I digress.

My purpose here today is to reveal the secret step to making authentic roti john.  Roti john is like chinese fried rice - extremely varied in ingredients but involves only a few simple techniques.  But the difference is that many people seem to know the 'secret' behind good fried rice: use left-over rice from the day before so that the grains stay separable and dry.  Essentially, you don't want to end up with a gooey starchy mess (zi char stalls can defy this logic by using fresh rice because they have huge roaring fires not found in the common home).  But what about roti john?  How is it the indian stalls out there can do their johns in distinct layers? bread, followed by meat, then sometimes sauce, and then lastly a solid layer of egg?

To be sure, don't trust the multitude of recipes out there who do their roti johns a la french toast tyle (dipping bread into an egg-meat mixture and then pan frying), its not roti jean.  What I am about to reveal to you is the result of close observation of the indian stalls at Golden Mile Hawker Centre.

The roti john I attempted was extremely simple and downright healthy.  Using tuna flakes, sliced button mushrooms and moz cheese.  Darn, even the eggs were low cholesterol ones!

First step is to slice your baguttes into half-baguettes.  Cut them into half width wise and then slit them length wise (yes, just like how they do it at subway when you order a six-inch).  Then, prepare a hot pan (I used a pancake/crepe pan) with some oil or cooking spray over the highest heat.

Pan toasting your bread is an important step.  This ensures that your liquids do not soak into the bread.  When you pan is hot and smokey, place the bread face down onto the pan and press using a big spatula or two smaller spatulas, in a few tens of seconds, your bread should be toasted brown as shown above.  Turn over and do so for the other side, press hard once again.  Set your bread aside onto an oven tray once they are done.

Next, prep your ingredients and beat one egg into a bowl with one teaspoon of light soy sauce.  Wipe or wash dry your pan and put more grease.  Use a medium-high heat.  Pour your egg onto the pan to cook.  Immediately, top the watery egg mixture with your topping and/or sauce - I used tuna flakes, sliced mushrooms and mozarella cheese.  And then with no time to waste, use one half baguette and press it firsmly down onto your omelette.  Ensure that the bread and egg stick and become one.   Once your egg bottom becomes browned or your egg is cooked to your liking, remove with a spatula and then neatly fold the roti john as you put it down onto the serving plate.  Voila! One down, five to go!

If possible, try to do your roti john as authentic as possible, using minced mutton.  But minced mutton is hard to find in your regular supermarket, not exactly hugely popular I guess.  A solution is to buy frozen halal lamb burgers/patties and then do the mincing yourself at home.  The advantage here is that the meat would have already been seasoned with oddities such as hydrolysed vegetable protein (aka MSG) so you don't have to do the dirty work yourself :p  Otherwise, the best wya to get frehs minced mutton is at the wet market.  Just season with pepper, salt and paprika and stir fry with some onions.

Another key component is the chilli-tomato sauce.  Every self-respecting stall serving roti john will have its own special recipe and the stalls at Golden Mile Hawker Centre at Beach Road have one of the best sauces out there.  But I think for mere mortals like us, buying good quality tomato and chilli sauce and combining them is good enough.

So remember Roti John 101: Egg, topping, Bread and then press, press, press.

 
Now how often do you see a restaurant called "Turkish Cuisine"? Imagine something so overtly simplistic was applied to your regular zi char stall, - "Chinese Cuisine".  The most appropriate response to that would surely be: "Simi lai eh?".  They could have called it "Istanbul" or "The Turk Perks" or "Sheesh!", but no, they called it "Turkish Cuisine".  But all the same, the restaurant's bold, red neon letterings caught my attention when I was in a cab along Upper East Coast Road one day and I finally got the opportunity to check it out last week.

The first thing that strikes you upon entering their East Coast branch is that it smelled like a spa.  Yes, one of those places where you get your shoulders kneaded like dough and your body scrubbed with mud and sand and other weird stuff.  The other thing that strikes you is the beautiful little ornamental decorations that lines one side of the wall.  Not things that would remind you of anything Turkish but very aesthetically tasteful indeed.  I liked the simple menu too - restaurants which have over-zealous menus tend to have under-zealous food.

 We were treated to a surprise complimentary starter, or more accurately an amuse bouche.  Well-seasoned bulgar wheat or what was described to us as "broken wheat", served on top crisp lettuce.  A nice start indeed!

One of our mains was a "Incik" or baked lamb shank.   The meat was absolutely gorgeous, a true melt-in-the-mouth delight.  A good way to start.  The sauce was commendable; was adequately tasty but was lacking a bit of body.  I do prefer my sauces a little heavy and thick.  But it did go well with the rice though I think they could have used a more fragrant type of long-grain like basmati to enhance the entire dish.  This dish, as described in the menu, was supposed to be served with swiss chard, a type of lettuce related to the beetroot and has red stems.  But interestingly they used baby kailan as a substitute here ("Wah lan, simi lai eh?!") as the vegetable garnish given the high cost and highly perishable nature of swiss chard.

 Another one of our mains which kept me trembling in anticipation which thus explains the poor quality of the photo was this beef shish karavan.  Marinated and grilled meat cubes served with mashed smoked eggplant and yoghurt.  The meat cubes were quite excellent, not too tough and well marinated.  But what stood out was the eggplant and yoghurt mash, quite unlike anything I've tasted.  I've never had cooked yogurt before (except maybe in tandoori chicken, which is indistinguishable anyway) and to have it in such a manner was quite a pleasant surprise.  The pita that accompnaied the dish too was excellent, doughy yet tender, a bit like good quality naan.

And to top off an excellent evening was this house specialty called "Kune fe".  Our waiter was quite courteously insistent that we try their specialty so we gave in.  And I'm glad we did!  Made of crispy wheat flex (like crispy deep fried tang hoon) with a warm cheesy (mozarella?) centre and the whole thing sits in heavy cream and ground pistachios.  "Eat hot! Eat hot!" we were urged.  Yum heaven!

Service was excellent here, our waiter was courteous, warm, affable and knowledgeable.  When asked which was his favourite dish, he did give us an honest opinion (the lamb shanks).  More importantly, it showed he has actually eaten the food served here.  Our water was topped up frequently, food arrived promptly and not too long after our starters.  two thumbs up.

The decor and ambience was fantastic, a perfect setting for a nice date.  Not too posh as to put some off and the tables were spaced adequately apart to allow some privacy.  The nett bill for two with drinks will come up to be about $50 a head.

The location of this place was a bit of a drawback though, a little inaccesible but I guess they serve the high-end crowd living nearby.  If you do want to try the food, you could try their Suntec, sky garden branch, though no guarantees that standards or noise levels will be agreeable.  Maybe being inaccessible has its advantages after all....

Food 8, Service 9, Atmosphere 9, Value for money 8

Turkish Cuisine

www.turkishcuisine.com.sg

162 Upper East Coast Road

Tel:6244-9891

Fax: 6244-8981

Above we have some pan-seared scallops.  The trick here is to cook your scallops about 80%, with the centre a little bit raw and tender and the outside a little crisp.  I was pretty happy this turned out well, considering the cost.  You certainly do NOT want to burn this, its not salmon (10%) patty.  Season well with black pepper and salt and you're done.

Next up we have our tuna steaks.  Here, seasoned with only salt and black pepper.  Like the scallops, my first time attempting this.  Unfortunately, unlike the scallops, I over-cooked this one.  The flesh in the centre should have been much redder, like a tuna sashimi and the outside slightly charred and caramelised.  Essentially, you want your tuna 50% done.  Over do it and it turns hard.  I served mine with paprika sweet potatoes.  Skin and cut up some sweet potatoes into wedges.  Toss liberally with olive oil, sprinkle paprika, lay onto a foil sheet and oven bake at 200 degrees celcius for about 20-25 minutes.  We bought some rocket leaves and some rather pricey baby tomatoes for our salad.  The marinated goat's cheese from the cheese counter was most excellent - creamy and sharp. 

A money-saving tip is to buy your scallops and tuna steaks frozen.  An advantage to this is that you may actually end up getting a fresher fish.  The fresh steaks may not move so quickly off the shelves and you could end up buying one that has been there a few days.  Furthermore, it is also possible that the supposedly fresh ones are thawed from frozen anyway!                    

So our mini seafood adventure came to a somewhat hardy end.  But at least I ate my food without feeling being ripped off by some fancy restaurant!

Viva is the new brainchild of the Palatevine Group of restaurants, one of the boys in the haute cuisine market.  If you're a regular at Clarke Quay, you would have noticed an atas Indian restaurant called Ras.  No prizes for guessing who controls that. 

Cuppage terrace was pretty busy on a Friday night when PY and I got there.  We actually had to wait about 45 mins for our table.  It was somewhat heartening to see that Viva was the most crowded restaurant there.  The hip and classy looking Japanese establishments there hardly looked inviting.  But north Indian food was doing pretty decent on its own, and so were the pubs. 

Upon being seated, we were served with some corn tortilla chips that were NOT your regular dorito's.  These felt real stone-ground and were unseasoned.  There were two accompanying dips - one of green chilli and the other red.  I enjoyed the green chilli dip which gave a nice raw, natural flavour to the chips.  So first up was this Ensalada Tere Reyna.  On the menu it is described as "A special house recipe - lettuce, coriander leaves, onion, sprouts, roasted chilies and shrimps coated in sesame seed, served with chilipiquin vinaigrette".

I did enjoy this dish - especially the shrimps.  Cooked to perfection and the sesame seeds stayed stuck.  I suspect the shrimps were marinated, pressed against the seeds and baked for a few mins.  The combination of the veggies were good too, very fresh.  What I appreciated was the use of real good-quality, red and juicy tomatoes.  The vinaigrette oil, though, was a little too much, but if you like oily salads, this is the one for you.

Below here we have Pescado a la Veracruzana (Verascruzana Fish) :"A recipe from east coast, Veracruz, the first Mexican city built by the Spanish.  This dish consists of tender fish covered with bell peppers, onions, capers, olives and chilis".

This dish, unfortunately, was decidedly ordinary.  Even the rice gave it a food-court feel.  I could have done this myself and not paid 30 bucks for it!  I thought the sauce could have been thickened up with a little bit of butter or corn starch.  I couldn't even tell what kind of fish was this.  Granted, the sauce was flavourful, would have been a success if done at home, but at an establishment like this, nothing to shout about.

Below, we have Chile Engonada:"A fine mix of beef and chicken, dried fruits and fresh fruits such as peach, banana and apple; stuffed in a poblano chili and served with walnut sauce, garnished with pomegranate.  A grand delicacy savoured during festive season in Mexico!". 

Ok, this was the piece de resistance of our entire dinner.  Something uniquely Mexican at last.  A poblano chili is a heart shaped bell pepper but has thicker walls which makes it easy for stuffing.  And stuff it they did, all that meat and fruit inside proved highly delicious.  But the trophy goes to the rich and savoury walnut sauce, absolutely to-die-for! And with the deft touch of exotic pomegranates - one of the new class of superfoods with health-giving antioxidants. 

Right, so the food is a little bit of a hit and miss but what about the ambience? Although I sat outside, I found the inside a little too dark and its decor consisting of cactuses and such a little bit tacky.  The area in general was in want of a bit of space I felt.  Too many establishments squeezed together.  Although, like most pampered Singaporeans, I would have preferred air-conditioning, sitting outside was no sweat (pun), rather cooling on a cloudy night.

Service was generally ok, the Indian servers looked a little lost at time with out dishes but generally waiting times were acceptable and our waitress was attentive.  Nothing much to fault in this department especially since it was quite a crowd.

The real stickler has to come with respect to value for money - P. O. O. R.  Serving portions were absolutely dismal, and I say this not only with regards to my food but also to the tables around.  Mains were going at $25-$30 and appetisers $10-$20.  I felt that I was being treated in a seven-course degustation manner with every a la carte dish.  This is really cost-cutting the wrong way!

With that said, Viva is a place you want to go once.  And I mean once.  Splurge all you can on funky Mex dishes and then go to Taco Bell for the rest of the year to satisfy your burrito cravings...

Food 6.5, Service 7.5, Atmosphere 6.5, Value for money 4.5

Viva Mexico

23 Cuppage Road, Cuppage Terrace

Tel: 6235 0440

Email: vivamexico@palatevine.com.sg

Open Daily, lunch 12pm - 230pm . Dinner, 6pm - 1130pm

This was one of those off-the-cuff things.  It was one of those what-shall-i-cook-?-dun-wanna-eat-the-same-old-stuff kind of days.  Yeah, you've had one of those I'm sure.  PY has them one in a while - just replace cook with buy and stuff with clothes.  So I hope that I'm the FIRST IN THE WORLD (!!) to come with the concept of the IOS (Inside-Out Sandwich).  So instead of the "filling" inside, it goes outside ... you can probably call it the "peeling". 

So for the above, take some chix breasts or thigh fillets. Put them on a board and cover with film or into those transparent plastic bags, pound till flattish using whatever you can find ... a vase or an old keyboard or a block of nian gao left over from last year.  marinate up your meat; whatever turns you on.  I did a simple salt and black pepper marinade.  But you can do BBQ, spicy or cajun.  You can even brine the meat too.  Then I lightly toasted some bread (the reason will be made known later), sliced up some tomatoes, bought some smoked ham, grated some cheese and grabbed some dried basil and parsley.  So at the bottom, I started with a layer of meat, then bread, then in-no-particular-order, your cheese, ham and veggies with a sprinkling of herbs as desired.  I used parmesan and mozzarella in this instance.  And the smoked ham gives it wonderful flavour. Then you end off at the top with bread, meat and if you like more cheese at the top (for example, if you like browned mozarella).  The reason for toasting the bread is so that dry bread absorbs the tomatoes and chicken juices better.  (Well, that was my reasoning - I haven't tried this a second time with non-toasted bread slices).  Then you pop the whole thing into a 200 degree celcius oven for about 20 mins.  Make sure you check that the meat is cooked - use a small sharp knife to pierce the meat, if juices run clear, it is cooked! (Chicken carpaccio or sashimi does NOT work well here).

So the beauty of this inside out sandwich is that first you see MEAT MEAT MEAT outside, yum! And then the bread absorbs all these wonderful juices, so make sure to put meat next to bread.  I recommend using good quality ingredients - the cardinal rule to making a good sandwich.  Use expensive bread, vine-ripened tomatoes, fresh chicken - it's well worth it! Some good pairings with chicken include avocado, bacon and mayonnaise.  Play around with the flavours.  Try it also with beef patties, beef burgers, emu meat, zebra steaks, crocodile fillets etc - whatever pleases you.  Just find the right blend of "filling" and "peeling" and you'll be flipping happy inside-out in no time.

But if you ever thought that the mid autumn festival was only about the moon and the moongal, you might be glad to know that it also celebrates the end of the summer harvesting season.  This means that farmers and their family members come together to celebrate the harvest by doing the usual eat-pomelo-burn-lantern-play-sparkle-and-eat-mooncake while the scholars buy atas Raffles hotel mooncakes and flaunt their haute and bulging "Raffles Hotel Mooncake I-Am-Not-A-Plastic-Bag" bag all over town.

So for awardees like me, who straddle the fence between this farmer-scholar divide, are burdened with the onerous task of performing both these mid autumn rituals.  But to serve our foodie purposes here, I present only the yummy mooncake portion.

So first up we have, this snowskin champagne truffle and white chocolate ganache mooncake from the famous Raffles Hotel, Singapore.  At $48+ for a box of eight, this has an atas-ness score of 10 upon 10.  If anyone tells you so-and-so chicken is melt in your mouth or so-and-so cake is melt in your mouth, take it with a pinch of salt.  But if someone tells oyu that Raffles Hotel snowskin mooncakes are melt in your mouth, boy are they right.  These sinful little ones are so fine that popping one in your mouth sends you almost to the pearly gates.  The secret I feel, lies not in the fancy filling but in the delicateness of the snow skin which is just exquisite.  Pity that this can't keep for long, best eaten up to five days after purchase.  But that shouldn't be a problem.

And after Raffles Hotel, I trekked down to Raffles City where there was a mooncake firesale since it was the last day of the MAF.  I managed to pick up this white lotus paste double yolk from Polar Cafe.  I got it for only $5, a real steal.  For a mid-range mooncake, the taste was pretty decent but I thought the skin was a tad bit too hard.  A little over-baked perhaps?  But the filling was quite kao-kao, or quite plentiful and the skin not too thick.  What I would have liked was more melon seeds!  Thre was only a grand total of like maybe 4 seeds in the whole mooncake.

And coming in at the bottom range, we have this roll of  豆沙仔 from NTUC.  Ok, so for five of these, you pay $1.70.  Hardly something you'll even find in Hotel 81.  They're hardish, the skin is quite thick and the filling is rough and a bit fudgy.  But after eating the first two, these little buggers kinda grew on me.  I'm the type who likes to eat hard stuff, as opposed to PY who likes soft.  So she eats the soft, chewy subway cookies while I prefer famous Amos.  And I was pretty happy just chewing and chewing on the 豆沙仔.  Rather therepeutic.

But of course, coming in at the "bottom bottom" are the home-made mooncakes by my Aunty Shah.  The cost price of each full sized mooncake is probably about $2 or even less.  The ingredients are from Phoon Huat and Bake King.  On the left is her famous green tea filling mooncake with a flaky parmesan cheese sprinkled crust.  It's not pastry-like flaky but rather cake-like flaky as you can see.  Each piece is slightly bigger than the size of a golf ball and contains two hazelnuts each.  On the right is the traditional lotus and egg yolk filling.  Once again, a thin skin with substantial amount of filling and melon seeds. Oh yes, in case you didn't know, the egg yolks in mooncakes are from salted duck eggs.

So there ends my mooncake culinary adventure ... at least until a year later.  Wishing you, my friends, a very happy harvest.

(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

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!

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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!

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.