I found this little Japanese ramen shop through online food reviews recently which highly recommend its ramen. It is pretty near to my new office at One Raffles Place.

If you know where the Boat Quay MacDonald's is, you should have no problem finding this little restaurant as it is the road next to Mac. We were lucky we reached the restaurant at about 11.40am, as a queue started to form after we ordered our ramen & sat down.There is only GST charge at this little restaurant, but the price you see on the menu is already inclusive of GST. You need to order & pay at the counter before you can be seated to wait for your ramen to be served. Since the signature ramen here is Miso Ramen - half portion ($10.50), & according to the cashier it is not as strongly flavoured as Shoyu Ramen, I decided to order this. My colleague ordered the Shoyu Ramen - half portion ($12.00) & we both decided to add an egg each to our ramen ($1.50 each). There wasn't a wide variety of choices in the restaurant as they only serve 3 types of ramen & 2 types of don. Guess it's a very traditional type of Japanese ramen shop......

Oh you must be thinking why we both ordered half portion only? Because I read reviews that the normal portion is huge & hence we didn't want to make ourselves so bloated.

My ramen was wonderful! The soup base wasn't very salty, in fact just right for me, & I almost finished the soup in the end! This is rare for me given that most Japanese soups are very salty to me hehe. The charsiew that came with the ramen was quite a big piece, very generous, & wow, it was really tender! I think it has been the best Japanese Miso Ramen that I have eaten so far? hehe and the half portion is just right for ladies I guess.

I will definitely visit this ramen place again if I have a craving for it during lunch, but must make sure I reach there before 12pm! ;)

My friend strongly recommended this restaurant at Hyatt Hotel's basement, saying that it has great Italian food at reasonable prices (especially so as she has the Hyatt membership).

It is an Italian restaurant with a very traditional European setting with red checkered tablecloth & wooden furniture. Even the menu was quite special, just a piece of "newspaper" listing the dishes they serve. From Mon - Thu only, set dinner is priced at $35++, which includes free flow of bread, salad bar (1 time serving only), main course & a dessert of the day. We ordered 1 set of this & a salad bar buffet ($22++).

The salad bar had quite a variety available (hence my friend decided to only take the salad bar buffet as it meant she could eat as much as she liked & not jus limited to 1 serving). For my set, I had to "pile" up as much salad/ fruits etc that I like on 1 plate since I could only help myself with the salad bar once. The lettuce, cherry tomatoes, fruits etc were all very fresh & I enjoyed this salad plate a lot. Bread was free flow, & my friend was "in charge" of bringing them to our table as she simply loves bread haha. There were 2 types of bread she took, & I thought the one on the leftmost side of the pic tasted better. The other type on the right side was walnut bread. We helped ourselves to 2 plates of bread while I waited for my main course... *burp*Soon my main course came, I cannot remember the exact name but it's some risotto styled pasta stuffed with spinach. Perhaps due to the cheesy nature, it was quite salty & after abt eating a third of the portion, I was already quite full. I like the part where the spinach was more than the cheese. It's actually like lasagna, but vegetarian version. Nice but one would probably feel too stuffed after a while, especially so since I had already eaten many slices of bread & the salad plate... Actually dessert of the day was supposed to be their famous Tiramisu, but I requested to change it to ice cream as I was really bloating! I picked Pistachio ice cream & it came with a piece of crunchy biscuit (or was it nuts?) and a half strawberry. The scoop of ice cream was refreshing, I'm glad I chose this instead of trying to stuff myself with the Tiramisu hee. Maybe next time if I go to Pete's Place again then I will try Tiramisu with a half empty stomach. It was a good filling meal, but I think if not for the 50% discount because of my friend's membership, it would not be as worthwhile a dinner.

Got to know that there is a new Gong Cha outlet at Orchard Central basement. So my friends & I rushed down there at about 9pm, for fear that it may be closed if we delay any further. Thankfully it was still open when we reached. Apparently it closes at 10pm

Probably because it is a newer outlet the queue was not too long, just a few people ahead of us. I decided to try something new this time & ordered a Taro Milk. My friends ordered a Winter Melon Tea and a Grass Jelly Milk Tea.

The Taro Milk had a rich yam taste. I like! Those Taro Milk sold elsewhere, e.g. neighbourhood bubble tea joints, were always very sweet & merely tasted like syrup. But this one was really different, very fragrant. This is why people say "you get what you pay for" hehe.

My friend lamented that the Winter Melon Tea was too sweet, even though it was in the Healthy Tea range & one does not need to choose the sugar level. I tried some & totally agreed. I didn't try the Grass Jelly Milk Tea but my friend who drank it said it was very good. Next time I shall try this.

If you fancy Korean snacks, not the deep fried snacks, but the less sinful & healthier snacks like rice cakes, I bet you would love this Hankook Rice Cake House too.

They serve a variety of traditional Korean rice cakes, be it stuffed with red bean, peanuts or simply the plain rice cake version. It's really good! Just like what you get in Korea. I especially love their traditional Korean Walnut Cake which comes in a bagful of small little cakes (or "kuehs" as I prefer to call them) that are walnut shaped and filled with red bean paste and baked with chopped walnuts. Very chewy and yummy! The red bean paste is also not too sweet, just at the right sweetness level. I can finish 1 bag very quickly & yearn for more hehe.

I was looking for a quick bite after shopping at Ion & decided to head down to B4 since there are many small eateries/ kiosks there. This little stall selling Japanese snacks caught my eye as it has been some time since I ate a Japanese fish-shaped cake! So immediately I joined the queue & paid for a custard flavoured cake (the last pc on the rack, luckily).

The cake was warm when I had my first bite. It's my 1st time eating this & I'm surprised by its crispiness. I tink this is the 1st time in Singapore I found a Japanese fish-shaped cake that is really good The fish may look a bit burnt but the custard filling's sweetness is just right & every bite is so crisp.

They have 4 different flavours: Japanese premium Azuki (red bean), custard, chocolate & banana, Sakura. I am definitely going back to try the others next time ;)