wagamama :)

wholesome food for the pan asian palate.

or the homesick people actually.

that's codeword for DAD.

he's the traditional chinese food man.

too many sandwiches a day make dad a dull boy.

it was a madly cold day out watching the changing of guards at Buckingham.

hiding in shops to thaw.

we finally decided to walk over to Victoria where they'd be watching the afternoon show for Wicked.

Wagamama's! :)

These guys have generous servings and complimentary miso and ocha.

It's no wonder they have a constant traffic of diners.

Walking into the interiors of the restaurant strikes up an immediate image of FFT @ Botanical Gardens.

Long communal style canteen tables.

Brackets below the tables for your personal items and coat hangers at the side.

It seemed like a place with quick turnovers and lunch fixes at first glance.

Then you realise that there's free WiFi on Cloud and there are a number of people quietly working on Macbooks having a leisurely dining experience.

I liked the atmosphere. :)

A large bowl of cha han.

Generous both in servings of rice and ingredients.

This looked infinitely promising.

but lacked flavour making the odd dash of chilli powder, chilli oil and soy sauce a necessary evil.

yaki soba.

coming across as highly recommended on the reviews.

This did not disappoint. :)

Wok fired and flavourful.

Now this was our second visit at Covent Garden before Singin' in the Rain.

Our preferred choice of pre-theatre dining.

Fuss free and deliciously satisfying.

Dad picked a Katsu Curry don.

Hmm. I'd rather not.

The katsu was over fried and just too dry.

The curry sauce lacked depth.

But the japanese rice was delicious with the sauce.

Happy campers. :)

And then he hides from the camera because of his beanie hair. 

Hahaha.

Loving London.

rained in.

Making macarons.

Mmm. ohmyyum.

Seafood flat rice noodles.

Wok hei but made fragrant only with the help of soy sauce.

Prawn paste chicken.

Oily.

But the batter is exquisite.

Crunch worthy.

Even till the end of dinner.

Which actually wasn't all that long. :)

A large serving of fried rice.

With the prawn bits?

I expected whole prawns at least.

In an opeh leaf to seal in the fragrance.

Dinner would've been a first with you.

jumbo riverfront @ indoor stadium

Just because it was Grandma's birthday,

these prawns were ordered with shells.

So that the grandparents could eat the heads. :)

The option with shells off although much easier to eat,

misses out on the crunch of the shells.

The cereal enhanced by the flavour of the curry leaf was subtly savoury,

but mostly sweet, light with a hint of spice from the chilli and totally addictive.

How do they do it?

Crispy skin.

While retaining the juices of the meat within.

Most parts.

The breastmeat was still evidently dry-ier.

Seafood fried rice.

Shreds of crab meat and prawns.

I didn't remember any scallops in this order.

There's something about this fried rice.

Pale in colour

Yet strong on the fragrance of eggs and seafood flavour.

Here's looking at you.

Come get me.

Because I'm simply delicious. :)

Nothing like these pops of deep fried mantous to dunk into the sauce.

One's never enough.

Bibs on.

And crab is served. :)

Lobster vermicelli.

You'd be surprised to find meat in the least expected places.

The feelers.

And be prepared to be pierced by their spiky exteriors.

My favourite takeout still.

Chock full of ingredients.

For a period of time they didn't include the fresh scallops but now they are back!

And they make me a very happy girl.

Daddy knows best.

And he always gives me the best.

The Eastern Restaurant @ The Centrepoint

The Eastern Restaurant is obviously a case in point for locality considerations when opening a restaurant.

Tucked into the deep recesses of The Centrepoint at Orchard,

diners would not even walk there to consider it as a possible dining outlet.

It doesn't help matters when there's a chinese restaurant situated nearer to the escalators.

And this hongkong restaurant has a HK chef from Mak's Noodles at its helm.

So yes, all that contributed to its less than stellar diner count everytime I walk pass the restaurant.

Walk pass. Never into.

Till this bloggers tasting fiesta came about.

For a restaurant that's been around for ten years, they are still coming up with new dishes from time to time to add on to the menu.

Hits and misses, I hope the ones that don't see too many orders get removed from the menu after awhile.

The sausage salad lite bites was a miss with a tough breaded crust and terribly boring sausage.

While the tofu dish was a simple but well executed dish.

It didn't conjure up the poetic justice that should have been with its name by its looks but it did have a very pleasant surprise of a fresh shrimp encased within each tofu piece.

Fried noodles with a generous amount of bean sprouts and sliced carrots and spring onions that added the much needed colour to this otherwise brown gravy coated dish.

Solid la mian noodles of a good doneness with generous slices of fish.

It was just too bad that the sauce was a tad too salty, it overpowered everything else.

And no, I couldn't manage to finish it if I wasn't planning on drowning myself in chinese tea to quench my thirst as an aftermath.

The fried rice was a better bet. Fragrant and resplendent with fresh shrimp and ham and a smattering of floss and scallions. This was a makeover for any leftover rice to die for. And that not an exaggeration. This would actually make me choose rice over noodles anytime. At this restaurant anyway. I don't usually take rice if I had a choice. Hmm.

So this dinner was really supposed to be about the xiao long baos.

Just by coincidence, I had din tai feng just the day before for lunch.

I don't know if it's just the branch at Bishan but those had awfully thick skins and it didn't help that the air conditioner was blasting such that our steamer of xlb was cold within moments of arriving at our table.

Suffice to stay, i didn't enjoy it much.

These however, had a thinner skin by comparison but still kept the soup within safe when picked up with chopsticks and hot for a while yet.

While it could do with a bit more soup, it was well flavoured and very enjoyable xlbs indeed! :)

Brand name and fusion cooking aside, if you're looking for the authentic type xlb with nothing more than just the traditional pork filling, this is where it's at.

Then it was time for desserts. The design on these babies brought images of shuttlecocks and golf balls to our minds. But really, they were simply molten salted egg yolk buns. I took a bite and held it out for a picture. It's not flowing! I was disappointed and left it on the plate while I kept the camera away. The next time I checked, it WAS flowing! Not that this flowing thing is a mark of a good liu sha bao but I quickly picked it up and took another bite. This was good! A salty sweet medley that was well balanced for its savoury and sweet notes. While not comparing it with the better ones out there, this was better than the ones at Imperial Treasure at Ngee Ann City. :)

 This is a dessert of choice for me where available. Easily shared and more often than not, a crowd pleaser for most dinners. The proportions were good on this. Ample red bean filling wrapped within a layered filo pastry.

I'd be back for a few of these :)

what's cooking at home

It's never an easy task to be cooking daily. Grandma isn't in the best of health and she can't stand for extended periods of time. Sometimes we want her to just take a good rest and buy takeout instead. But if given a choice, she'd rather cook. It's sort of like a responsibility she's taken on and she's lost if she doesn't have to cook. She's good at it. And no, not because i'm biased. Food outside never tastes the same when replicated at home. For better or for worse- the taste, that is :)

Braised pork trotters with egg

Perfectly braised pork trotters with tender meat falling off the bones and the flavour infused hardboiled eggs. Chases away the cold rainy nights. 



when leftover rice takes on new life when wok fried



Leftover rice is sometimes my grandmother's biggest bane. She's left to decide whether to fry it up or to just to steam it with the new batch of rice she cooks. It used to just be eggs and rice but these days, she's taken to adding in strips of charsiew that she buys from the market. This is an entire meal all on it's own. But of course, we always have dishes on the side. :)



sea bream smeared with curry powder



That's the taste of home right there. I haven't had curry powder smeared on fish outside before. Not that I've ever come across. Chilli/ sambal yes but curry powder, her secret blend of spices, nope. And rarely a night goes by without fish. :) I've taken to loving both the crispy skin and curry powdered white flaky fish meat within. I used to avoid eating fish because of it's bones and the patterned skin. Psychological.

And yes, there are vegetables as well. Depends what she gets from the market. That's the one dish we finish up without fail every night. For the very reason that vegetables aren't recommended leftovers what with a loss in color and their nutrients. We love our greens. :)

What's home cooked food like at yours?

Midautumn night's treats

It was a quiet affair this year. I miss the lanterns that grandpa used to hang all around the trees in his garden. Age does catch up. Especially when one sits around at home daily issuing an open invite for age to ravage the self. 

Still Alice was a book I just read by Lisa Genova. It chronicles the timeline of an English professor diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. The words that she used to wield power over now lost at the tip of the tongue.

You see an object. You can describe it. You know what it should be called. But the word eludes you. You're somewhere. You know you aren't far from your destination. But you look around and everywhere seems foreign. People pass you by. The fear of being lost takes over and triggers the emergency response in your body.

I imagine my grandparents in these situations. And it worries me. Are they aware of what's happening to them? Do they know how to react? Will they tell us if this happens to them? I try to speak to them more. To be around them more.

That day, sitting in grandma's room on the flat wood planks that she sleeps on, sewing while she was talking on the phone. It brought me back to days when I was still in school. When I came home and refused to bathe, sitting in my pinafore on those planks, sewing bits and pieces of what I knew how to, watching television till it was time for dinner. Where did those days go?

My grandfather washed my socks two weeks ago by hand for me thinking they were dirty. He used to do that for my brothers when they got home from school. Daily, he would wait for them to come home, take their socks to hand wash and wring dry before he set about to cut fruits or squeeze fresh juices for them to have after dinner. Where did all that time go?

I miss those days and I appreciate every single dish grandma puts on the table every week day. Cooking for at least 5 people every night isn't easy yet she manages it day after day. Today she fried up a batch of fried rice chock full of ingredients- fried egg strips, char siew slices and thin strips of hormel luncheon meat. :)

A pot of braised pork packed with fatty trotters and lean meat. Not forgetting a dozen hardboiled eggs, peeled and left to braise in the dark sauce gravy over a charcoal fire. That stove makes all the difference in the world. No fire control needed, no constant hovering over the fire and food that's infused with flavour, left gently boiling till it's ready to be dished out. 

And her chicken curry. I am ashamed that I still have not mastered the recipe. There are a few things in her culinary expertise that has rendered me unable to appreciate any other variations of these items- homemade kaya, rice dumplings and chicken curry. It just never tastes the same anywhere else. I'm not a snob. I just have specialised tastebuds for these items. She buys the different spices and gets these spices ground and mixed by the kilos at a stall in Little India. I love her curry. :)

It's something that's hard to say face to face. But I really appreciate and love you both. Thank you. For everything.