18 Feb 2012 - Zhou's Kitchen high tea buffet

Wanted to sleep in this rainy day, but got nagged at to go out. For "fresh air".

Went to Zhou's Kitchen at Novena Square2 for their high tea buffet, $16.80++ per person. Had a refillable pot of pu'er tea for $2.40++ too.

Fried crab rolls - crispy, but insides tasted more doughy than crabby. Perhaps crab meat is too delicate to be done this way, reminded him of the "fiery balls of crab" at Joe's Crab Shack during his stay in Dallas in 2011.


Fried dory fish fillet done Thai-style. Many people like tender dory fish, and it was made better with the sweet and slightly spicy sauce.


Prawn salad has always been his favourite. Succulent prawns, sweet melons and nata de coco topped with mayonnaise, just can't go wrong with this.


Pan-fried turnip cake with Chinese sausage. This did not taste overtly oily, he liked that the sausage bits lent contrast to the soft cake. She felt that dried shrimps were not sufficiently used though.


Cold dish of Drunken Chicken in spicy garlic sauce. Notice that this was cut out like ham? No bones.


Century egg porridge for her. He had a few spoonfuls, and thought that the broth tasted a little out. She found nothing wrong though.


Had difficulty removing the shrimp dumpling to his mouth, the skin was just too sticky. Crystal Jade did a better rendition of this.


Braised "phoenix" claws...


Steamed pork dumplings in spicy sauce. Suspected that this was "guo tie" that was steamed instead of being pan-fried.


Pork ribs with black bean paste, with no black beans to be found. Meat was succulent.


These were the weirdest siew mai they had ever tasted. The orange topping of fish roe seem to have all burst, the dumpling was overwhelmed with mushroom flavour, and the overall texture was a bit dry and hard. The first time he did not enjoy siew mai.


Sour and spicy soup to regain some appetite.


Pan-fried dumpling (guo tie), with pork floss and salad dressing. Warm, crispy and tasty. Nice.
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Finally, desserts to signal the end of the show. Herbal jelly that she complained about not being bitter enough.


He liked the sweet and cool almond jelly with mixed fruit.

26 May 2010 in Taiwan

a search on famous food in the vicinity led them to a certain xiao long bao shop. however, that shop was only opened till 2pm, and they were late by an hour or so.

not wanting to give up, they drove along and stopped by another dumpling shop selling guo tie.

curry and chives amongst the many flavors.


close up


next location - dream mall. 2nd largest mall in asia (or southeast asia?) and some colleagues who had been there before were talking about it.


really huge but nothing much of interest to the lads. except for the the playground on the roof, arcade machines and a ferris wheel. yes, a ferris wheel on the roof, not a puny one at that.


nearly forgot about food, ate at another shabushabu buffet restaurant, 500NT for 2 hours. what was good was the free flow sashimi, seemed very fresh, better than the ones at dongguan market.


some handrolls - and the rest were forgotten by the stomach...

badminton day 20 Sep 09

woke up to an sms from lk to have lunch at nyp macdonald's. however, he had stocked bread, chicken franks, and cucumbers, so it was to be brunch at home.

opened up a pack of 10 chicken franks, wrapped with aluminium foil and put them into the steamer. threw some chinese steamed buns in to accompany the chicken franks, too. since everyone was at home, he decided to cut the franks into halves, such that it would seem like more for each to eat. a half would meet almost the length of one slice of bread anyway, though the intention was to expedite consumption of the bread.

halved chicken franks saying hello


steam buns - 3 yam buns, 1 char siew bun. his favourite's in focus, while she had the rest of them.



after badminton, he suggested that they go for this mussel spaghetti at sembawang hill food centre, along thomson road. stall name's "grill and pasta". recommended by ws and seemed highly rated online too. 5 people strong team headed out there, very hungrily.

tomato based mussel spaghetti - only $5 !! 3 of them had this version. the tomato sauce had substance, not the usual watery ones they had. and the mussels, around 10 of them for each serving. yummy. his mouth is watering again. see that gaping mussel? asking for it.....


cream based mussel spaghetti with extra cheese $6 (extra 50c for cream sauce and 50c for extra cheese). one of them ordered this, and the aroma was tiltillating. it had the whole table regret not opting for the cream sauce. again, the sauce was really thick and creamy, very very sinful.


he as usual, went for aglio. the least oily offering that he tried so far, and it was very fragrant even though it had less garlic as compared to others. this had linguine instead of spaghetti. actually, he had wanted to change it to mussels spaghetti but the stall ran out of stock. was feeling down-hearted, but this aglio really made him happy with his choice. only $3.50


sz spotted a taiwanese eatery's banner shouting "salt baked chicken", so they headed there to continue the expedition.

it was a quaint little shop, with only 2 tables occupied when they were there. few shops down, ivin's had a lot queue.

after they got seated, they placed orders for taiwanese beef noodle, salt-baked chicken, oyster mee sua and guo tie.

while waiting, they had dried beancurd strips (correction?) and braised peanuts, some of the tidbits you have in a chinese restaurant before food is served.


then came their beef noodles - $6.80. noodles were still springy, soup was good, beef was tender (seems like brisket). he liked it, but not as much as the gooey version.


next up - salted crispy chicken. it seemed that they mistook the chinese word and thought that it was another dish. disappointed looks around the table. $6.50 for this. the group concurred that it tasted like popcorn chicken.


oyster mee sua followed soon after. $6.80. there were probably 4-5 oysters, you'll see one peeking out from the bottom of the picture. two of them had been to taiwan and tried the famous oyster mee sua, and they felt disappointed with this.


finally, the last dish was served piping hot. guotie (pan-fried dumplings). it probably cost in the region of $6.50 too. they were pleasantly suprised to see the skin served as one whole piece, a first for most of them. the skin was crispy and tasty, while the guo tie still had some soup in them when he bit in. yummy.