For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow: http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/sugar-granny-cafe-outram-chinatown/

I came here every Tuesday for near to two months in a row because it was quiet and convenient and cheap, one of the few cool cafes in Chinatown that is open in the hot afternoons.

Very interesting characters you will see here. I saw a boss with his secretary from a nearby company–they were doing some paper work but their hands were on each other, and ring ring! the boss’s wife telephoned. Once, I saw an uncle with his China Money Boy. (ps: trust me, I know a Money Boy when I see one because I cum in contact with them for work! Don’t think dirty.) Wow, the China Money Boy is so hot! He looks like a hunky version of Dai Yang Tian, in a very tight shirt, showing his ripped biceps. His body is tight! Drool. If I had $200 (that’s how much they cost), I’d put my money down. I tried very hard not to look at him, but he kept staring at me. I find the Uncle very poor thing. I’m not good-looking but the Money Boy felt that I was a better choice than the Uncle. And the Uncle tried so hard to impress him it was bordering on the point of pathetic. This is a Mandarin-speaking shop with Mandarin-speaking waitresses and the obviously Mandarin-speaking Uncle spoke in broken English to the waitress just to impress the Money Boy of his bilingualism. Very sad lah, in the Gay World, once you’re old, you lose currency. The nearby Keong Saik St is also known for the illegal female prostitutes. Underground Chinatown is very colorful.

I never ordered the food because it’s mostly fried food, calamari, fried chicken wings, fries, fried fishballs and sotongballs, etc. (See the menu here.) I’ve a firm belief that all deep-fried food are similar, unless the food is made from scratch and I don’t expect the food here to be made from scratch.I always ordered the Chinese desserts. I’ve tried the sesame paste ($2.50) thrice, peanut paste ($2.50), Bailey with gingko ($2), Mango sago with pomelo (pictured, $3.50), Durian sago ($4).

The desserts were ok, smooth, but taste-wise, they cannot be compared to Mei Heong Yuan, which is only a few streets away. Out of the desserts, I prefer the sesame paste because it is so kick-ass sweet. It disregards diabetes completely, like diabetes is no longer a problem. Dead Sea is so salty it doesn’t allow life in it–this is like the Sugar version of the Dead Sea. And it tasted very different from other sesame paste too. There was a slightly burnt/roasted scent which is nice.

Overall, I think the food is average, the service is borderline-lazy, bo-chap, and the decor is cheesy and uncomfortable. The food isn’t even value-for-money, since there are so much good food at a cheap price in Chinatown. The reason it survives in the competitive Chinatown is because there are no other cafes nearby. Pray Starbucks doesn’t open here.

For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow: http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/shunjuu-izakaya-robertson-quay/

A lackadaisical day. Chiobu and I meandered slowly along Robertson Quay and settled on this Japanese restaurant, Shunjuu Izakaya. “Izakaya” means “place of comfort,” and of course, comfort means alcohol. Too bad we are almost teetotalers. Is the decor comforting? Well, it is fuss-free. Seats are placed along the corridor of Riverside View building, but still far away from the canal, so there isn’t a view to speak of. Not much of an ambience.

The restaurant is also known for its “sumiyaki,” or skewered BBQ meat over Japanese charcoal.The complimentary starters were quite appetizing. The raddish and carrots, as appetizers, were soaked in a miso-soup until the roots were throughly soft, absorbing the essence of the soup. Another free entree was a very hard white cabbage. (Chiobu said, “Can eat this raw meh???”) First, you squeeze sour lemon over the very salty, slightly sweet bean sauce. Then you dip the almost tasteless white cabbage in the sauce. Crunchy like celery but much tastier.

Mixed Sashimi for $40. While they were relatively fresh, we didn’t think it was value-for-money. $40 should buy you a meal, not a few pieces of sashimi.

We also had Set A ($19) and Set B ($25) of sumiyaki. Set A consists of beef short rib, asparagus rolled with pork, chicken meat ball, golden mushroom rolled with beef, and pork belly. Set B has rib eye, scallop rolled with pork, rice cake rolled with pork, chicken wing and goose liver (foie gras).

It is difficult to pick the better set because they all have positive and negative food in them. The bad ones you should avoid: from set A, pork belly (too hard), beef short rib (overcooked) and from set B, scallop rolled in pork (tasteless), rice cake with pork (too sticky and bland and starchy). The fantastic ones are: from Set B, rib eye (very tender), chicken wing (flavorful!), and goose liver (melts in your mouth!).

Service was good and attention.

Overall, everything–the food, the service and the ambience–was satisfactory but not overly memorable. We won’t come out of the way to eat this but if we are in the area, then we wouldn’t mind. Including $2 green tea per person, and GST, etc, we paid $104 for two persons.

For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow: http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/food-on-fire-capital-square-three/

Featured on 8Days, Wine&Dine, and Exquisite, the decor is canteen-style, so this is really a eat-and-go place but there are several selling points:
1. Guilt-free healthy Indian food! less salt, less oil, less cream, no MSG.
2. “We don’t own a freezer,” says the owner; food is freshly prepared daily.
3. Chefs are from India, so there is a degree of authenticity.
4. The owner’s ancestry is from Gujarat, and it was the first shop in Singapore to sell Gujarati dal dhokli, only available on Wednesdays 12-3pm.
5. Owner’s extended family lives in India so they buy fresh spices, pound and mix them themselves and ship it over to Singapore freshly.

A friend and I shared the angmoh-influenced lamb kebab wrap ($11) with plenty of fresh vegetables, a naan as wrap, and two sauces, a spicy one and a yogurt-based one. This is good lunch food, as I remember fondly of my New York Ah Beng Training Days when I ate wrap for lunch. There wasn’t a stench of the lamb. The texture of hot lamb and crunchy vegetables fit well together. The spiciness of the lamb was padded by the vegetables and the spice left a tingling sensation on my lips. Hot lips! Good to kiss any time!Meat Platter ($20). The food came sizzling on the hotplate and the aroma was mouthwatering. Taste-wise, it was average for us–we thought the spices could be heavier–but the meat was tender and succulent.

My friend and I also had Chicken Masala set ($9.50) and Chicken Makhani (butter chicken, $9.50), which come with a naan each and are popular for lunch. The Makhani is definitely the better of the two. The masala was salty for us but the Makhani chicken has a deep roasted, very smokey taste that I like very much and can’t stop eating. The chicken really absorbed the essence of the tandoor (clay oven). I’d come back for this.

I don’t like lime juice ($2.80), because it’s either too sour or diabete-ly sweet, but here, the balance was superb. This is the only lime juice I can recall that I like but I wonder if it can be cheaper. $2, maybe?

In general, although I love spicy-hot food, I can’t take it but the food here is ok to my palate. Unlike my other experiences of eating Indian food, after eating, we didn’t feel heavy and lethargic. It tasted decent too. The price seems reasonable as the eatery is in CBD area. An eatery that survives 8 years in such a competitive area can’t be bad.

For photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow: http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/ying-yang-rooftop-bar-ann-siang-hill/

If you see my record of bars, you’d know I love rooftop bars. Ying Yang has a surprisingly good view, given that its building is so short. The view is the surrounding towering skyscrapers built by capitalist pigs but ooh, the office lights of the late-night workers-slaves are so pretty. The ambience is great too, very relaxing, with lounge sofas, feeling like it’s by the beach. (Use imagination lah.)

The service within the bar itself was like the ambience–indolent and lazy but I didn’t care because in such a mood, everything could be slow. There was no rush for time. Besides, at least the wait staff were nice. However, the service of the Club Hotel was mixed. The first time, the hotel receptionist buzzed us up the lift (you need a hotel card to use the lift). The second time, the receptionist told us to climb the 3 or 4 storeys up and by the time we were up, we were panting.

Drinks are at cut-throat cost, $20 or so for a drink, but you pay for the atmosphere. The second time we were there, there were a group of gay angmohs with a Sarong Party Gay. Gay people are cool and cool people hang around here. So you know the price of the cocktails is justifiable.

Me@OUE serves Japanese, French and Chinese cuisine. I would usually claim, “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” but the stellar cast of award-winning chefs ensure the standards are high. Chef Justin Hor, in charge of the Chinese menu, is the Vice-President of the International Exchange Association of Renowned Chinese Cuisine; while Michelin-starred chefs Laurent Peugot and Masayasu Yonemura are in charge of the French and Japanese cuisine respectively.

An exclusive elevator will bring you to a classy restaurant with ambient lighting and tall ceiling – the beginning of an amazing experience. Great for romantic dates and groups afterwork. The al fresco bar offers a spectacular panoramic view of Marina Bay. Me@OUE set lunch price is $48+ (2 courses) and $58+ (3 courses), rather good value considering some of the best dishes we had were from the lunch menu.

Not only were the food and decor excellent, my dad and I were quite impressed with the service, well trained and managed by Loic Esposito, formerly from New York’s Daniel Boulud restaurant. Our server’s name for the night was Hai, a Singapore PR who speaks with BBC accent because he learnt English from listening to BBC news. (My dad listens to BBC 88.9fm too!) My dad said, “There are so many waiters.”

I replied, “The more attentive the service.”

For full review and more photos, please visit http://rubbisheatrubbishgrow.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/meoue-singapore/