"Big Justin Tan" or otherwise known by his online moniker, Bonos, was finally back in Singapore. Apart from the fleeting fact that he lost 30kg (!@#$@#%$), he was still same 'ole justin tan. So PY, Meiling, Yanjie, Gillian and I met up at Brotzeit's spanking new branch at Raffles City for some German grub. I actually had planned on going to Brotzeit for some time especially after this poor experience at Magma I had heard some good things about the branch at Vivocity so I was looking foward to trying the food. And lo and behold, the special of the day, as indicated on their blackboard outside was the classic german pork knuckle - no better way to gauge the authenticity of the restaurant.

(Firstly, thanks to Gillian for the use of her 5mp phone and her time in sending me these photos :))

This really was a "special" - its not in the menu. Come to think of it, its a little strange since pork knuckle is like the most german of german dishes besides sausages. Anyhow, quality-wise, it was of little surprise that this was a smashing good dish. Nothing like the roasted knuckles I had at Magma. The meat, bar the outer edges, was succulent. The sauerkraut, pickled German cabbages, was tasty and had the right amount of tang. Plus, the potato salad was smooth and creamy with deep fried onions as a topping. I could find little fault with this dish, it even came sliced like we requested. But I could have done with some gravy on the side though. The major boo-boo about htis dish was not in the taste but in the price and the manner of advertising. A quick glance of the Brotzeit main dishes will reveal that mains usually average in the mid $20s +++. But we were shocked to discover that the pork knuckle was a whopping $36+++. The shitty "I got ripped off big time" feeling was compounded by the fact that the previously mentioned blackboard at the entrance to the restaurant conveniently failed to mention the price. Sure I can certainly be blamed for ordering something without asking for the price. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded paying but no one had informed us of the price beforehand. It just left us feeling stupid at the end of what we thought was a good meal.

Some saving grace however, can be found in this dish:

This is what the Deutch call Meeresfruchtesalat - mixed salad with smoked salmon, tuna, prawns, semi-dried tomatoes, olives, grilled zucchini, oranges and sour cream dressing, Now if there ever was a Salad Olympics, this will be a strong contender for gold. Every bit, and I mean every bit of this dish, is high-quality stuff. The Real Deal Stuff man. Everything is fresh and tasty; I especially liked the seared tuna. Everything was so good that it masked over the fact that the ingredients may not have complemented each other very well. I mean, there were so many things that its hard to make a match of the tastes and textures. It's not like a Caeser's salad where the cheese, romaine leaves and dressing go well together. Another plus point to this salad is the very delicate sour cream, not your usual over-powering stuff or tartare sauce masquerading as sour cream. This dressing tied everything up perfectly. And at $20+++ I would have gladly ordered two more of this rather than the pork knuckle

Service-wise, I was not pleased either. The restaurant uses either bluetooth of 3G wireless PDAs to key in orders which then appear magically in the kitchen's screen. Gilliang was pretty intrigued by this and asked if she could see the PDA. But the curt reply from our waitress was "No". The waitress wasn't really trying to be rude but her reply can be roughly translated into "No! You're just here to eat, so eat. Why you want to know so much about our new spanking German technology?". Well firstly, a waitress shouldn't be curt to customers. Secondly and more importantly, never reply a customer with the word "no". There was a gazillion ways to reply - "I'm sorry m'am but...", "M'am, unfortunately...", "M'am, I'm afraid I cannot...". But the bottomline is (pardon my caps): WHY THE HELL SO PROTECTIVE ABOUT A COMMON WIRELESS PDA SET?! I mean, unless there's some top secret nuclear code inside or something. The waitress could very well have demonstrated to us how the restaurant utilises this technology to save time and costs and it would have left us with a nice, warm and fuzzy feeling about the wonders of cutting-edge wireless gadgets ... *wow*....

Oh yes, back to the service, nothing special I'm afraid and thoroughly forgettable. Not particularly warm, friendly or affable.

Atmosphere-wise, the restaurant was an an open concept i.e. no air-con. Somehow, deep down in my sweat glands, I doubt that Singaporeans take very well to non air-con restaurants unless it is a zi char stall or some famous Geylang turtle soup. When they look at the prices and they look at the location, it is almost inevitable that most Singaporeans will expect some cool comfort. I mean, no surprise, we're not exactly living in a temperate climate. Furthermore, I don't see the cost savings in electricity being used to offset the cost of my pork knuckle...

What I did like was the good use of benches amidst the wood-theme decor - suitable for large gatherings and gave a feeling of earthiness.

Overall, I doubt I'll be back at Brotzeit. The restaurant scene in Singapore is way too vibrant for anyone to accept subpar standards, no matter how good the food. But of course, this doesn't apply to hawker stalls where the hawkers can be as curt and rude as they want or locate their stalls in the 18th level of hell for all Singaporeans care, they'll endure all sort of abuse for their good chicken rice, you char kway or wanton mee. But unfortunately, not for sauerkraut.

Welcome to the schizophrenic world of the Singaporean foodie.

Food 8.5, Service 5.5, Atmosphere 6, Value for money 5

If there ever was a dish that can best symbolise the state of my life at this moment in time, it is a thai green mango salad.  Or rather, more specifically, this concoction of a green mango salad that I've created here.  It has the semi-sour and semi-sweet crunch of unripe mangoes, its a little bit messy, it has some uneven crunch with crispy bits of pork rind, some fulfilling moments with the fat, nutty taste of cashews, some hot, hairy and tear-jerking moments with the chillis, and a nice sprinkling of toasted white dessicated coconut that look like the frequent graces and blessings from God that blankets most of our lives.

It's never nice being a junior military officer.  Its worst that a BMT recruit.  That's because as a recruit you do not have any responsibilities.  In fact, you're the centre of attention...the whole BMT complex exists to serve the recruit.  But as the most junior officer, you are tasked with all sorts of rubbish jobs, get an earful when superiors get stressed, and then need to face responsilibilities involving big guns and men's lives that could screw you and your career up big time and lastly, you are still expected to fulfil your primary job of training to become what you're supposed to become. 

So this dish here is dedicated to all junior officers, whether in the military, in the civil service or a private company.  Even the "lowest life forms" deserve some good food!

Serves 4 hungry humans

Ingredients

4 green unripe mangoes

Half cup dessicated or shredded coconut (lightly toasted using a pan over a small flame)

1 cup fresh basil

1 cup cashews

4 chilli padis or 2 large chillis, de-seeded

5 sprigs or 0.5 cup of cilantro / chinese parsley

0.5 cup mint leaves

Grated rind of one lime

4 tbsp fish sauce

4 tbsp lime juice

2tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp peanut oil

Cashew nuts

Crispy pork rind

-Mix together your wet ingredients with the sugar to form the dressing.  Make sure it is well mixed.

-Peel your mangoes using a potato peeler.  Ideally, use a peeler that juliennes to shred up the mango flesh.  I, unfortunately, did not have the luxury of having one and had to settle with the strips made by a potato peeler.

-Use only the soft stalks of the basil and tear them into bit size pieces.  Do the same with the cilantro.

-Finely cut up your chillis.  Be careful with the chilli padi, hot stuff!

-Mix the veggies and mango together with the lemon rind.  Then dress the salad in a big bowl

-Top with cashew nuts, coconut and the crispy pork rind.  The rind and nuts should be broken into smaller pieces.

-Best served freshly cut and tossed.

I got most of my ingredients from the Little Thailand of Singapore a.k.a Golden Mile Shopping Centre.  I would recommend you go there, if nothing, at least to soak in the authentic feel of Thailand.  Remember to search for the unripest of green mangoes, those which are the hardest.  Otherwise, you'll get ripe flesh near the mango seed (mangoes ripen gradually from the inside).  You can also choose to add meat or seafood too if you want.  but I suggest you don't, just K.I.S.S

Most of the time spent on this dish was spent peeling the slicing the mangoes, you could use fancy equipment to help you expedite this process if you do have them.  Otherwise, it was pretty therapeutic doing something brainless and monotonous. 

Just what every junior officer needs!

I once saw someone wearing a T-Shirt that said "The Best Thing Since Baked Bread".  I really couldn't argue with it, not with the fact that he/she is the best thing since baked bread but the fact that, by implicit meaning, baked bread is good.  Good Stuff.  I wonder who in the world ever thought of taking wheat, beating the stalks about for a bit till the grains fall out, wonder what the hell are these tiny things, proceed to smash and grind them till a powder is produced, and then putting in some bacteria and finally putting the gooey thing over heat.  Like DUH? But this process gave the world baked bread.  Virtually anyone in the world can appreciate the smell of freshly bake bread.  Bread is my favourite carbohydrate and I'll eat it any day.  What I like are loaves, not the gardenia-type bread slices which are boring but like loaves from Breaktalk or Q Bread. 

So I was pretty glad to be in Marina Square one day when PY and I stumbled on Pong's Laksa House which served their signature Laksa Bread:

Ok lar, most of you will realise that it isn't really overflowing with fish and prawns; as if it is chocked full of it inside.  But for $5.50 I think this is a pretty good value dish.  The bread is the same type as the Singapore version of the french loaf - rather fluffy.  But the magic is in the laksa gravy - what I like about htis gravy is that it manages to deliver taste without too much fat.  Very often, laksa stalls (and homecooks) like to use heavy coconut milk to bribe the customers with fat.  But Pong's laksa gravy is more on the mild side and is decently flavoured.  The taste of the shallots, turneric and daun kesom are all there.  I enjoyed this lighter version quite a lot.  And the best part is that Pong's very obligingly gives you an extra bowl of laksa gravy too; I like bread ends so it was very handy for me.

A little bit on the Marina Square food court.  I'm not a big fan of food courts because the food is usually just standard stuff and variety isn't very great.  But I think two food courts in Singapore stand out - the food terrace food court at Suntec city which is just amazingly huge and the Marina Square one.  This Marina Square food court is decent big, has a decent variety of food (even suckling pig is available albeit at an exorbitant price) and best of all a great view of the upcoming IR.  I half expect the stalls there to put up a hand scrawled sign stating something like "With affect from August 2009, all items food price increase 30 cts due to IR completion and the very accompanying sceneries to offer".

Oh yes, for those who like 芋泥 or aw nee, the dessert stall there sells the cold version: yam paste over shaved ice with corn and gingko, a steal at $2.80. 

Yes, laksa bread and yam paste - you'll be in heaven too!

PY and I took a well-deserved break two weeks ago.  We had initially wanted to go on a cruise but the idea of sailing on a ship as a getaway didn't really appeal to me.  Going up and down the South China Sea in a sail to 'nowhere' was particularly not welcoming either as my navy friends can tell you.  Furthermore I was afraid that I might be tempted to madly rush to the bridge of Superstar Virgoand shout "HARD TO STARBOARD" whenever I see a fast moving ferry drawing near.  So the best plan was to proceed inland and as far away from the sea as possible, 6100 feet above sea level to be exact.  So now, the culinary chronicles of our Genting trip.

XXSo when we got there, PY was hungry (as usual).  Ok, so we walked around to check out the place while we were waiting to check in.  For some strange reason, she decided to go for bak kut teh.  This was one of the themed areas at Genting World Hotel.  Those who go to Genting frequently might be familiar with this.

You wouldn't expect the BKT at such a place to be wildly delicious or anything.  But neither did I expect the price.  !#$%^&!? It was as if they killed the only remaining pig in South East Asia to make this bowl of BKT because it was rdiculously priced at RM$23.80 with a bowl of rice! PY was so shocked that she she just handed over the money (I hope this isn't a common occurrence).  So I went around checking the prices of everything else.  Well, fruit juices sold for RM$6 and a fish and chips for RM$15.  Yes, my deduction is that the issue at hand was pork and a bit of race involved.  Something that I shall not comment on... we decided to stick to non-pork items...so remember yum yum means bum bum on your wallet.

This was a buffet line-up at Genting Hotel's Restoran Kampong.  We had this for our first night dinner.  The specials of the day were the Perak dishes.  I think we paid about RM$40 per person.  The line up of food was decent enough.  Variety was certainly not lacking.

So we have mutton on the left and chicken on the right - supposedly recipes from Perak.  I did like the mutton, it was the dry-curry kind.  The type that would go excellently well with briyani rice.  Think its called Kambing Lada Hitam. 

So this was our kingly feast (first round).  Genting attracts a lot of Indians for they have lots of Indian food such as paratha and poppadoms.  There was a decent vegetable selection too.  But don't expect the food here to be Marriot Hotel standard.  It is more of the $25 kind of buffets you find in Singapore.

Desserts though, I felt was poor.  The kuehs and Indian snacks were hard and doughy.  We didn't eat very much of this.  But we did like the stewed bananas though, it was done using plantains.  Very excellent.  But overall, the buffet would rate about 6.5 on a scale of 10.

Second night's dinner was at Imperial Rama restaurant.  We wanted to try something interesting so we figured a Chinese-Thai restaurant might do well.  This was located at Genting Hotel too.  The exterior was very excellently decorated.  And the restaurant was situated next to the hotel's VIP casino.

The decor inside was also nothing to be scoffed at.  I was glad we were there during the off season when there weren't many people around.  But unfortunately service here was extremely slow and inefficient.  Our first dish took a grand total of 20 mins to come.  We had ordered a steamed fish.  Logically speaking, the restaurant should serve the easily cooked dishes such as stir fry together with rice and then the steamed fish last.  But they wanted for the piece de resistance to be cooked and served before the rest of the other dishes were cooked and served.  Plus, a couple sitting behind us were not given their menus until like 10 mins after they sat down.  They were pretty peeved too.  If you can see from the photo, we were seated in a corner.  Good for couples but bad because we got neglected by the staff.

XXThis is a dish I hadn't eaten in a long time.  It's sambal petai.  Petai is is a tyoe of bean that comes in a long pod and is an extremely acquired taste.  It can be termed as "bitterly rich" (which ironically, can be used to describe some people also).  This dish goes excellent with rice and petai is very good when added to fried rice.

And here is that steamed fish I was talking about.  The live fish here is extremely cheap, RM$5 for 100g of sea bass, so this 800 fella here cost only $40.  Very fresh and very delicious.  You really can't go wrong with steaming food this fresh.  Topped with fried ginger and garlic with a simple soya sauce.  I think I could probably finish the entire thing on my own.

Here we have a Thai 'ulam-ulam' - an assortment of vegetables like cucumber, kang kong and kai lanf served with two types of sambal belachan.  It was very decent and he chilli belechan was great, freshly made with distinct tastes between the two although both utilise lime juice and belachan.

On the final day lunch, we went to a restaurant called Olive at Genting Hotel.  We had passed it a few times and against PY's instincts, I decided to try some fine dining.  We had asked the lady at the entrance who the head chef was but (I think she didn't really understand us) she just kept saying the chefs were Malaysian.  Hmmm...for an establishment like this, I thought it was imperative for every service staff to know at least who the head chef or chef de cuisine was!  The decor inside was quite good.  Actually, i thought it very suitable - a bit of class and a bit of warmth with the right colour combinations that suited the level of cuisine here.

And I enjoyed the concept of the open kitchen too.  You could see the kitchen from the walkway outside too.  But I thought they were a little too much Mediterranean themed with olive oils and olives and pasta shapes all over the place.

And first up - our basket of bread.  This was the first time in my life I've been served or ever eaten squid ink bread.  I heard it was pretty popular in Japan.  The other multigrain breads were pretty decent too.  Importantly, the bread came nice and toasted and eaten with the balsamic vinegar and olive oil ---mmmmmm! like you've gone to heaven.

PY took the set lunch and her salmon and trout appetiser was very commendable.  Very fresh and nicely plated.  I liked the inclusion of the salmon eggs (ikura) with the croutons.  The blend of textures on the plate was very complementary.  I didn't mind the generous use of olive oil either especially the parsley olive oil.

I ordered the antipasto.  There was a duck prosciutto with melon ball at the top left, then raw prawn beside it, the wasgyu beef carpaccio on the right with a piece of foie gras entier and lastly salmon.  Very excellent again.  The wagyu beef was particularly superb and I thought the water cress complemented the food very well.  The only downside was that I would have preferred the foie gras to have been cooked astly so that it came warm.  Another thing was that I felt the herb cream cheese at the bottom left to be a little out of place with the rest of the food.  I promptly just used it to eat my bread.  This costs about RM$50

This was my puff pastry salad with poached egg.  The egg was executed very well.  The inside was gooey and the whites was all firm.  It sat on a prune compote.  The salad itself was done dlicately too, with roasted peppers and feta cheese.  What I didn't like was the puff pastry.  It was like "duh?".  I had expected the salad to have been served in a puff pastry sort of bowl.  So a piece of rectangular pastry just lying there at the bottom of everything else was quite weird.  It might have been forgiven if the pastry was light and fluffy but this was rock hard.  A poor addition.

And PY's main - roasted quail and millefeuille.  The quail was good in the sense that it was well marinated and cooked through succulently without being dry.  The millefeuille I felt, tasted like KFC original recipe.  The paste looking thing there to be exact.  I don't know whether it was some short cut technique or that the restaurant managed to recreate the KFC flavour on their own! Or whether it was just all a coincidence.  But nothing bad to say about this dish.  Do give Olive a try when you're at Genting, a bit of a hit and miss but for S$50 thereabouts person for a decent meal without wine, its good value.

From foie gras and millefeuille we jump to this - penang laksa! Otherwise known as assam laksa! We found this at Genting World hotel at a place called Market Food Street.  It costs about RM$8.50 and we were surprised about how good it tasted.  The gravy was thick and sourishly spicy.  Plus there was a nice chunk of sardine.  The noodle was also kind of special, it had an udon quality to it.  I don't really have much experience with assam laksas to know if such a noodle was common but I did like the texture - a departure from the usual chor bee hoon you get.

And here we come to the end of our Genting foodie trip.  We didn't come here expecting anything very gastronomic (especially so after we went for the hotel's buffet breakfast) so in that sense we left pretty satisfied.  Prices here are not cheap, generally Singapore food court and restaurant prices. What I would recommend is actually the cup of corn that is selling all over the place, for some reason, the corn here is nice, big and juicy.  And it sells for only RM$3.50.  So I leave you with a glass of teh tarik, horrendously priced RM$4, but reminiscent of what Genting is all about, sweet and bubbly but be prepared to pay.

I'm pretty confident that a grand total of about maybe 3 Singaporeans have ever heard of Milan's seemingly well-known Cova Cafe.  It's such a well-heeled aka atas establishment that it has spread its wings into Asia by way of swanky cities such as Hong Kong and Japan.  So when Wing Tai Holdings decided to bring cova to Singapore, where else but the equally swanky Paragon shopping centre to set up its flagship outlet.  So amidst the Jean Paul Gaultier, Burberry's, Coach and Gucci, we now have some chi-chi smoked salmon sandwiches and fruit tartlets to complement those tired shoppers; feet who have been in their Pradas for too long.

This was about a week after Cova had opened its doors.  Incidently, PY and I were here at Paragon specially just to try this chic establishment although PY was secretly pining after the Gucci store (I suspect).  At this juncture, I must introduce the term "educated idiot" to you.  An EI is a catch-all phrase which describes someone incredibly educated yet displays occasional failings of extreme ignorance.  Like this friend of mine who didn't even know Dover station.  Or this girl-friend of mine who had never eaten Tandoori chicken before -_-'  As for that EI in me, I had never been to Paragon before this trip.  Yes, really.  Always walked past but never entered.  I mean, can't blame me right, I don't fly SIA every other week or need my monthly Louis Vuittonbag.  So the only thing that can draw me here...food.

I must admit the ambience and decor of Cova brought back good memories of France and Italy where the cafes were quaint, the sandwiches were big and full of stuffing and the pastries were oh so delectable.  So I was pretty excited about trying the food.  So we made a reservation about an hour in advance, walked around for a bit and came back, got our table and sat down and we sat down and then we sat down some more and then we looked around and then we sat down and ?!?!??!? no menu? Yes, dear reader, we waited a whole 10 mins for a menu.  No, the place was not crowded.  Yes, there were plenty (and I really mean plenty) of waiters and waitresses around but everyone just gave us surreptitious glances.  It was as if each waiter was waiting for someone else to serve us.  Or maybe they thought we had already ordered our food and were waiting for it to arrive.  But as my seargent in BMT told me: "Bloody hell recruit, you thought? you thought?! you thought, i think, who confirm?".  Exactly my sentiments.  Well, someone finally DID serve us in the end.  It was a portly chinese waiter who was friend enough ... but only just.  But his knowledge was patchy, he couldn't list out what was in the antipasti appetiser and didn't know what arrugula leaves were!  Aiyah, so at this point, we quite sian liao, almost want to leave but we decided to give the food a chance...

 First up we ordered the arrugula aka rocket salad.  Rocket was one of my favourite veggies in London and it goes extremely well with cheese and bread as it was a slight peppery taste.  Here, it is served with smoked salmon, cream cheese and sliced apple.  This simple dish was marvellous, the proportions of the ingredients were all perfect especially the amount of cheese.  The salmon was very good and the sliced apples were perfectly sliced wafer-thin then slightly salted to prevent oxidation. 

Next I had the main dish of seafood stew with pan fried crispy cod.  The stew was simply flavoured with saffron.  This was another good dish.  Of particular mention is the cod which I suspect was slighly torched after being pan fried.  This gave it a nice crispy top which contrasted well with the rest of the texture of the dish.  The mussels and prawns added a springy texture.  The soup stock was also nicely flavoured and well created with discernable depth.  What I would have preferred is a thicker soup (maybe a little butter and flour?).  This would have gone well with the foccacia that came on the side.

Next up is this calzone that PY ordered.  A calzone (kel-zo-nee) is essentially a wrapped up pizza.  The ingredients are pretty much the same.  This calzone was probably my least favourite.  For one, there was inadequate sauce inside so you do end up eating quite a lot of bread and dough at the end with nothing to mop up.  Secondly, the ham inside wasn't anything to shout about.  It was at most a mid-range kind of thin cut ham available at NTUC; I was expecting something with a little more oomph.  What I did like though, was the freshness of the dough.  You could taste that it was freshly kneaded and rolled out upon order.

And the part both of us were looking forward to ... our just desserts.  PY did exclaim happily that they had sache cake, arguably the world's most famous chocolate cake after maybe Devil's Food cake.  A Viennese specialty that was really really good.  I enjoyed it tremendously.  The blend of chocolates, the icing and the sponge will be guaranteed to give any choc lover tears of joy.  Even the strawberry on top was fresh and tasty.  Next we had a selection of little thingies from the counter.  At $2 each, they had better be good.  But it was a case of hit and miss for some.  The biscuit like thing was worth maybe $0.20 honestly.  It was just a plain butter cookie which could have come out of those blue round tins of Danish butter cookies.  The chocolate biscuit fared just a little better ... but only just.  The two winners were the cream puff and the fruit tart.  The choux pastry of the cream puff was to-die-for; light, fluffly and tasty.  And the custard base of the fruit tart was most exquisite; not overly hard, the custard was not too sweet but deep and rich.

Overall, Cova gives on the feeling of a sputtering train just getting to leave the station.  There are numerous creaks and groans and steam but whether its going to gallop away or breakdown, no one knows.  Service standards need lots of improvement.  Although the decor was top-notch, PY pointed out that the tables were squeezed so close together (even nearer than those at Macdonald's) that the impression of exclusivity and chic-ness was kind of lost.  So if you do go, remember not to discuss too much office politics or gossip or debate about top secret national security information, you might do better just enjoying the food!

Food 7, Service 4, Atmosphere 7, Value for Money 6

Caffe Cova Pasticceria-Confetteria

For reservations call 6733 0777

290 Orchard Road, #01-20A Paragon Shopping Centre 238859

Tel: 6836 0351