Sakon Thai

I contemplated on whether I should write about this place. I love dining here and really don't want it to ever be too crowded. But it's such a great find that it's a shame not to share it with others. Located at 77 Jalan Wangi (off Macpherson Rd), its location is almost secretive, probably known to only the landed property occupants nearby. And on the last occasion we were there, even spotted a local tv celebrity dining there with his friends.

The food is delicious and price inexpensive and service is pretty alright for Singapore standards. The servings are on the small side though, so you may have to order more if coming with a big group. Not sure if they serve medium or large servings.

Chiang Mai Mango Salad - $6.50.
Difference with this and normal mango salad is this one is drizzled with coconut milk.

Mixed Vegetable $6

Chicken Pad Thai - $5.50

Prawn Cake $6.50

Beef Green Curry $8

Clear Seafood Tom yam Soup $6.90. Red one is better. 

Seafood Kway Teow $6.50

Longan and Lychee Ice with Red Ruby - $3.50

Mango with Sticky Rice and Coconut - $5.50 or $4.50 can't remember. 

Rice is charged at 50cents a bowl and there's no Service Charge, just GST!

Kiddy Fun, Indoor Playground at Turf City

This indoor playground is pretty similar to the one you can find in Vivocity, Airport and a few other malls. The place is very colourful and it's all padded for safety. We went here with a friend who had kids of similar age and one was younger. Although my 6 going on to 7yo had fun playing and chasing her friend around etc, I feel that this playground is more suited to the younger kids, those aged 5 and below.

Unlike fidgets, there's not many places for parents to sit and relax or chit chat with their friends. Especially when there's a party going on where the whole section is blocked, there really is no place for us to sit.

If you're thinking of bringing your kids to an indoor playground at the new Turf City, and you're tossing between Fidgets and Kiddy Fun, I'd say go to Fidgets, it's more spacious.

Slappy Cakes @ Turf City for a Slappy Good Time!

This is a great place to bring the family to as it's fun for the kids to cook their own pancakes. Not only that, they can make their own creations with the batter using the squeeze bottles. Toppings and the batter is also priced affordably so you can afford to try out a couple of different batters. Just be warned though that each bottle can actually make quite a number of pancakes (so much so that we overdosed on pancakes!).

We chose the Buttermilk one for the sweet batter and Zucchini one for the savoury. If you don't know what zucchini is, it's a vegetable. Each bottle is $8++.

Our toppings and fixings: Lemon Curd $1.50++, Chocolate chips $1.50++, Bacon pieces $2++, Cheddar Cheese $2++. Hubby and darling daughter didn't like the lemon curd so much. I thought it was ok, lemony and tart. 

we weren't that creative.... ;P

Looks like they use Japanese technology for the hot plate. Which doesn't emit such a hot feeling even though we were sitting so close to it.

We also ordered a Slappy Lemonade (not pictured), don't order it, it is the sourest lemonade I have ever tasted!! I probably should've asked for more sugar syrup instead of dumping a packet of sugar into it - cos it never dissolved.

The place is a bit small, so you might have to wait for a table on a weekend, especially breakfast, brunch or lunch. We passed it on another night during dinner time and there wasn't many people inside. I guess not many Asians would take a preference to eating pancakes for dinner...but they do serve an all day breakfast.....and again, I guess it's not an Asian thing.

Ivin Nyonya Specialties @ Kovan Heartland Mall

This is a great little restaurant on the 2nd floor of Heartland Mall. It serves wonderful home cooked Peranakan food at really affordable prices.

I love love spicy food so this is right up my alley.  There were so many dishes we wanted to try but I guess we'll just have to come back again to try them...and perhaps bring more people so we can try more.

Ayam Buah Keluak ($7.90++). Delicious gravy.Just enough for 2 ppl. It only had 2 pieces of the buah keluak.

Nyonya Mee $5.90++ including a Barley drink. Ordered for our DD who doesnt eat spicy food.

Honey Pork ($7.90++). Again this one is only enough for 2 people. The meat is tender and the sauce was not sickeningly sweet  

Sushi Express @ 313 Somerset

This is my new favourite sushi place! It's fantastically cheap - every plate at $1.50, but not only is it cheap, it's very tasty too!

There are ample seating as they made a really long snaking conveyer belt so as to maximise seating. Most seats are facing the conveyer belt with not as many booth seating. So if you are coming in a group and would prefer a booth seat, be sure to come much earlier than the lunch or dinner crowd.  We came on a Friday and came at 11.30, there was hardly anyone inside at that time. But even as the time progressed I was surprised that there wasn't a queue outside.

They don't only offer sushi on the belt, they had cheesecake (which wasnt that good), chocolate mud cake, mango pudding...

They also dont charge for the wet napkins like many other places do.

Thumbs up and will definitely be going there again!

Post-Edit: We went back again on a Sunday night around 6.30pm. It was a full house and we noticed the offerrings on the conveyer belt was a bit scarce. Although as time progressed they did do a pretty gpod job at refilling.  You just have to be patient and let the belt go aroumd a few times before you get more choices. There were a few differences this time though, perhaps due to it being a full house,  they gave this ticket stating the time you arrived and the time they expect you to finish by. They only gave us 40mins which I felt was pushing it a little. Even places with express buffets give 60mins. But the time limit was not really enforced perhaps because after a while there were more vacant tables. I do wonder what they would do though. Quietly ask you to finish up or what. Maybe they'd keep an eye on those who arent really eating and who are just sitting around chit chatting. So it's not a really good place for people who want to hang around chit chatting and taking their time to eat. 

Secondly I noticed the sushi with the raw scallop on it that I'd eaten at lunch only came as a single portion, but at lunch was 2 portions.

Macarons - First Attempt

I've always wanted to try making Macarons and even have a couple of books at home on the subject, but have put off making it because it seemed so complex, with ageing egg whites, and the mysterious risings of the "feets" .

I stumbled across this website: http://bravetart.com/recipes/Macarons which made it seemseasy enough to make Macarons. No need to age the eggs, no need to let the shells air dry. So since today I had some free time, I gave it a go.

Well unfortunately they didn't turn out the way they should, and after doing up more reading I realise I made a mistake here and there. Firstly I think I overmixed the batter because it was oozing out of the tip, so it was definitely too runny. Secondly I didn't realise I should've used a stainless steel mixing bowl to mix the egg the whites, not sure if this makes much difference, but other sites say don't use plastic bowl which is what I used. Thirdly, I used silicone mats instead of Parchment Paper. I really had no idea that it would make a difference, but they say the silicone mats make it too sticky and will leave you with an empty shell...true enough this is what happened to mine. I had two different mats, one worked well and the other did not....so what does that mean??

Before mixing in the dry ingredients

After piping them and after they were out of the oven, they looked amazing....but they were empty shells.....

This one was baked on a different mat and had little feet on them and was cooked beautifully inside.

these were various shapes, like flowers, mickey head and hello kitty head

These are the empty half shells....

Oh well they tasted really good, DH and DD both said they were really yummy and ate a handful. I couldn't even believe my DD ate so many considering she's not that into sweet stuff! So once this batch has all been eaten (some will be eaten in ice cream/gelato/sorbet), I'll try making it again.

The texture is just like a store bought Macaron

These were the hello kitty ones....doesn't look like it eh?

Empty shells, still pretty good after filled.

DIO - Do It Ourselves burger joint at The Grand Stand Turf city

After letting the kiddos play upstairs at the indoor playground, we settled on DIO (Do It Ourselves) burger joint. Not sure what attracted us to try it, perhaps the sign that said 10% off our bill only till that day? The menu had a good range of burgers you can choose from, starting off from which bun you wanted, You get to select from Brioche or Wholegrain buns, then the filling, which ranged from beef, pork, chicken and even fish! All burgers are served with fries. There is also a kids meal for $9.80 which included either a chicken or beef burger, fries, nuggets and free flow fountain drink. And I tell you what, the kids meal was very generous in portion, definitely enough even for an adult! So that's a thumbs up from me!

Flavourwise it was quite good. I was impressed that the beef wasn't dry at all and when I bit into my beef patty it was so juicy that the juice even dripped down. And on top of that, the beef was still slightly pink inside (although some might think that it's undercooked, I personally think this is how beef patties should be). It was weird that the sets didn't come with drinks....freeflow fountain drinks were $3.80.

I guess the best thing is the salad bar and the sauce bar, you can load up your burgers with as much (or little) veggies you want or you can even eat the veggies as a side salad. They even had whole Cornishon/Gherkins in the salad bar, thumbs up! There was also a lot of sauce options, ketchup, chilli sauce, mayonnaise, thousand island, terriyaki sauce, bbq sauce, cheese sauce, spicy cheese sauce. All great dips for the burgers or your sides.

Pricewise most burgers were around $12-$15, keeping in mind that it comes with the salad bar and french fries. It's a little steep for me to eat this on a regular basis, but once in a while perhaps I'd go back again just to try the other burgers. No complaints on the taste, just the price. Great place for families with kids, as there's 2 big tvs showing cartoons.

The Salad and Sauce Bar

retro(ish) comics on the wall

Chilli Cheese Fries, these were really good! around $6.80.

Trio of Mini Burgers (about 2-3 bites each): Wagyu Beef with Bacon and Cheese, Chicken Thigh with Bacon and Cheese, BBQ Pork with Onion ring. See the onion ring and you can gauge how big the mini burgers are. ($14.80)

I like the thick cut fries

I forgot to take a photo of the kids meal :(

I just found the bill, guess what, no service charge or GST!

Jamie's Italian Singapore

I had been anxiously anticipating the opening of this restaurant in Singapore since I've been such a big fan of Mr Jamie O since the beginning of his television career. I have his books and I watch his shows religiously so of course I had to try his one and only restaurant in Singapore or South East Asia for that matter.

We did a walk-in as I had read on their FB that reservations are fully bokked until November.  But they still have a lot of seats left for walk-ins. We went on a weekday and there was 9 of us, we were lucky to get a table without having to wait too long. But the restaurant does require all members of your party to be present before they will seat you.

The menu looked good with a wide range of food being offered.  It was actually hard to decide on which one to order for our first Jamie O meal.

Below is all the food our table offered.  Taste is subjective, but to our party it was just pretty average.  The food was nothing to shout about and perhaps the thing that affected our judgement is the fact that the kid's spaghetti bolognese was greatly undercooked and had to be sent back. I've never personally had to return food before but this wa inedible. Al dente it certainly was not! The kid's meal is also accompanied with a chopped salad which was a bit bitter with a non-existent dressing and a watered down ribena or apple drink (we couldn't even tell what it was).

The other downside was the seafood bucatini had a lot of broken clam and muscle shells and my friend's muscles still had the beards on them...So eventhough there were other things on the menu we wanted to try, we're not sure if we'd go back again which in itself is a bit disappointing. ....

Seabass, special menu

Bucatini with Seafood cooked en papilotte $29.50++

Happy Fish fingers kid's menu with polenta chips.
$11.50++ including a 'shake me salad' and an unlimited glass of Bottlegreen cordial

Polenta chips with rosemary and parmesan cheese.
$7.50++

Three way (vegetarian) canneloni $19.50++

chicken lollipops kid's menu
$11.50++ including a 'shake me salad' and an unlimited glass of Bottlegreen cordial

Mini Sliders - Kid's menu
$11.50++ including a 'shake me salad' and an unlimited glass of Bottlegreen cordial

Spaghetti Bolognese - Kid's Menu
$11.50++ including a 'shake me salad' and an unlimited glass of Bottlegreen cordial

An ingenious way of presenting the kids menu!

"What should I choose from the kids menu?"

Fresh Bucatini made on site.