For more photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow:http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/astor-bar-st-regis/

Dipsomania kicked in. I wanted a good cocktail. Astor Bar at St Regis is on a few Top 10 Best Bars in Singapore lists so here we are.OMG, the ambience was the tops!! I LOVE IT. I felt so comfortable here, like I belonged! It’s old money 1920s New York chic, rich dark woods with luxurious leather chairs. The tables are trays with legs, so when the glass spills, the liquid won’t drip. Picasso lithographs hang on the wall. Quiet jazz. The other patrons are mostly white men in suits – but they mind their own business. Can I get a suit-up sugar daddy please This bar is a scene out of a movie.

The bar is known for two things. the bar localized Bloody Mary into Chili Padi Mary ($19) with vodka, chili padi, Chinese old ginger, lemon grass and organic tomato juice. I didn’t want anything tomatoy or spicy so I ordered the other speciality: organic cocktails. I wanted something sourish and citrusy that day, and got the organic Sao Paulo Smash($19), consisting of cachaca (Brazilian rum), galliano (sweet herbal liquor), passionfruit, and orange marmalade. My bad. I should have known rum would turn out bitter. Rum is bitter, kids. I should have asked the servers for advice – but no loss. I’ll be back. Spend about $100 (the price of 5 cocktails) and get complimentary parking.

The drinks came with olives and nuts. Olives are a nice touch but I thought the nuts were flat. St Regis can definitely do better.

Overall, my friend and I had an amazing time here, very relaxed, as if we were out of Singapore. Healthy cocktails that aren’t too expensive. Astor Bar ranks just below my all-time favorite bar, Coffee Bar K.

For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow: http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/tong-heng-东兴-chinatown/

Tong Heng has been around since the early 1900s! That’s 100 years of history in Singapore.

There are two main Chinese pastries in Chinatown, both with their own distinct taste but I prefer Tong Heng. I’ve tried almost everything there including the Chinese desserts.

Over the years, I’ve tried most of their products, even their Chinese desserts. (Bet you didn’t know they sell Chinese desserts!) The diamond-shaped egg tart is the most awesomest! Because it sells quickly, they are always baking new batches and so the tart is usually hot. It’s like M&M, melts in your mouth, not in your hands, with just the right amount of sweetness. The other specialty in the shop is the char siew su. This one is different from other places because there is a slight saltiness to it, the char siew is moist and just a little bit charred–which is the best kind of char siew. My third favorite is the egg cake (鸡蛋糕) because it’s light and fluffy.

The shop also does chinese new year goodies, mooncakes, wedding pastries and baby’s first month.

Although there are seats in the shop, which is like the Chinese style of a cafe, people usually takeaway.

For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow: http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/dessert-story-northpoint-hougang-mall/

Between the outlets at Northpoint Yishun and Hougang Mall, I’ve tried Milk Pudding; Egg Pudding with Ginger; Peanut Paste; Black sesame paste; walnut paste; add tang yuan to them; Mango Pomelo with sago; Herbal Jelly; yam cake and carrot cake. Can you tell I’m a big fan of Chinese desserts (but don’t ever order the herbal jelly. it sucks, tasted very plasticky and not authentic.)Although Mei Heong Yuan’s desserts are smoother and tastier, if you don’t feel like making a trip down to Chinatown, these desserts found in heartland districts definitely hit the spot. Definitely can eat, and can return to eat more some more, but I thought for such a small bowl, it was quite expensive at $3. $3 can buy you a meal leh.

Service: But an unhappy incident happened to me. I was drinking the walnut paste and it had a slight bitter aftertaste, which it shouldn’t have. So I asked the staff if the dessert had herbal ingredients (because, I learnt some cooking, and I know you can add herbal stuff). The PRC server sneered in my face like I was super ignorant and stupid, like it’s the funniest joke she heard in her life. Seriously, I wanted to give her two slaps. No happy ending for this Dessert Story. But I’ve to add, there are some aunties who are very nice to me here.

For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow: http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/beng-hiang-telok-ayer/

Chiobu and I were at the reception counter and an old rude fat man cut our queue, saying, “I’m sitting with Dr. XXX.”

I quickly told the receptionist, “We are here first.”

The receptionist replied brusquely, “He already has a table” and quickly led the fat old man to the table before returning to us. We also already had a table–she had no excuse for letting the old man go first. She should have told the man to wait because we were there first. It made me think that she was impressed by the title of Dr.

The service remained bad throughout. One friend–he’s so funny–was so frightened of the grumpy waitress he asked me not to call her to help us anymore. I said, “But it’s her job!” He complained and complained about the horrible service, like we owe them money, but when the waitress came, he would thank her so sweetly like a little boy who just received candy.

The old skool decor, however, was pretty nostalgic, like in the 80s, with red walls, chinese paintings, wooden lazy Susan. The atmosphere was very convivial and noisy. And there were an amazingly high number of hot men. Yums!There were five of us and we over-ordered: hokkien noodles ($12); spring roll ($8); fish maw soup ($28); oyster egg ($12); steamed garoupa ($56) and for desserts, yam paste ($15). I can understand why people withstand the horrible service to eat. The Hokkien-cuisine food was quite astonishingly good.

The fish maw soup, or shark fin soup without the shark fin, was thick and lipsmacking, so you know the cartilage had dissolved into the soup, giving you collagen. There are two types of spring roll, one is with prawn (hia zhou), the other with minced pork. They were quite simply the best I’ve ever eaten. I didn’t know spring roll can taste so savory. Theoyster egg was different from the hawker centres; this one is completely deep-fried and packed a punch. I never like hokkien mee because they tend to have a plasticky pungent taste but this one–”crackling with lard,” my friend said–didn’t have that ammonia scent and I could tolerate it. My friends loved it.

The only two bad dishes were the steamed garoupa and yam paste. Woah, $56 for a fish!! The broth wasn’t sweet enough and the fish, fresh but not super fresh to justify that kind of price at this kind of restaurant. The yam paste was downright rotten, not smooth, with huge bits of yam in them, and was quite tasteless. Waste of calories.

From the outside of the restaurant, the street was so quiet you’d never imagine how bustling it was inside. Reservations are a must. We spent $150 for 5 people (GST but no service charge). Although you don’t need to be a doctor to eat here, it’s best when you make reservations, say that you’re a doctor. They wouldn’t know anyway and you’d receive better treatment. You can cut queue. Doctors’ $5 is worth more than non-doctors’ $5, you know.

For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow: http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/chocolate-origin-changi-village/

Remember when Awfully Chocolate just started and the cakes were sooooo good Imagine that feeling of biting into an Awfully Chocolate cake back in 1998…and then multiply it by 10. That’s how ORGASMIC the halal-certified Chocolate Origin is.

They don’t sell in slices, so you have to buy an entire cake but don’t worry – you can finish it all by yourself in 2 days. I did. Normal cakes have sponge cakes with layers of cream but Chocolate Origin’s cakes are the opposite; they have chocolate mousse with paper-thin layers of sponge. I don’t even know how it is possible to bake such a cake!!

And the taste! Made of Belgium chocolate, there is no other word to describe the dark chocolate cake except for ORGASMIC. It was just the perfect and delicate balance of sweetness and after-taste bitterness. It was sooo very rich and yet at the same time, it was sooo light and soft that you can eat as many pieces as you want without being sick. It is truly the BEST chocolate cake I’ve eaten in years. Kudos!