I was rather excited when ION’s highly anticipated Food Hall at Basement 4 first opened cuz food hall = lots of food stalls to ogle at. Since then, some have closed, some are new, and Mushiya Steamers is one of the many stalls left standing today.

The steamed cakes come from Hokkaido and all the ingredients used are from Japan. Supposedly very healthy too cuz they are ”non-oil” and the flavourings are “natural”.

I tried the matcha (green tea) kintoki and kurogoma (black sesame) mochi kintoki ($2 each)… And was disappointed. Bland, texture was sticky and chewy rather than soft and fluffy. Maybe like our Chinese “huat kueh”? Anyway, these cakes are really “what you see is what you get” cuz the sweet kintoki beans/mochi are limited to the top of the cakes.

Next to Original Sin, LivinGreens is my favourite vegetarian restaurant. I go to the former when there’s extra cash in the wallet, and to the latter when I just want to have a deliciously-healthy (ya, these 2 words are not mutually exclusive, contrary to popular belief) meal without breaking the piggy bank.

I’m already a regular here and I’ll always, always order the LivinGreens lasagna ($8.50), which is wheat-, gluten- and dairy-free. Every slice of the lasagna contains fresh tomatoes, green and red peppers, carrots, mushroom, and every slice is lip smackingly good with a well-balanced flavour and texture. This is the most sinless lasagna ever created!

My must-have desserts: Avocado Pudding ($4) that combines so perfectly with a syrup of gula melaka and molasses and Black Sesame Pudding ($3.50) that’s incredibly fragrant and has such a smooth texture and clean flavour.

Pavé Chocolates is the sort of place I like, a place for friends to gather and spend a calorific afternoon together. Not only did they not chase us away even after our cakes were long gone, the friendly staff at the counter gave great recommendations which coincided exactly with our orders! Great minds think alike, haha.

For Alice ($8.50) sounds like a cake with a story. Perhaps, it’s made specially for a friend named Alice in mind, I do not know. And somehow it slipped my mind to ask. In any case, this is my favourite one out of all~ Not only is it an aesthetically pleasing creation, the combination of 50% dark milk chocolate mousse, vanilla crème brulee, and Williamette raspberries scores brownie points for being so smooth and rich, and the sweetness is just to my liking!

Maccha, Okinawan sweet potato and apricot? Sounds like a queer meld of ingredients to me. But the unlikely is transformed into a lovely Miyuki ($8.50) that has a myraid of flavours: slight bitterness from the green tea sponge; subtle sweetness from the purple potato; and faint tanginess from the apricot layer. I thought this would end up as a confused cake (think confused child), but I was gladly proven wrong =)

Around the corner from 3 Inch Sin is Taste Matters, an ice cream dessert shop opened by a husband-and-wife team. It used to be a six-seat ice cream parlor but now, it’s solely a takeaway shop and no photography is allowed. I reckon business must have been quite good cuz owner Richard revealed that he’s currently looking for a bigger shop, so relocation is a real possibility in the near future.

I was intrigued when I saw that yuzu ice cream ($5.50) is the special of the month. Yuzu sorbet I’ve had numerous times before, but yuzu ice cream? Nope, can’t remember when’s the last time I’ve had it, if ever. It’s sweet and sourish, creamy and smooth. Though it’s not bad, I still think yuzu makes a better sorbet than ice cream.

What knocked my socks off was the Dark and Sexy ($7.50, about 20mins waiting time)—a chocolate fondant that spills out insanely rich and dark chocolate lava like there’s no tomorrow. I particularly adore the distinct hint of espresso in it which brings out the bitterness even more.

My only grouse is that since it’s a takeaway shop now, the lava cake is inverted into a plastic cup after baking and the shape is pretty much “destroyed”, in the sense that the cake cracks open easily and the lava flows out without any probing. Which takes away my pleasure of breaking it open =( That’s one of the “highlights” of eating lava cake, isn’t it?

The brainchild of a brother-and-sister team, 3 Inch Sin specialises in warm chocolate cakes with molten cores of 8 different flavours: white and dark chocolate, bitter orange, raspberry, peanut butter, mint, coffee and hazelnut. Top quality valrhona chocolate is used and the cakes are 3 inches in diameter, thus the cutesy name.

I opted for a trio of mini ones ($5, about an inch across) so that I could try more flavours. The original is your normal dark chocolate cake; bitter orange has an orange marmalade filling that’s too weak; and peanut butter hits the spot perfectly cuz of the addictive salty-sweet-bitter combination. By the way, these are not lava cakes so don’t expect fluid chocolate to flow freely when you cut open the cakes. Or maybe it’s just the mini ones that don’t flow, hmm.