Lunch at Ichiban Boshi

OK I am not going to make silly new year resolutions anymore like, "post monthly on the blog", where it's recorded for all to see that I'm not living up to my resolution. But for once, here I am, logged into Blogger just the day after I've eaten at a place, with the photos all uploaded, so I'm just gonna put them here.

Place: Iciban Boshi, Suntec City
Date: Sat 16 Aug 08
People: Dawn (birthday guest of honour), HX, Jen, moi

Food:

I had unagi with scrambled eggs. It had 3 major problems for me. 1) Rice was too hard. 2) Came with spring onion garnish (which I had to pick out). 3) Eel skin was too thick and oily, which I also sliced out, leaving me with not a whole lot of unagi to eat. Well lesson to me is I really shouldn't order unagi next time. But the scrambled eggs was yummy, especially with the savoury sauce it was doused in.





Dawn had the cold soba. Didn't hear any complaints from her, so it couldn't have been too bad. Plus the presentation looked really pretty. We thought it looked quite korean actually. Would've wanted to try that myself, but didn't think cold food would go down too well on a completely empty stomach.







Jen and HX went for an assortment of sushi, which turned out to be a really good plan. I shall try that next time when I'm less ravenous.











And finally, the piece de resistance. Rather, the pieces de resistance. 2 desserts which the four of us shared. Tempura ice-cream, and something else whose name I forget, but which essentially is peach ice-cream (with a hint of mint - as HX pointed out in her 2nd-to-last spoonful of the ice-cream) encased in a white chocolate shell so whole thing looks like a pretty little ripe peach. I definitely prefer the tempura, for its novelty if not its actual texture - the tempura part of it was quite soggy by the time it reached us. But the peach thingy just looked pretty, and was a little too sweet for my liking.

Not too shabby a dining experience, all in all. But next time, I'm just going for the sushi.

Lunch at Yanqing's Shanghai Kitchen (1st post of 2008)

So I've decided, it's a new year, and all my unfulfilled resolutions of 2007 are going to be newly, well, resolved. It's taken me a couple of weeks, but here I am, finally making my first post, not just of this blog, but ever. Been waiting till now 'cos I had to find something worth posting about, and I had a pretty cool meal at this place for my mum's birthday, so am just gonna put up all the food pictures I took there.

Appetizers: (left) Peanuts soaked in this thick-ish, sweet, vinegary sauce; and (right) bean curd sliced into thin strips, with cucumber (I think) and some other stuff. Addictive stuff. They should pack this in packets and sell them in supermarkets. Won't be surprised if they do in China.

南瓜百合心太软 - If only it tasted as nice as its name sounds. Cold dish of diced pumpkin, lily bulb (the white pieces that look like onions) with dates stuffed with glutinous race. I really don't like cold, un-cooked stuff, to begin with, and cold, sweet, raw food before the meal proper just didn't seem right for me. Maybe I would've enjoyed it more as dessert. Ma loved it though.

蟹粉烩白玉 - 白玉 being the cubes of tofu in the crab sauce. Really, the tofu was the main ingredient and not the crab. Rather liked it, very subtle taste.

宫保鹿肉 - Tried not to think about the poor deer that sacrified itself for this dish, but at least it was a worthy sacrifice. This was sooo good, think everyone rated it favourite dish of the meal. The meat was perfectly tender, and the cashew and tomatoes really came together deliciously with the meat.

香煎银鳕鱼 - Took this right before the waiter divided it up into portions. (Wonder if they get a lot of trigger-happy customers there. He must've thought I was nuts snapping away at everything put in front of me.) This was sort of like a less salty, and sauce-laden version of salted fish. Ma thought it was a waste to cook the life out of cod like that, but I liked it, very nice with rice.

丝瓜蘑菇炒蛋 - This tasted exactly like what my grand-aunt cooks at home. Not sure if it's a good or bad thing. Tasted not bad, but could've saved sixteen bucks asking my grand-aunt to whip this up. Should've gone with another vegetable dish.

肉松香麻饼 - I only got to eat this the next day at work, 'cos I was so full by the time this was served up, and it was da-pao-able. Ma said this was good. But the version I ate the following day was cold and hard and very unsatisfyingly teensy. Ditto for everything else in this place, portions are kiddy. Except for the next dish...

XO酱海鲜炒面 - Or so it says on the receipt. Didn't taste the XO though, not that it mattered. We ordered this to have something starchy to go along with the rest of the protein/vege. Thought it was gonna be single-serving, like everything else, but it turned out to be a gigantic heap enough for 3,4 people. Was still good when we da-paoed this back and re-fried it.

功夫母指粽 - These were the cutest things - literally the size of your thumb, and tasted almost exactly like those regular-sized triangular dumplings, except they cost twice as much, maybe thrice. Well at least they're cute.

It was really too much, we always over-estimate, but overall, think we all enjoyed the food. Next time I go back there though, if ever, I'm going for the cheaper $7+ noodles.