lunch date

Waking up late.

It's a work day for you while I'm in the last week of my holidays.

Finishing my book while you slept in.

Frustrated and finally forced out of bed by the incessant sounds of piling and ongoing upgrading works.

Only to fall back to sleep next to your nephew.

A big kid and a small one to melt my heart. :)

It's been a while since we had time for lunch.

Where to?

Chicken rice at Clarke Quay.

I've never noticed this- Tiong Bahru Hainanese Chicken Rice where quietly it sits behind the bus stop across the bridge from The Central in the direction of home when you get off work late at night.

A set meal for two.

$17.80 if I remember correctly.

Serves up half a chicken (choice of roasted or white)

Roast chicken was too salty on the wings but otherwise juicy and mmm yum.

It might have something to do with the fact that I was ravenous by 2pm as well. ;p

I liked the addition of tomato slices and salted vegetables.

And they had a bowl of soup which was more than just decent.

I'm impressed.

Tasty. Boiled chicken stock with salted vegetables.

A choice of side. The lady taking our order offered either the thai style fried beancurd or five spice meat roll.

A little heavy on the salt. But savoury and well balanced out by a dip into the luminous orange spicy sauce.

Ngoh Hiang for the carnivore of course.

And a choice of vegetable between fried beansprouts or baby bok choy. I like them crunchy bean sprouts but I like my healthy greens more :) A little overly blanched but tasty with the toppings of oyster sauce, fried shallots and hey, some ikan bilis too.

And this was mine.

All mine.

I definitely have a healthy digestive system full on fibre. :)

Thanks for lunch.

And I'm happy we managed a proper lunch before you started on your work day.

boon tong kee @ ang mo kio avenue 3

After Chinese New Year Celebrations at school, we decided on a place that would be more befitting for our cheongsams. :) Actually, it was just too weird for us to be dining at the market in our outfits. Plus, we appreciated the aircon. So to boon tong kee we headed.

And what else but hainanese chicken right?

So we had a whole chicken. For $24.

Bone in.

Was too fatty for my liking.

The chicken was served cold as you would expect of typical hainanese chicken but the skin was too fatty to be gelatinous.

And a side of chicken liver for $3.

Just because we like our greens, we had crunchy bean sprouts fried with crispy fish skin as recommended to be a house specialty. Now this cost $12.

A tad too steep for bean sprouts and crispy fish skin wouldn't you think?

Teas were alright the first round and basically just water the next refill.

While the $1 might not be alot for tea cover charges, I'd have expected better from a 'branded' restaurant so to speak.

Service was too slow even with only 4 tables occupied. Asking for the cheque was even worse. It took a while to come and when it did, a correction to be made for an extra rice charged saw the bill going back twice (once to check for the correction and again for the actual bill to be printed) before I actually managed to sign for our lunch.

I left lunch yawning. Not because I was satisfied but more that I was tired just sitting around waiting to pay.

I don't think i'll be going back anytime soon. Chicken rice at a lot of other places around the AMK area are better bets at more wallet friendly prices.

traipsing down thomson road

a good ending :)