We dropped by at Hans next to the Buona Vista CC before 12pm for budget set lunch as we wanted to be seated in the aircon section of the restaurant. As my colleagues placed their orders I noticed an A4 sized notice advertising 'Hainanese Pork Chop with Rice' for $7.80 and ordered this instead. It is easy to find sweet sour pork, 'JingDu Style' pork ribs or even coffee pork ribs but.hardly any restaurant or zichar stall sells Hainanese pork chop nowadays. Hainanese pork chop is actually breaded pork cutlet cut lengthwise into pieces and served with wedges of tomatoes, onions, deepfried potato, peas and bathed in a sweetish tomato gravy.

I was full of anticipation to try a long lost zichar favourite, only to be let down with a bump by Han's cooks. I had no complaints on the breaded pork cutlet but the whole dish was NOT Hainanese pork chop. The cook had used red colouring and vinegar, among other things, to concoct a highly acidic sauce that I could not scoop over my rice. There were no potatoes or peas to be found in the sauce. Worse, a handful of mushy fruit cocktail from a tin can had been added to the gravy. Well what to expect when you have cooks from Northern China and the Philippines helming Han's kitchens, mused my colleague. Thank goodness the kopi C was ok. Better stick to their set lunch next time.

The revamped Chinatown Point now hosts various new fast food and mid-priced restaurants. Yoshinoya has an inviting exterior and has a more relaxed environment than other fast food places like McDonalds and KFC probably because there are many places to have rice-based meals in Chinatown. The restaurant was almost empty but I was asked to take a seat and given a palm sized alarm whic buzzed some 10mins later indicating that my food was ready for collection.

The Combo Value Meal at $10.90 allows diners to pick two types of meat or fish to go with rice, boiled mixed vegetables, miso soup and a small soft drink. Choose two items from their signature streaky beef, the popular teriyaki chicken, salmon croquette, deepfried dory fritter,ebi fry. I picked the beef and ebi. Ebi was nice but the portions of beef and mixed vegs were paltry. The side order of gyoza (5pcs for $3.90) was also disappointing. The gyoza skin was a little mushy and not at all crispy indicating that they had been prepared much earlier and either left on a warmer or reheated upon order. The filling also tasted strange and floury - a little fishy and I could not make out whether there was pork or chicken in it.

We wanted noodles without having to queue up at the food court & then carrying steaming bowls of soup while looking for seats at dinner time. So we went into Ajisen just expecting to have noodles served to us. When we had no expectations we should not be disappointed right? Ajisen proved us wrong. The zealous waitress hard-sold their set meal so we ended up having side dishes to go with our ramen. I ordered the ChaSho Ramen with ebi fry as my side dish while my dinner-mate had the hotate ramen with gyoza side dish. The iced green tea was tasteless, like drinking iced water. It was free flow but we didnt even finish a glass of it. The gyoza was nice but ebi fry was forgettable - the oil was not properly drained after deep drying.

The soup is supposed to be one of the highlights of paying top dollar for noodle soup. Ajisen's soup failed miserably - the soup was watery, topped by a repulsive layer of oil and was unbearably salty. It was so bad we could not even finish a spoonful of the soup & had to reach for our iced tea. It took a while before the foreign waitress brought us a glass of lukewarm water to moderate the excessive sodium level in the soup (we had asked for hot water). Ramen was ok, thick noodles were served unlike some other ramen shops that offer customers a choice of thick or thin noodles. My companion said the tiny hotate were bland, overcooked & had rubbery texture. Looking for the hotate was like a treasure hunt. My chasho ramen was slightly better, the chasho was not bad but sliced thinly. Ajisen does not serve onsen egg with their ramen - only half a plain hardboiled egg per bowl.

Overall a very disappointing meal - overpriced & poor quality from a specialist ramen chain.

The wonderful but expensive buffet at MBS' Rise Restaurant needs no introduction. However when you're not having the buffet, or are arriving without a reservation, the staff will seat you together with the lounge/bar patrons. While the armchairs are comfy, the low, tiny coffee tables are ill suited to diners having their meals. The Friday night we were there, all the staff were Filipinos. The few local staff that were here at our last visit are all gone, or it could be their day off. We've no problems with Filipino staff but sometimes we do like to be left alone.

The a la carte menu at Rise is very limited with several types of pastas, a handful of popular entrees like Fish & Chips and less than ten local dishes. We settled for the Chicken Rice $25++ and Nasi Goreng $22++. The chicken rice was good but unremarkable. The Nasi Goreng is lousy. The rice itself was bland & I could eat it only by asking for a saucer of sambal to mix with the rice. The chicken wing was too thickly coated with batter & had been overcooked so it was not just bland but too chewy as well. The prawn cracker was all flour & had no prawn flavour, thus only the achar passed the taste test. The satays tasted ok but were not warm so they had probably been grilled in bulk earlier in the day and two sticks plonked at the side of my plate of nasi goreng before serving. So if you're visiting this restaurant, call ahead to place reservations for the buffet. Forget the a la carte food here.

Hungry after an active morning at East Coast Park & craved spicy stuff. Ruling out food courts it was a simple choice between Kartini Indonesian or Thai Express at Parkway Parade. Picked the latter as it was new & near mall entrance, moreover Kartini's service sucks. There were three choices for the 'Sanook' set lunch menu, so I opted for the $12.90++ green curry & fried rice set which looked good in the photo.

I ended up being disappointed as the Sanook entree was not green curry per se, but actually fried rice coloured to a strange hue with green curry powder. The bowl in the menu's photo that looked like curry turned out to be spring onions topping a bowl of bland soup with some glass noodles. (My punishment for glossing over the menu.) Even the bowl of soup that comes with dry/tossed fishball noodles had more flavor than this which the menu listed as 'Chiangmai glass noodle soup' - deceptive. I Visit Chiangmai every year but I've never seen or been served anything like this type of soup. Looking for the chicken chunks in the fried rice was like a treasure hunt.

The pomelo salad was also a joke ~ I think it is not fresh but canned pomelo sacs (those they use in mango pomelo dessert) with a drizzle of fish sauce so it tasted bland, flat, monotonous. Totally different from even the cheapest street stall version of pomelo salad found in Bangkok which has chopped peanuts, sliced birds eye chilli, shallots & crispy tiny shrimps to give it an interesting mix of flavours & textures. Dessert was 1/3 of small bowl of diced sweet potato with lots of sweetened whipped cream. Not worth the price paid as the other two Sanook sets cost 30% less at $8.90.