For full review, visit http://molly-mia.blogspot.sg/2015/06/mias-review-bricksncubes-cafe.html

Attracted by their avengers-themed burger set groupon deal, I took great pains to persuade T to drop by with me on a Sunday early afternoon, and found the café absolutely deserted. Frankly speaking, I was really surprised, judging from the fact that there is a groupon deal ongoing and I've expected a huge crowd on a Sunday.

And first up, their service didn't really impress me much. I had to walk to the counter myself to get a menu from the staff, and get reminded by him, albeit in a very polite tone, that I have to return to the counter to make my orders.

And the real first impression killer was the menu. The menu book really.... sucks.

It's just a worn out clear folder slotted with crumpled papers with dish names and prices printed on them. You don't even get to see what the dishes (will/may) look like when served. Avenger's Burger Set

The result of a collaboration between a few brilliant local chefs, these colourful buns are made from natural ingredients, with no artifical flavouring, no gluten and no trans fat. Each set comes in 4 different coloured mini burger but there's only 3 flavours to choose from: Grilled Chicken, Grilled Fish or Classic Beef. Needless to say, this is indeed an instagram-worthy dish! Such adorable looking mini burgers with such bright colours.

But the good things end here.

The buns are pretty, but dry and hard, especially the outer skin. There seems to have a slight tinge of flavour in the buns (especially the orange bun, with a hint of citrus flavour) but it really didn't add any brownie points to the dish.

The grilled chicken was pretty poorly done, with a strong 'frozen chicken taste' to it and thick globs of fats under the slightly slimy skin (the chicken definitely wasn't fully cooked on the grill, but probably in a microwave).

Grilled fish, albeit better than the chicken, was still nowhere near good. Just, acceptable and not as bad as the chicken.

The french fries were also slightly soggy and dry inside. Didn't taste like they were freshly out from the fryer either. Rocky Beef Burger

T chose a beef burger and his only comment was: At least the food is (temperature) hot.

The restaurant at Bugis+ was pretty small and hence, rather packed when we reached there at 7pm on a weekday. Nevertheless, we still managed to get a table for 7 (at one 'private' corner to ourselves) without much hassle. Just a few selection of the menu. Prices are really affordable, nothing ridiculously overpriced. My favourite soup flavour, mushroom soup! It's priced at $6.80 for a relatively large bowl.

The soup is relatively thick and creamy, with a strong fragrance of my favourite mushroom! It tasted like the cook has dumped a good load of mushroom into the blender, topped it up with cream and blended away!

Even though tiny bits of mushroom (the brownish specks) are visible, the soup is smooth and creamy, not lumpy at all. It's neither too runny (which will make me feel rip-off) nor too thick (which makes me sick of it easily), just nice to my liking. The soup is flavourful on its own (no additional salt and pepper required), with a brilliant tinge of mushroom fragrance to it. I'm using fragrance here because let's face it, mushrooms hardly have any taste.

The soup is also topped up with nicely toasted croutons cut in generous sizes, and 7 of them! I love how these croutons are toasted to perfect crispiness, just falling short of the bitter "overtoast".

As the soup is not too runny, it'll take a good while for the soup to thoroughly seep into the croutons, thus it's a plus point for me as I dislike soggy croutons. I ate up all the croutons, coated in the creamy goodness of mushroom yet not soggy from being seeped through, before finishing up the rest of the soup. And here's my Poulet Roti, priced at $15 dollars for half chicken. It's a pity they're not flexible enough to give quarters, because I couldn't finish half a chicken!

The chicken comes originally with creamy mushroom sauce, and they recently have a new addition of cranberry sauce. Being a mushroom fanatic, I didn't need to think twice to go for the mushroom sauce (which I regretted).

As you can see from the picture, the creamy mushroom sauce is obviously very creamy, albeit falling short of being mushroomy. It reminded me very much of a white cream sauce for pasta, and topped up with just one pathetic piece of mushroom (that was hidden by the chicken), which added absoutely no mushroom taste to the sauce. So why name it the creamy mushroom sauce?

The sauce was way too creamy for my liking, didn't like it one bit. In fact, it made me sick with the overpowering creaminess that very much covered up the fragrant sweetness of the roast chicken. I ended up painstakingly slicing the chicken in a manner that will allow the minimal amount of sauce getting onto it. I wasn't the only one at the table that hated the sauce, but I got to be fair and admit that there are others who literally wiped their plates clean. So I guess it's a definite hit or miss, you either love it or hate it.

For me, sauces are supposed to enhance, not to overpower or worse, contradicts the taste of the actual main. In my humble opinion, this sauce has tipped over the line of "contradicting" the taste of the roast chicken. I hated the combination of it at the very first bite. There's just this face-scrunching moment that I couldn't really put the experience of the taste into words. You really got to try it to know how much you love it or hate it.

Note: Sa later on told me on IG that their cranberry sauce is much better. So for my readers who already dislike creamy sauces, you might want to go for the cranberry instead.

Now on to the roast chicken. I love it! The chicken was well marinated and roasted to just how I like it. The meat is flavourful yet tender and not "overly-juicy".

I know many love those extremely juicy meat but not me, I call them slimy.

I could easily poke my fork into the meat, give it a quick slice with my knife and pull the entire chunk of meat out from the body of the chicken. Being well roasted, the chicken skin is also not oily, slightly crispy (when I say crispy here, it's the roast chicken kind of crispy, please don't expect KFC style crispy skin) and infused with the "roasted fragrance". Hence, it was a rare sight of me gobbling up the skin and all. In more common cases, I'll remove the skin and push them to the side of the plate. Not a health freak, just not a big fan of skins.

So for those girls out on a date, there's no fear of showing your date the less than demure sight of you battling with a half roasted chicken, trying to tear chunks of meat of the body and then ending up with the most unslightly sheen of oil on your lips. *rofl*

After this first visit, I visited Poulet again twice to try out their apple sauce and mushroom sauce. The apple sauce was equally bad, and while the mushroom sauce was still decent, it still leaves a weird aftertaste, which makes me not want to try the same dish ever again.

I mean, what else can I say? Poulet does roasted chicken perfectly, but please do something with your less than decent sauces.

For full review: http://www.molly-mia.blogspot.sg/2015/01/mias-review-bakery-bar-st-marc.htmlLured in by the famous Chococro of St. Marc Cafe, we decided to give Bakery & Bar St. Marc a try. And of course, the chococro isn't the only luring factor. Heh!Salted Milk Chococro (left) and Original Chococro (right)Smaller than an iPhone 4, it's definitely a pretty pricey treat at about $2.40 to $2.60, but SO WORTH IT!

Warmed prior to serving, the croissant is crisp and flaky with a strong buttery fragrance. The fillings (choco and/or salted milk) were rich and made the otherwise dry croissant slightly moisten as you chew.Garden Salad

They usually serve with the dressing mixed in, so if you take your salad without dressing most of the time, like me, do request that they separate the dressing (or omit). Yes, I know it looks pretty good and fresh, but.... pictures are deceiving here.

This is the saltiest salad I've ever, ever eaten. It's so salty my tongue hurts, and I had to force myself to finish this bowl of salted veggies by slushing my mouth with water after every bite towards the end.

I have no idea what went wrong in the kitchen, perhaps they mistook salt for some other condiments or what, or perhaps I should have just demanded they redo the salad for me. But I just didn't, and my poor tongue paid the price for it.

Never again, St Marc. I'll never try your salad ever again.Fish and Chips

Once again, looks pretty when served, but tasted just like a normal fish and chips, with a little too much batter to 'fatten' up the fillet.

The Bakery & Bar St Marc is supposed to have a fuller menu (sandwiches, pastas and other mains) as compared to their cafe counterparts, which focuses mainly on pastries and desserts, but by far it seems to me that I'm better off heading to their more easily accessible cafes to indulge in their pastries instead.

I rated them poorly on taste as Bakery & Bar is supposed to have a fuller menu as compared to St Marc Cafes. All those yummy choco cro can easily be found at all other St Marc Cafes, which isn't the dish that makes Bakery & Bar different.

This is actually my second time dining at Bangkok Jam, albeit at a different branch. I apologise beforehand for the lack of pictures for this post because I didn't intend to do a review on it, since I've already been there once (PS new wing) and the experience was, well....mediocre. Mediocre service (even at a less packed dining time of 5pm and most of their crew was idle), mediocre food (had their Pad Thai & special item Earl Grey Milk Shake then) Nothing good, nothing bad.

But this time round at Marina Square, the level of service & food seemed to make a turn for the worse. Was actually reluctant to dine at Bangkok Jam, but since YS kept suggesting we go there as they have a shorter queue compared to Hi Fu Mi and the others (with the exception of this sorry looking cafe called Addictions, which was empty) and I sensed that she was eager to try it, I agreed.

There were two couples in front of us in the queue, and from the outside I can easily notice that the restaurant is horribly understaffed. There're dirty tables left uncleaned, along with a few empty tables staring invitingly at us to just walk straight in and take our own seat as those particular few servers just threw us a blank stare as they zoomed by to tend to other seated customers. Finally, one staff dressed in a chef coat came out to usher us to our respective tables. Or perhaps, their restaurant manager dressed up like a chef unlike other servers in black? I doubt so.

Anyway, YS and I ordered similar dishes. Seafood in Red Tom Yum for her (plus an additional sunny-side-up), Clear Tom Yum for me, and we both ordered iced Thai Milk Tea. Our orders took roughly 20 minutes to arrive, yes for a soup dish it is a very long waiting time. Never mind, see how our (or rather my) food was served.Let's not even complain about the tiny bowl of soup (with exactly 2 small pieces of fish, 2 squids, 2 shrimps ONLY) selling at $7.90 (a total ripoff, yes!). My utensils and serviettes were not served, but only a black ladle was given.

Now, obviously not very happy, I reminded the waitress about the missing utensils, and also our missing drinks (which restaurants serves drinks later than cooked food, and mind you ours took 20 minutes to come) YS also took the chance to remind her that her red tom yum has yet to be served, to which the waitress interrupted curtly, "I can speak Chinese."

YS and I exchanged glances of bewilderment before she turned back to the waitress and told her again in English, that her red tom yum wasn't served.

Seriously, what has your customer's language abilities got to do with the orders not served? And yes, we do speak Mandarin too, but sorry to say YS doesn't speak it well.

After a few minutes, YS's red tom yum was finally served and our utensils handed over by the same waitress, just as YS pulled out a strand of long hair from her bowl of rice, to both of our horror. The waitress immediately apologised and snatched up the bowl of rice, saying she'll change it for us. She returned shortly after with a bowl of rice that seemed to be 'disrupted' instead of how it looked like in a pretty dome shape. I really hoped that they didn't just pull the hair out and re-serve it to YS.

And yes, with our food served, we finally started eating our dinner. The first sip of my clear tom yum brought a frown to my face. It wasn't spicy at all. Previously when I visited the PS branch with Ade and Boon, Ade had red tom yum and she liked it because it's spicy. I remembered Boon commenting that the clear tom yum will be even spicer, for that's how it's supposed to be, because clear tom yum is cooked with chopped chilli padi. Then, I asked to try YS's red tom yum to compare. Hers was much more spicier than mine.

Clear Tom Yum is spicier then Red Tom Yum. Really?

Being really hungry, we just gobbled down our food quickly. I shan't give much comment on the food because it really isn't fantastic. The ridiculously small serving aside, the fish definitely wasn't fresh as I can taste the fishiness even when it's cooked in Tom Yum soup. The squid was overcooked, hence tough and rubbery. Shrimp was too, but at least not as horrible as the squid. And when we're both halfway into our meal, YS exclaimed, "Where's our milk teas?"

Ahh, yes! Our milk teas weren't served. So once again, we desperately raised/waved our hands at the pathetic few servers, only to have the chef coming to tend to us again. It took a couple more minutes after he has left our table before he returned with our milk teas.Which really isn't fantastic. It's just a tinge sweeter with a slightly stronger tea fragrance as compared to any other milk teas.

And back to my clear tom yum, I finally realised the reason why it wasn't spicy at all when I polished it off (not because it tasted heavenly please, because it's really a tiny bowl!)There's only a pathetic 1/3 piece of a chilli padi inside the entire bowl of soup. How to make it spicy?!

I remembered when I told Sa I enjoyed dining at Porn's (Pornsak's Thai restaurant), she scoffed that I have no taste for Thai food. I don't blame her for being overly critical. She hasn't tried Bangkok Jam.

The restaurant is extremely quiet for a lunch hour (actually the whole Zhong Shan Mall is) with only 4 tables occupied, including ours. A flip through the menu (HERE) was pretty impressive with the relatively large selection of choices, even with Chinese/Korean fusion such as Mabo Tofu and Kimuchi Buta Itame (shallow fried pork with kimchi). I was really tempted to get the Kimuchi Buta Itame set but decided to stick to my original craving of ramen in the end, and ordered their recommended Spicy Ramen (spicy pork bone base ramen). The server asked if we would like to have the chilli served separately, and we just nodded our head without any apprehension of her question. Should I say, thank goodness we did. Spicy Ramen, $15.

And that's the chilli that was served separately on the small dish, which kind of resemble a watery otah paste. I was all about to dump the entire lot of the chilli into my ramen when I suddenly decided to test out the spiciness. Once again, thank goodness I did, because it's ridiculously spicy for a calm orange paste! And so, I became extremely cautious, picking up minute amount of the paste and stirring it into my ramen before tasting the soup, making sure that the spiciness is still within the acceptable level before going for the next bit. The end result of the spicy ramen looked just like a normal tonkotsu ramen, it looked exactly like the picture on the right, no tinge of the spicy redness at all. But I can assure you, it taste just as spicy, or even spicer (because I always dump a lot of tongarashi nanami powder) than any other red hot spicy looking ramen we find elsewhere. And this two picture shows you the amount of chilli I've added into my ramen in total. It really wasn't a lot at all!

The ramen itself was kind of mediocre, with a badly done job for the noodles. The noodles still have the very distinctive taste of 'kee', the characteristic put-off taste of the yellow noodles we find in our prawn mee and lor mee etc. My colleague and I immediately made a face upon our first bite, and we immediately did the same thing. Added more chilli. Lucky us, we both decided to opt for the spicy ramen. I'd say the scary spiciness of the chilli covered up the 'kee' taste splendidly. The noodles' texture itself also has a lot of room for improvement, for I find it a little too tough and not Q (chewy) at all. I know some people prefer harder noodles, but not me. I've yet to go for my root canal and I can't chew well, alright?

Within the ramen were two pieces of charsiu, half of a flavoured boiled egg, menma (bamboo shoots), a handful of greens (I think they're spinach), and a generous topping of bean sprouts.

The charsiu was, OMG, friggin tough! I had a hard time battling with it, which left my colleague clearly amused and slightly bemused. I bit into the meat, hard, 3 times. All I've done was to left my distinctive bite marks on the piece of meat. After more biting, tugging, and chopstick twisting moments, I decided to give up and stuffed the entire piece of meat into my mouth for a long chew down. The meat itself was flavourful, slightly salty, which really wasn't too bad.

But oh please, I was expecting charsiu in my ramen, not bakwa!

The menma and flavoured egg was less disappointing, with the surprise find of a few extremely soft and tender pieces of menma in my bowl of ramen. The menma, although not chilly cold like straight out of the refrigerator, wasn't exactly as piping hot as the rest of the ingredient in the bowl either. So, I can't really decide if the chef has dumped the ready cooked menma straight from the fridge and directly into the ramen. Oh well, I hope not. The flavoured egg, although not as well done as Ippudo and Santouka, was still acceptable after the scare of the noodles and the bakwa charsiu. The outermost rim of the yolk has been cooked through to hard boiled standards, but the insides still remain watery crumbly, while the whites was fully cooked through. Not that bad.

Now to another most important aspect of the ramen, the soup base. I've tasted the soup prior to adding the chilli, just for a better gauge of the taste. I would say, it reminds me greatly of the ramen soup I had when I dined at places like Ajisen and Ramen Play. Tasty, yes. But truly good? Hmm, I can only say I merely drank up less than half of the soup and my glass of Calpis wasn't enough to quench my thirst thereafter.

With this as my first dining experience at Kotobuki, I won't say that I'll never visit this place ever again. But the next time I have a ramen craving, I probably won't choose to go there.