Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Bar Bar Black Sheep @ Bukit Timah

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Located at Cherry Avenue, this place always seemed to have a crowd on both occassion of visit. The concept is pretty simple; it has three stalls offering Indian, Thai and Western fare. Food and beer/wine. Good combi, yes?

the Thai and western food stalls

It was post dinner when we visit, so we got some light bites to go with beer. The food was from Smok'Inn Frogz Kitchen. Had onion rings and fish fingers. Can't remember the exact prices but each were below $10. Yep, they were deep fried and very oily.

onion rings, served with ketchup
onion rings close up view
fish fingers, served with fries and tartar sauce
fish fingers and fries

The onion rings got soggy pretty fast. Had better ones elsewhere. The fish fingers were a little burnt, the batter was thicker than expected and the fish meat was soft. The fries were alright though.

Had a funny incident with the beer. Ordered a jug of Kronenbourg Blanc and the guy delivered to us, and we paid. He came back with the change. And after a few minutes, we realized we didn't have any glasses to pour out the beer. Hahaa! The guy forgot to bring us some.

finally, glasses for beer
a jug of Blanc @$25

Payments are in cash terms. This place opens till late.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Zhou's Kitchen 周庄 @ Novena Square 2

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Located at Level 1 of Square 2, this place looked pretty small. On the weekend day of our visit, the restaurant doesn't seemed to be ready for its 6pm start of evening service as some staff were seen to have just started to clean up the front section of the restaurant. Probably the tea-time crowd was hectic? Not sure.

booth seats
view for 2 pax seats

For 2 pax dining option, they have two set menus (Chef's Recommended Set and Tasty Set) available and both priced at about $28++. For set menu meals, one can get appetiser, soup, fish, vegetable and dessert. Quite a good variety, if you ask me. However, my dining companion was more keen on ala-carte dishes so we didn't get any set menus.

ala-carte menu

As the usual practice in most Chinese restaurants, a small plate of peanuts or such would be placed on the table. Here, we get pickles. The vinegared fruits and vegetables slices/juliennes/shreds tasted quite nice.

pickles 酸菜

We also ordered pu-er chinese tea for drinks and it came served in a metal pot.

tea pot
pu-er

For food, we ordered steamed sea bass, crispy roasted chicken (half) and stir fried kai lan with sambal. The service was pretty fast, as the food started to arrive in approximately 10 minutes after our orders were taken. Also liked that the service staff will verify the orders once more with you, after it was keyed into the system.

The crispy roasted chicken came first.

crispy roasted chicken (half) @$16++
flavored salt
closer view of yummy chicken

The chicken was quite yummy with its thin crispy skin and tender moist meat, especially the thigh and ribs part. Yums!

stir fried kai lan with sambal
closer view of vegetables
white rice

The vegetable wasn't spicy actually. Just fragrant with the sambal and goes quite well with rice. The surprise dish was the fish, as I wasn't really expecting a milky broth from that dish.

steamed seabass
closer view of steamed fish

Liked how the fish meat was already deboned and placed back on the serving dish to resemble the fish body. There were tofu cubes below the fish meat. The fish was alright although there was a slight fishy taste to it. However the preserved vegetables were kind of too salty to be eaten so we skipped those.

Service was generally alright, although one dish from someone else's table got sent over to ours after we had finished our meal.

We paid $26+ per pax (after 20% off for Tunglok card holder members birthday month discount).

Friday, June 1, 2012

Yakitori Enmaru 焼鳥 炎丸 @ ION Orchard (Part II)

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Second time visit with a first-timer. Wendy, my friend, made reservations for us, but on a weekday evening, it was rather unnecessary. The place was quite quiet.

handwritten welcome note

I was happy to note that the $5 shochu promotion (on selected shochu) is still available, so got myself a Tomino again.

We ordered yakitori of course, and this time round, we had tsukune oroshi (chicken meatballs with grated radish), garlic shitake mushrooms, ringo buta bara (pork with apple slices) and tebasaki (chicken wings). For appetiser, we had the tako with wasabi. Also ordered the ibushi yaki and onigiri. I had the salmon onigiri while my friend had the same but grilled version.

As usual, the raw cabbage with miso was served as otoshi. I think they forgot to drain off the water from the cabbage as there was quite a pool of liquid at the bottom of the bowl.

a feast for two

Everything was served to us, almost all at the same time. So that was how we ended up with a table full of food! On hindsight, it would be better if we'd order bit by bit and have those first, before re-ordering. The grilled items probably tasted better while it was still hot off the grill.

mushrooms!

The grilled mushrooms had a nice strong scent. Heady woody flavour. Yums. Next, we had the deep fried chicken skin in ponzu sauce (kawa ponzu).

kawa ponzu
yummy sinful deep fried skin

The deep fried chicken skin was kind of addictive, like crunchy keropok, albeit probably a more sinful version.

Onigiri, I kind of liked. Sure, the rice didn't hold and half of the onigiri crumbled after a few bites and there were scarcely any salmon in it, but somehow, this mound of rice ball wrapped in seaweed was like comfort food. Simple and filling.

salmon onigiri

Ok, I cheated. At times, the plain tasting onigiri was jazzed up using the tako wasabi. Haha! New flavour to consider.

small mound of slimy tako with spicy wasabi in a large bowl
tsukune, tebasaki and buta ringo

The tsukune was a little disappointing. The meat didn't hold together (not as compact as previously tasted) and it was a little dry on its inside. Perhaps we had left it out for too long before consuming it. Tebasaki was pretty juicy, while the apple pork was a little hard. It was a good chew though and the apple slices were sweet.

ibushi yaki, close up

The ibushi yaki and the tako wasabi were quite salty, so it made us thirsty for a long time.

Overall, the service was friendly and polite. The place was fairly relaxed.

Thank you Wendy, for the birthday treat!

Here's the link to first visit.
 
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