One of the best fried carrot cake (white) can be found at the Ang Mo Kio Central Market & Food Centre.The carrot cake itself is soft and is well covered with egg – this combination is perfect as it is crispy around the edges with a nice fragrant eggy flavour! The picture below is of the $4 serving size and comes with sambal chilli which goes well with the carrot cake.

Located at the Amoy Street Food Centre, A Noodle Story (超好面) is opened by former Waku Ghin chef de partie Gwern Khoo and his business partner Ben Tham and together they have created a Singapore-style ramen.The noodle servings are available in three sizes – $5.50, $6.50 and $7.50.Crispy Potato-Wrapped Prawn, HK-Style Wonton, Tender Cha-su and Hot Spring Egg are also available as additional side orders.
The noodles to me seemed more like our local mee kia rather than Japanese ramen and the chilli used is actually hae bee hiam (sambal udang kering), a spicy dried fried shrimp sambal.This is served with several slices of tender Japanese-style chashu, two pieces of wonton filled with fresh springy prawns and had a hint of ginger in it, one piece of fried prawn wrapped with potato shreds which was crispy, fragrant and really tasty, as well as half a Japanese style onsen egg that was cooked perfectly (just the way I like it). Each ingredient gave a different dimension to the dish as they brought different textures and flavours to your tastebuds. The noodles are typically garnished with freshly sliced scallions and red pepper but I don’t like scallions so I asked them not to put any garnishing in my bowl.

Overall I would classify this as fusion food, so I’m not really sure if it is popular with the local crowd, as I noticed the queue at this stall is not as long as the some of the other stalls at the food centre. I did enjoy the noodles, which were a change from the usual ones being sold at most hawker centres and my favourite ingredient was the crispy potato-wrapped prawn. Yums!

A selection of 145 dishes are available on the ala carte buffet menu and customers will be spoilt for choice! Crowd favourites are the sashimi, tempura and yakitori dishes.

The interior of the restaurant is quite spacious.If you are planning a large family gathering, or dining with friends or colleagues, the restaurant has some private rooms available at no extra charge. You can request for a private room for your party when you make your reservation, but do note that there is a minimum headcount of 10 persons to get a private room.

This particular room can host up to 35 people but if the groups are not that big, then the space can actually be divided into two rooms by moving the folding partition across the middle of the room.We were served with 25 dishes for our food tasting session and it was an unbelievable amount of food for a Saturday afternoon!

Here are some of the highlights from our meal...

Chawanmushi (Steamed Egg Custard) – The egg was smooth and had a piece of chicken, shimeji mushroom and gingko nut in it.Shabu Salada (Pork Salad) – Quite a nice salad which had a fragrant sesame dressing and the pork slices were cooked just right.Sashimi Moriawase (Assorted Sashimi Platter) – The sashimi is very fresh and I thought the presentation looked good with the salmon rose and the wasabi shaped like leaves.Yaki Tori (Chicken in skewer) – The succulent chicken pieces were juicy and well marinated. I think this was my favourite dish in the entire buffet!Tsukune (Chicken Meat Ball) – This ranked second on my favourite list at this buffet. The minced chicken meat was well marinated and there were some crunchy bits in it which felt like cartilage and gave the meatball a different texture, but overall it was a flavour bomb!Satsuma Age (Home-made Japanese fish cake) – Quite a nice fish cake which was pleasing to the palate.Age Gyoza (Deep Fried Dumpling) – I’m not really a gyoza fan but I must say that this fried version was tasty and was still crispy even when we didn’t eat it immediately after it was served! I would definitely order this again the next time I’m there!Agedashi Tofu (Fried Tofu) – Those who love beancurd will like this as it was quite nicely done and I thoroughly enjoyed it! The outer fried layer doesn’t break away from the tofu when you pick it up, unlike at some other restaurants.For a more detailed review on all the 25 dishes which we had tasted, please refer to my blog post - http://jaznotabi.wordpress.com/shinkei-japanese-restaurant/

Thanks to OpenRice Singapore and Shinkei Japanese Restaurant for the food tasting!

Many interesting dishes are being offered at this place which serves ovo lacto vegetarian food but they do have some vegan options too.

Some of the items that I had tried were...

Century and Salted Egg Pasta – Spaghetti with century egg sauce and salted egg, finished with chilli oil caviar and pickled ginger.

It was very appetising and there was a perfect harmony of the century egg sauce, salted egg and the pasta which made it a gastronomic delight.

Roasted Bone Marrow – Potato bone marrow stuffed with mushrooms and mascarpone, drizzled with pesto.

An interesting dish which certainly resembles bone marrow, made using potato hollowed on the inside and stuffed with mushrooms.

Z Crème Brûlée – Baked egg custard with a hint of ginger and a touch of lime under a crisp film of burnt sugar. Served with a buttery sable stick.

A dessert which is pleasing to the palate! The egg custard was smooth and the crispy layer of caramelised sugar added an extra crunch to the dessert. Loved the sable stick which was light and fluffy with a lovely buttery fragrance.

Cakes and vegan ice-cream are available too if you are just dropping by for a light snack.

More details and photos can be found at http://jaznotabi.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/cera/

The hotpot arrived at our table containing lumps of collagen pudding, which was actually the chicken collagen soup in its solidified form.As the pot heats up, the collagen will melt into a delicious concentrated chicken soup. Chicken pieces are buried within that collagen goodness. Other ingredients to be placed into the hotpot are tori tsukune (i.e. minced chicken to be made into meatballs), prawns, yellow zucchini, watermelon radish, wintermelon, black and white fungus, yuzu, chinese water spinach, chinese cabbage, lettuce, deep fried tofu and mushrooms.The hotpot set also includes a serving of noodles and 3 options are available – Thin Egg Noodle, Rice Noodle or Thick Mochi-mochi Noodle.

There are free refills of the chicken collagen soup but you may feel that the soup gets saltier when you run out of ingredients to cook with.

Overall, it was very tasty.

The Bijin Nabe (美人鍋) is only served during dinner and you'll need to arrive at least 30mins before the restaurant opens for dinner, otherwise you will have to leave your name on the waiting list with no guarantee that you will definitely be able to dine there.

For more details, check out - http://jaznotabi.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/bijin-nabe/