cancel all our connections and accommodations for Madrid and Barcelona. Hopefully all the money we already put down will be refunded.

We had actually been monitoring the situation on Friday when all the airports started closing down one by one. At that time Milan Malpensa (MXP) (where we were flying from) had indicated that the airport would be closed till 2pm on Saturday. Our flight was at 7ish, so we were still safe. Got to commend Malpensa and Easyjet for having very good, up-to-date tracking systems for checking flight statuses. (Crisis management!)

Woke up on Saturday and was about to leave for Milan some time past noon when MXP officially announced the continued closure of the airport and Easyjet promptly updated that our flight was most affirmatively cancelled.

SO. We had to find something else to do for the weekend. Fortunately for us we have a great floormate/neighbour who can acquire any movie you could possibly desire in less than a minute. (He has a premium megaupload account.)

We spent our Saturday watching Star Trek 8, and part of Star Trek 4. And the first episode of The Pacific which I FNALLY got to watch and zomg I hearts many. THIS is the kind of production I would absolutely adore having the opportunity to work on.

How we watch movies here on USIHome 3rd floor:
1. Vita’s mac and speakers plugged into the kitchen telly.

2. Pulling down the blinds on all the windows and closing the door so we can watch movies in blissful darkness. Schweet.

Vita Humpa from Czech Republic. Don’t be fooled by the harmless nerdy image portrayed here. He’s only wearing specs to watch the movie. The rest of the time he’s a walking, beer guzzling ball of wit and dry humour who is great fun to have around. Hehe.

So that was our Saturday. Grabbed some extra ingredients for a second round of devilishly awesome oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip cookies to make myself feel better and baked them after church today while we watched Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel.

My gosh, it’s one of those films that probably deserves a cult following at some point in time. It’s British humour and really one of those daft, irreverent things sort of like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that you’ll either love or hate.

But this entry isn’t about the film but the amazing cookies, so I decided to shoot the baking process more thoroughly today since I had the luxury of time. Measurements here are done by guessing mostly because of the lack of proper baking equipment. And yes I had to cream the wet ingredients with a fork by HAND because we obviously don’t have a stand/handheld mixer here.

Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters
From Baking, From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan

3 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg (optional, didn’t use it as I didn’t have it)
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature (‘defrosted’ it in the microwave for a bit)
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
9 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chunks, or 1 1/2 cups store-bought chocolate chips or chunks (chopped up 2 100g bars of milk chocolate and 1 bar of dark chocolate)

Getting Ready: Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Ingredients! Salt, white sugar, brown sugar, expensive peanut butter that doesn’t seem too big here in Switzerland, three bars of Migros chocolate (2 milk, 1 dark), eggs, muesli (the recipe calls for rolled oats, but I just sifted out the raisin and fruit bits so they wouldn’t interfere with the taste), weird little packets of baking soda and vanilla essence. Vanilla essence is disgustingly expensive here. That one little sachet cost me 90 rappen (90 swiss cents). AND obviously it’s only 1 teaspoon’s worth.

Whisk together the oats, flour, baking soda, spices and salt.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter, peanut butter, sugar and brown sugar on medium speed until smooth and creamy. (Did this completely with a very tired hand holding a fork, sista!)

Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition, then beat in the vanilla.

Reduce the mixer speed to low and slowly add the dry ingredients, beating only until blended.

Mix in the chips.

If you have the time, cover and chill the dough for about 2 hours or for up to one day. (Chilling the dough will give you more evenly shaped cookies.) If the dough is chilled, scoop up rounded tablespoons, roll the balls between your palms and place them 2 inches apart on the sheets. Press the chilled balls gently with the heel of your hand until they are about 1/2 inch thick.

If the dough is not chilled, drop rounded tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto the baking sheets.

Bake for 13 to 15 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back after 7 minutes.

The cookies should be golden and just firm around the edges. Lift the cookies onto cooling racks with a wide metal spatula – they’ll firm as they cool.

Consume!

So yes that was my Sunday. And here’s an extra picture of Vita and Marco having lunch.

(As you can tell for all of us, every day’s a pasta day. One day I’ll dedicate an entire entry to pasta. One day.)

So well. No Spain, but still a pretty interesting weekend here in USIHome.. No school this week so I’m going to go find stuff to do like draw or design and keep looking out for internships or something.

Peace out!

When sick of pasta,

March 18, 2010 § 2 Comments

Engage in every means possible to create food that does not involve pasta.
(Normally this also means just eating cereal/biscuits/crackers/chocolate/ovomaltine. But occasionally I try to cook something different.)

Color difference reflects nice natural light in the afternoons and the most impossibly gross dim yellow lighting in the evenings.

What wee eat.

February 19, 2010 § Leave a Comment

So we didn’t steamboat during CNY.
But we made do with a carbfest.

Food for 6 girls. Took us more than 1.5 hours to prepare, and about 20 minutes to completely devour.

2 huge plates of fried rice, 3 packets of boiled instant noodles, and a pot full of chicken curry with loads of potatoes. And a terribly hard baguette. Srsly it wasn’t bread, it was biscuit. Bread here dries up and turns hard very quickly.

A scary colored yu-sheng that Becky’s parents brought up for us.
It was quite funny cause none of us know enough ‘four letter words’ to say while lou-ing. And we all basically ate very little of that stuff and chucked it aside. (We all agreed that normally in Singapore, some male relative or another is usually responsible for vacuuming up the yu-sheng which none of us were prepared to do.)

So we tried to get rid of it by offering it to an Indian neighbour, who became pretty enthusiastic about his new strange and wondrous discovery of strange Chinese food and proceeded to have seconds.

But the rest of the time we mostly have rather normal meals.

Okay, like I’ve mentioned we’re on shoestring budgets.
So all the rooms basically cook the same stuff in different permutations every day:
Potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic.

Almost every dish we cook has the above 4 items.
Me and my roommate also indulge in mushrooms.

But every room has it’s own idiosyncratic indulgences, we’ve realized.

Meat comes as a whole chicken (cheapest at 7.05CHF), or 0.5kg of minced beef at 6.95CHF.

Carb choices revolve around pasta (we will aim to try more than just Conchiglie [seashell shaped] and Spaghetti), rice (which we generally either overcook or put too much water), instant noodles and potatoes.

We’ve had soup for the past 3 days (forgot to take picture) made from the usual suspects: carrots, potatoes, lots of garlic and onion, and a whole chopped up chicken. With a mountain of fried shallots that my Momma sent up. Life is good.

But I think our kitchen ski||z are getting a little better. Tonight we had sauteed shrooms with minced beef, steamed broccoli and cheese omelette for dinner!

And I remembered to put enough salt for once. We used a good quality block of cheese I bought but wasn’t as flavorful as my cheapo Brie chunk.

Can’t read any of the names here since everything’s italian so I figure I may have purchased a cheese that was more suited for cooking, because it tasted real good with the omelette.

But Brie (and I will buy a block of Camembert to try next!) still remains my preferred selection for bread/crackers.

Okay, maybe more photos of food next time (must remember to take photos). But you can see the rest on facebook.

Will upload again soon on next week’s adventures in Bern and Lucern.
Doubt there’ll be much to say in the next couple of days since we’d actually be having them 8 hour classes. @_@

Shall have to sleep now!
Goodnight.

Eating in Switzerland.

February 19, 2010 § 2 Comments

Alright, so today I will talk about food (nothing else to talk about, we’ve run out of things to do in little Lugano).

We’ll be travelling out to Luzern and Bern next week, we largely have very little class to attend. Yes we only have about 35 days of school in total, shocking ain’t it? Most modules are cleared in about 5 days, BUT each day’s seminar is 8 hours. 8.30am to 12.30pm, 1.30pm to 5.30pm. Give and take la huh?

So we’ve been here 2 weeks and haven’t even eaten out yet. (Expensive. Duh.)
We told ourselves we’d eat out once a month somewhere nice. Haven’t done that yet, but fortunately we have loads of instant noodles and curry powder to keep us sane.

But we’ve been having loads of pasta and bread and such as well. And cheese. Even the cheapest cut of Brie here is yumyum. And cheap.

So being cheapo students on exchange trying to spend as little as we can, sniffing out good bargains in our favourite place (the supermarkets, which we have never spend so much time in Singapore as we do now) is an important activity we engage in every other day.

Here’s one of us being very proud to find a twin pack of ham discounted.
Meat here is expensive, but being Singaporeans who really cannot just eat pasta for every meal (as we have noted some neighbours doing), we need the carb/meat/veggie balance met.

Veggies in this country are quite inedible in soup. Being Chinese and all, obviously we boil everything. But most of the veggies here taste terrible boiled (as we have experimented). So far the most familiar and palatable is broccoli. There’s spinach here too but people mostly eat it ON pizza so they sell it in these expensive little packets ready for pizza. The only other roll of veggie we’ve found that doesn’t taste terrible after boiling is iceberg lettuce. So we’ve settled on that.

Funnily it’s like an inversion here. Veggies are kinda expensive, we saw ginger that cost 9CHF just now. Crazy seriously.
But stuff like cheese is really cheap. And hazelnut flour.

There are hoards of hazelnut products here. There’s nutella and about a zillion other nutella substitutes that taste practically like nutella, just waterier. (But of course there’s also ovomaltine, my love.)

I really love my ovomaltine spread. (The bottled stuff on the right hand side.) Haven’t bought any other Ovomaltine products because they’re not really cheap and none of the other girls are particularly enthusiastic about Ovomaltine so I can’t share with anyone.

Ovamaltine spread is like a cross between nutella and ovaltine with rice krispys in it. *_*

And these Italian-speaking Swiss folk really love their pasta. Should’ve taken proper shots to do a panorama with but since I didn’t here’s 8 pictures of the same shelf in the supermarket featuring the pasta collection.

Tadaaa. This isn’t even counting the need-to-be-refrigerated type of pasta like ravioli and gnocchi that are on a different shelf!

Anyway with easter coming there are shelvessss of chocolate bunnies all over the supermarkets. And since chocolate is so cheap here, some of the big hollow choco bunnies are already only $4.95. Wonder how much they’ll go for once the Easter slashing starts?

(Behind is a woman walking two ridiculously tiny dogs that don’t look like they should even be let out of the house to walk. They were seriously, smaller than my rabbits.)

They also sell colorful, sprayed eggs during the Easter period.

Which is kinda pretty, and cool, but also kinda gross. These are the metallic ones. The prospect of you accidentally eating is just rather ick.

Alrights, more in the next entry about what we’ve been eating per se here.

Curry Wok!

January 28, 2010 § 2 Comments

YES! Another food entry, fresh from tonight. Burps.

So tonight we went to Curry Wok which is reallyfarawayfrommyhouse and a ratherlongbusrideaway.
It’s at Coronation Road which in the general Lizzy Map Of Singapore doesn’t exist.

Bukit Timah is superbly far removed from my sphere of knowledge. Lol.

But we made it there and although I was very reluctant to go at first for many reasons, it was definitely a hit.

The Curry Wok
ADDRESS: 5 Coronation Road #01-04 Coronation Arcade Tel: +65 6464 8878
OPENING HOURS: Wed – Mon 11am – 9pm

Hungrygowhere reviews here!

Couldn’t tell that they closed at 9pm, we were there pretty late, by the time we got there it was probably 8.30pm and we weren’t the last to order.

I had my doubts about this place for several reasons. Or actually, 2 main reasons. One being how far it was from my house and knowing what a lazy traveler I am… The other reason was the key reason – being that their signature dish, fish head curry, was quite far removed from my ‘favourite food’ list. In fact, the distinctly fishy taste that accompanies fish curry drowned in a sea of coconut milk is a memory that remains rather nauseating. (Or maybe it was just the plague of that particular childhood memory of that one particular fish curry.)

SO. You have no idea how pleased as punch Jason was when I was pleasantly surprised by the curry.

Terrified dead fish says hi. Fish head curry. ($20/$24)

The curry wasn’t ‘gelat’ (overbearing), it didn’t have that fishy smell I was expecting, the fish was SUPERBLY fresh, and it was really, really good.

The boyfriend is happy that the fussy girlfriend likes the food.
So happy that he went a little crazy with ordering, as he does quite often these days. He’s starting to adopt my mom’s lavish food ordering habits.

We had FIVE. FIVE DISHES OKAY, between the two of us. FIVE. I could feed my whole family dinner with the amount of food we ordered (and FINISHED).

The rest of the dishes. Oh the best part is that they serve you ALL YOUR FOOD at one go. Very awesome.

Ngor hiang! ($4 per roll.) This was good. These are most authentic when made by your grandma / my grandma, and yes the best ngor hiang in my book is definitely still grandma’s (which she doesn’t make anymore). But this was good ngor hiang.

Chup Cai! ($6/$8) Oh ho ho I feel so Hokkien and connected to my roots tonight. This is realllllllly shiok chup cai. Quoting one of the hungrygowhere reviews. It has the ‘tastes-like-home’ sort of feeling for kiddies like me whose family cooks about once a year (if ever).

Unassuming prawn omelette. ($6/$8) I wasn’t expecting much from this because, hey, it’s just fried scrambled eggs and all. But it was SO. MOIST AND JUICY. Better than any regular 菜饭 omelette. Incredibly moist and delicious.

Tofu with century egg. ($6/$8) I don’t eat century egg. But this was an interesting dish of cold tofu served with century egg and a very pleasant concoction of soy sauce and other stuff. Fried shallots added to the unique flavour as well. Good to try but nothing fantastic. It was interesting though.

They also serve an interesting drink of lime juice mixed with chin chow (grass jelly). ($2)
It’s like… sweet, and sour, and all sorts of confusing for your poor tongue but it was really refreshing to wash down the meal with it.

Jason cleaned the fish right down to the bone. It was like watching Pedro eat. Pedro eats his lamb chops so cleanly you’re surprised he doesn’t swallow the bones as well. But anyway I had the (dis)pleasure of watching Jason clean every last bone. The fussy eater known as Liz comes from the embarrassing sort of Chinese family that doesn’t eat a lot of the stuff Chinese people eat. But then again Chinese people seem to eat practically… everything. What’s that saying about how the Chinese eat everything as long as it’s back faces the sun?

Heh.

Okay, yes. But I’ll be BACK. When I come back to Singapore. For braised pork knuckle. Kinda regretted not ordering it. And the otah smelled really delicious too (floated over from the neighbouring table), so looking forward to trying some of their other dishes 6 months later… Lol.

But for now curry is still swimming inside me…

Mom’s going to be back on the weekend and then it’ll be her turn to stuff me into a turkey. :s

Cafe Oliv

January 28, 2010 § Leave a Comment

Yes, more food. I’m off to Switzerland in 9 days and the boyfriend sees fit to stuff me on behalf of my Mom (who’s away on work in China at the moment) with everything I won’t be able to eat for 6 months.

Cafe Oliv
ADDRESS: 220 East Coast Road Tel: +65 6344 3114
OPENING HOURS: Daily 11.30am – 11.00pm

Hungrygowhere reviews here!

Okay, so we came here because it was a Monday night, and we had originally wanted to go to Casa Do Churrasco Brazil but FORTUNATELY they’re closed on Mondays. (One stuffed Lizzy being served right up. We had Wan Dou Sek the night before.)

I know you guys are probably bored about reading about food and wondering why the heck I eat so much (not scared grow fat meh?), but yeah I’m sure once I hit Switzerland I’ll have other things to blog about, since there isn’t much to eat in Europe except, I expect, cheese and chocolate. And gelato. :]

But we’ll get to that when it comes.
In the meantime…

On to the food!

Cafe Oliv offers lunch and dinner set promotions which are really value for money. Dinner sets are only $16.90++ that includes soup+drink+entree+dessert. There are some more expensive sets that are also very decent.

We ordered one set and an additional set of sausage and rosti.

The mushroom soup. NOT canned soup, which is already a promising start. Quite a hearty bit of shrooms in this one.

Beef stew with (some sort of) rice, part of the set menu. The rice is really, really fragrant. Jason said he’d never seen me eat so much rice before.
Actually he finished the first plate of rice and we ordered an additional one (at $1) on top of it. The rice is really appetizing, 很开胃！And the beef stew is hearty and well worth the crazily cheap $16.90 set. Wait till we get to dessert.

Rosti with sausages. This was an a-la-carte item that was around $15 to $16. Rosti is fried with bacon bits IN it. Tasty stuff. Decent sausages. Sour cream could be better though.

DEEEESSSERTT. The most important part of my meal. They only have 3 desserts here but they are ALL. SO. GOOD. You can choose from a mudpie, a brownie served with ice-cream as pictured above, or creme brulee. Ordered on its own each item is only $5.90, the brownie is $6.90. Mudpie not pictured here but it is cheaper and comparable, and perhaps I think even nicer than the one from Coffee Club!

But I decided to have brownie that day. It’s served WARMED, really warm, with vanilla ice-cream dribbling off it’s warm fluffy head to complete any meal with a little bit of heavenly comfort. GOOD. STUFF.

Service wasn’t great though. The lady boss whom I usually see around wasn’t there and the two waitresses were from China – there was definitely a bit of a communication issue but overall the food at Oliv has been and continues to be an enjoyable and satisfying meal. For the price you pay, you are reallllllly getting some really great food.

Post-dinner faces:

As you can tell, I was really quite stuffed. Lol.

If you’re wondering where the bluish light that’s being cast on us (and the food) is coming from, it’s from the TV hanging on the wall opposite our table that was showing New Police Story on Channel 5 which had both of us quite distracted for a large part of dinner.

Highly recommended dinner place which won’t hurt your pocket terribly and is a good place to bring friends or a date. Come visit the East! Lol.

Wan Dou Sek

January 25, 2010 § 14 Comments

Jason and I hit Geylang yesterday for some dim sum at Wan Dou Sek.

First went there with the ASFV boys (Lide, Jeremy and WL) for dim sum & durian after we wrapped filming and had the yummiest chee cheong fun evarrr. But unlike Jeremy we have no Mini Cooper so we cabbed there and back from my place. (Not exactly the most convenient or nicest neighbourhood to be wandering around, that area.)

Wan Dou Sek
Address: 126 Sims Ave Singapore 387449 (between Geylang Lor 15 and 17)
Opening Hours: 24 hours daily

Loads of reviews of this famous place available online including ieatishootipost.

Beverage-wise, I really loveeee the stuff here. We ordered chin chow and plum juice. All their drinks are served in this plastic bowl that hurts the environment so so much, why do they do it? But yea. $1.50 for a generous serving of chin chow that’s enough to fill 10 cups (or more) of chin chow water from Canteen A.

And the plum juice was the right amount of suan-ness (sour) to hit the right spot. Mmmmm.

We had EIGHT dishes of dim sum between the two of us. Think Jason is starting to order like my Mom. Scary.

Fried yam cake. This one, very good.

Prawn wrapped in very fried tau kee. Oily but terrifically crispy on the outside, prawns really juicy on the inside. Their serving staff recommended this. Have to admit that it’s good though I’m not a fan of these.

Unimpressive har gao. Prawns are okay, same prawns after all right? But not as juicy as a har gao should be.

THE STAR of all Wan Dou Sek in my books. The chee cheong fun!!!! *_* (Yes sparkly eyes.)
We loved it so much we ordered it twice. Prawns the first round and char siew the second.
There’s something about the sauce. It’s this magical sauce that tastes like… Well the closest thing I can describe it to taste as is pork floss. Bizarre I know. But it is very, very, fantastic.

Glutinous rice wrapped in somesortof leaf. Has generous portion of meat and mushroom inside but rice was dry, I no like.

Siew mai. I’m a big siew mai consumer. It’s one of my favourite dim sum dishes of all time and I must have it/try it everywhere I go that has siew mai. I see this siew mai no up. It’s not bad, it’s just unimpressive.
One of my favourite readily available siew mai is still from Tiong Bahru Pau. Which I love. My favourite cha siew pau is also from Tiong Bahru Pau. I grew up eating, living, breathing, smelling Tiong Bahru Pau.

But I digress again.
Let’s carry on.

Okay, I ate about 10% of this and I’m sure Jason knew that when he ordered it. (He just wanted it all for himself. =x) Steamed pork ribs. Not my cuppa tea.

Overall. Dim sum here is not bad, maybe we didn’t order more of the right stuff. Would return here for more of that awesome chee cheong fun and generally not bad dim sum.

The BEST ban mian ever.

January 23, 2010 § 2 Comments

Okay today I must really wax lyrical about one of my favourite food. Especially since I’m flying off to Switzerland in 2 weeks and will have NONE OF MY FAVOURITE FOOD for 6 months, I’ve been going around eating loads of my favourite stuff.

I’m a self-confessed ban mian addict. People who eat with me in food courts often enough (especially church friends) will know that I almost always eat ban mian.

Yes the Qiu Lian and Formosa chains available in most food courts these days are actually quite decent, with the worst ban mian award being a tie between the one at Canteen A (NTU) and Canteen 14 (NTU). I’d say Can A’s wins. Don’t eat either, is my suggestion.

BUT.

THIS ban mian (which I have enthusiastically dragged many people to try) is well and truly, the very, very, very, best.

MY FRIENDS. Do not be put off by its unassuming demeanor. It. Is. AWESOME.
(I was here around 3pm so there weren’t that many people.)
In fact it is so awesome, I need to eat it at least once every week. (Can you sense the epic withdrawal I’m going to suffer that’s fast approaching?)

These few weeks I’ve been into E-mian (brown noodles below).

Normally I’m a U-mian person, because most places tend to have clumpy and starchy ban mian. So eventually I became a U-mian person. And I seldom order E-mian anywhere else because they don’t cook the E-mian long enough and it tends to be somewhat hard or rubbery when eating.

But the E-mian here is just perfect. And oh, all the other mians too. Not starchy at all, just the right ‘QQ’ texture. (Yes I know and I resent that QQ isn’t a word, but there’s no better way to describe it.) And the soup is heavenly. Most important thing after noodle texture in a bowl of ban mian is SOUP! And the soup is so good. Especially doused with chili. :] :]

If you look at the picture you’ll see that this is actually a bowl of fish E-mian (fish is the white meat at the top). BUT. They are ridiculously and heavenly generous with their liao (ingredients). When you order fish ban mian the very friendly stall owner will ask if you want meat with it. So you get a HEAP of fish along with a HEAP of minced pork when you order fish ban mian. (With a heap of noodles, veggies, some shrooms, egg… perfectly hearty.)

You can tell that I really resent those ban mian stalls (ie. Canteen A) that count out 3 – 5 miserably thin slices of fish and pick them up stingily with the tongs when you order fish ban mian. Always feel super cheated and annoyed when that happens. (Add to the fact that the noodle is starchy and undercooked and the soup sucks and the meat bits tend to be just floating blobs of fat.)

Okay. Totally forgot to mention where this gem is.

Qiu Rong ban mian is hidden in the basement of Roxy Square II (next to Mercure Hotel), opposite Parkway Parade. Basement 2. I have no idea what the address is but there’s another rather popular steamboat place there in the basement as well.

They also offer red wine chicken mee sua (one of my mom’s favourite) and some comforting Chinese soups (depends on when you go).

If you are a ban mian person. This is the mecca of ban mian. Srsly. ))))

Out of the pan.

January 18, 2010 § Leave a Comment

Just because we happened to be there for lunch.

Mushroom crepe.

Tandoori fish crepe.

Out of the Pan is that restaurant in Raffles City around the fountain in the basement. I frequent the place very occasionally. But the crepes are not bad and the food comes fast.

Momoya

January 17, 2010 § Leave a Comment

Momoya Japanese Restaurant
ADDRESS: 16 Jalan Pari Burong, Picardy Garden (somewhere further down from Sempang) Tel: 62453303
OPENING HOURS: Mon–Fri 11.30am – 2.30pm Sat–Sun 11.30am – 3.30pm Daily 6pm – 10.30pm

View the Hungrygowhere reviews here.
(Yes hungrygowhere is my de facto food review site. If I’m going to pay that much money for food, I like to see what other people sa)

The short review:
Only two items met my standard: the sashimi and the chawanmushi.
To be fair I’m a picky eater and spoiled tastebuds.
Also affected by fact that I was at Hibiki a week earlier.
Number of dishes 3 times that of Hibiki but standard not that imho. Prices aren’t that far apart, with that said I would rather go to Hibiki.
Momoya is still quite popular, but the standard just doesn’t cut it for me.
Very average, and some really tasted like foodcourt standard.
Probably won’t go back unless large group of friends want to go there for buffet or something.

Another disclaimer, the comments below may be a little harsh. The food wasn’t terrible by any means, it just wasn’t anything to rave about. So what’s below is just, with honesty, what came to mind at first taste.

If you want to pay $40 for a Jap buffet with a large variety of very satisfying food – Kushinbo is far more worth it. (Just went there last weekend with Mom and Jason, no pictures from there because it was a rare day I didn’t bring out my cam AND I was too busy enjoying my dinner anyway.) For $39.0++ dinner at Kushinbo you get as good sashimi, large variety of EVERYTHING, a large array of desserts and virtually any drink you could possibly want to accompany your meal. And they have meal promos for various times of the day including a $24.90++ eat-all-you-can after 9PM.

Okay, but enough about that. Here’s the dig on Momoya:

Some duck thing. Salty.

First round of sashimi. Fortunately good, slightly better or at least comparable with Hibiki’s.

Sis enjoying chawan.

Tempura. Batter too thick.

Soft shell crab roll. Soggy soft shell crab. Seaweed that I had to grit between my teeth and yank just to tear.

More sashimi… yum.

Beef. Tastes like foodcourt Jap food. Unimpressed.

Soft shell crab sushi. Okay la. Nothing much to say.

Katsu. Let’s not even talk about the taste. It already looks like overfried foodcourt Jap food.

Fried fishy bits. Okay but nothing to rave about.

Some unimpressive fish.

Soba wasn’t cold enough, texture not smooth enough…

Worst agadeshi tofu I’ve eaten. The skin peels off the entire thing like a goopey gel skin that you can’t chew. You have to either peel off the entire skin or swallow the entire gooey skin.