Original Review on http://www.nahmj.com/2016/05/04/ollella-pourover-bar-somme-residence-farrer-park-singapore

Ollella And The Pourover Bar are at Somme Residence. Most might not have realised that it is a stone throw from City Square and the Farrer Park MRT station. It isn't as inconvenient a location that most might have imagined.Ollella specialises in Choux pastry and have collaborated with Raphael and Karen for coffee. As such you will notice that there is The Pourover Bar occupying a corner of the shop.When I entered Ollella, my attention was turned to the dinning area on my right. It has bar tables and chairs. But what caught my attention was the greens that are hung on the barrier and the flowers on the table. It is much like a garden.

At Ollella
At the moment, Ollella is offerring 7 chouquette flavours. One will find the Vanilla ($4), Dark Chocolate ($4.50), Lemon Meringue ($4), Raspberry ($5), Apple Cinammon ($4), Tiramisu ($5) and Matcha Azuki ($4.50).

I have a tough time deciding which 2 flavours I should be getting. As usual, I would love to have all of them. I am glad I did not succumbed to my greed. I went for the Lemon Meringue Chouquette ($4) and the Matcha Azuki ($4.50). The Lemon Meringue has a lemon curd within the choux pastry and a meringue on top of the choux resulting in a sourish and sweet pastry. The lemon curd was lightly sour. I wouldn't mind it to be more sourish. In short, it is a typical Lemon Meringue flavour.

The Matcha Azuki has red bean within the choux pastry and a Matcha cream on top. Lightly green tea flavour coupled with generous red bean. Both the choux though were delish, there isn't any surprise element.For those who prefer to savour the plain choux pastry could go for the Chouquette. Beside the Chouquette, Ollella offers the Kueh Lapis and Choux Tart too. Ollella offers some tea blend to accompany their pastries. If diner prefer coffee, Ollella has The Pourover Bar to serve some V60 filter coffee and the Espresso based coffee. The coffee order could be done at the same time at Ollella.

The Pourover Bar
Karen and Raphael specialise in the Pourover coffee. The pair are very friendly and shares with customers a lot on coffee too. At the beginning, they offered beans roasted from Ninety Plus Coffee. A roastery hailed from Melbourne. There are beans from Tanazia, Ethiopia and Panama Gesha.The coffee offered by The Pourover Bar is steep and it is going to be hard to swallow by most coffee drinkers, unless you are coffee connoisseur. They believe in only providing the best to consumers. So expect a cup of pourover at $11 and above. The most expensive currently offered by The Pourover Bar is a Panama Gesha at $45.Ollella And The Pourover Bar as a pair offers fabulous pastries and high quality coffee. Such is a great collaboration for the SME in Singapore.

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Tang Restaurant And Bar located along the highly dense street of restaurants and eateries is owned by Zoe Zhang. It was re-branded from Tang Steamboat Restaurant. The restaurant specialises in Szechuan Hot Pot. 

We understand from them that the objective of creating this restaurant was to provide a more refined Szechuan Hot Pot where the expat and foreigners would enjoy.With that objective in mind, you will observed that the interior design of Tang Restaurant and Bar is classy and elegant. The space isn’t big, in fact, I would describe it as relatively tiny. It could occupied only a maximum of 40 diners.

The space is divded into 2 section. First section, at the entrance is the bar where diners could enjoy a glass of wine or any drink before or after the meal with some bar snack such as the Deep Fried Enoki Mushroom.
The latter section is the dinning area where diners get to enjoy the piping hot pot. Tang Restaurant and Bar is also thought to provide private dining rooms for guests too. There are 2 rooms which has a removal centre partition to make it one big room that can occupy a total of 14 diners.

The Hot Pot
It was certainly an experience to dine at Tang Restaurant And Bar. I felt the experience is equivalent to fine dining. The service crew will dish you the first bowl of soup before you start the meal. And all food will be cooked by the service crew too.There are about 3 soup based served at the Tang Restaurant And Bar. We have the Mala and Signature Golden Imperial Broth. Beside these, there were Tomato Soup which is also very popular among their regular guests. Diners could choose 2 out of the 3 soups for $21.The Signature Golden Imperial Broth was boiled for more than 8 hours with Pig’s bones, Fish bone, Old Hen and together with over 10 herbs till it is whitish in colour. The Mala soup is also worth a mentioned. The ingredients used to boil the Mala Soup was in consultation with traditional Chinese Physician to ensure that all herbs and spices are in the perfect harmony by Chef Zou Bin who helmed the kitchen of Tang Restaurant And Bar. This avoids having excessive heat, diarrhea, stomach pain and other ailments after having spicy soup especially in huge amount. Importantly, the soup are free of MSG.The soup are generally light in flavour so if you have a light palate, this is perfect for you. I truly enjoyed the soup at the end when lots of ingredients wer cooked in it and it created even a sweeter and richer flavour tone.We started off with the Translucent Sliced Fish ($22), since fish has a lighter taste among the rest of the ingredients we ordered.The service crew will help to cook the sliced fish in both the Signature Broth and the Mala Soup. Though the sliced fish was so thin till it was translucent, nonetheless, I could still enjoy the flavour and texture of the fish.Various homemade minced meat paste were served at Tang Restaurant And Bar too. The noteworthy items were the Minced Seafood Paste, Minced Fishball and top selection the Homemade Meatballs. I enjoyed the meatball as in it there are cilantro to provide the herb fragrance and chestnut to provide the crunch texture.
All the minced meat paste were chewy to the bite. It was certainly excellent.For meat selection, the Beef Sliced and the Iberico Pork Sliced are two of the must ordered hot pot ingredients.One other ingredients which all of us enjoyed so much till we ordered the second portion is the Homemade Dumpling. This dumpling is made using Zoe’s mother recipe. The dumpling skin was so smooth and in it there are some, I think were black fungus to provide the crunch. Should the dumpling skin be thinner, it would certainly be perfect.Even though I am not a beancurd fan, I would want to miss having the Deep Fried Beancurd especially with the Mala Soup based.Mushroom fans, great news, there are assorted variety of mushroom to go along with the hot pot.For those like me who need greens, there are quite some good selections at Tang Restaurant And Bar too. There are Chinese Cabbage, Spinach, Lettuce and Kai Lan.If diners need to turn to some carbohydrates, a good recommendation is the Cold Noodle ($7). This version has lots of vinegar and lightly spice in it.At the end of meal, a complimentary bowl of dessert, Snow Fungus was served to each guest.We enjoyed the lightly sweet and a little jelly like texture of the dessert.
It was a fabulous dinning experience. It is highly suitable for a small group dinning, perhaps with your best family or a small family of 4 – 5. It would be a little tough to settle for large group unless you opt for the private dinning room.
If you don’t like doing your own cooking of hot pot and preferred to be served, Tang Restaurant And Bar is the place to turn to.

Review with photos at http://www.nahmj.com/2016/03/29/cheek-jowl-boon-tat-street-telok-ayer-singapore

When I got to know about Cheek By Jowl along Boon Tat Street has opened its door to welcome diners, ever since, I was eager to try them out. As I have my regular meet up with this group of foodie colleagues, I took the opportunity to have a feast there. And guess what, we ordered almost the entire Dinner menu. Lol!I was surprised that one of my friend went to read up about the restaurant and the Chef. We were not in anticipation of the dinner.Cheek By Jowl has a very much, I would term as open concept. From the kitchen and even the front door. As such the cigarette smoke got into the interior dinning area which was quite annoying for me since I am sensitive to the smell. The ambience was causual. It is interesting to see the only round table at a corner of the restaurant.
Coming to the dinner menu, all its dishes are designed for sharing, staring from light bites, small plate, large plate and lastly desserts.We started with Oyster ($5/pc) as the light bites. The oysters were topped with shaved tomato ice. Oh my! It was icy cold and with to the tomato aroma, it was refreshing and masking any strong seafood flavour. We enjoyed so much till we ordered more of it. The two other light bites which we missed were Marinated Olives ($6) and Padron Peppers ($9).5 small plates were offered at Jeek By Jowl. We ordered everything except the Roast Pumpkin ($22). First on the table was the Beetroot ($17). Interestingly, it consisted of beetroot marinated in 2 ways. The lightly sweetened beetroot was topped with the pickled beetroot. These were sat on goat cheese. It was an appetiser to us, whetting our appetite for more food to come.The Ocean Trout ($22) has a colourful plating while its combination is genius. All the ingredients, Cucumber, picked green, sauce and buttermilk, complemented the lightly seared Ocean Trout.Next on the table was the Wild Venison ($22). It is a dish which was enjoyed by all 3 diners. This dish is in the form of Tartare, so it is usually raw. Interestingly, the venison was light pan fried on the side before dicing it. It is much like rare instead of raw. The entire flavour was sourish and due to the pepper and garlic, these added much flavours to the dish.Our final small plate was the Braised Rabbit ($24). We were attracted to this dish as it has the Northern Chinese cooking ingredient, Szechuan Peppers in it. The Szechuan Peppers aroma was light and it reminded me of a popular Northern Chinese dish, the Chilled Chicken. But certainly, this is a healthier version compared to the mentioned Chinese dish. In case you have not tasted rabbit meat, it is very close to chicken. If I were not told that it was rabbit, I would have mistaken it for chicken.Moving to the large plate. Our first was an interesting Confit Duck Leg ($36) served with waffle. This dish has an Asian twist contributed by the sauce. That's how I feel. The sauce tasted like the Chinese BBQ sauce which is a little sweet. We enjoyed dipping the waffle with the sauce. Waffle was no doubt fluffy and yet with some bread like denseness in it. By its side was a Asian like salad.Next was the Rangers Valley Ribeye ($55) with doneness rare. Simple but yet enjoyable. It was accompanied with Romaine Lettuce in I think Mustard dressing and a Chinese like soy sauce. We prefer having the steak without the sauce.

There were 2 other large plates on the menu which we didn't order were Lamb Shoulder ($36) and Barramundi ($32).Finally, it is dessert time. There were only 2 desserts on the menu and we ordered both. First was the Coconut ($15) has the Laksa Leaf Ice Cream which was too light to savour the laksa leaf fragrance. The rest of ingredients to complement the dessert were pomelo, green chili and some meringue like. Despite not savouring much Laksa Leaf flavour, we enjoyed the dish as I like the various texture coming to play in the dessert.The last dish of the night was the Black Olive Cake ($15) with diced strawberry on top and by the side were yoghurt and strawberry ice cream. Though I couldn't savour much olive aroma, we enjoyed the dessert. This is especially so when all the components were eaten together.

This was the first time that we were satisfied with all the dishes we ordered. It was truly enjoyable. 

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Original Post http://www.nahmj.com/2016/03/10/kraftwich-swissbake-one-raffles-place/


Kraftwich is the latest concept cafe created by Swissbake. The environment is casual with some hipster touch.On weekdays, Kraftwich starts as early as 7.30am to serve the early birds in the CBD area with some hearty breakfast items. There are 3 types of bread to choose from; the Croissant sandwich, Multigrain Croissant and Swiss Crumpet. Each with different fillings; Turkey Ham & Cheese Croissant, Egg Mayo Croissant, Tuna Mmultigrain Croissant, Fritata Multigrain Croissant, Poached Egg & Turkey Ham Swiss Crumpet and Beef Pastrami Swiss Crumpet at $5.90 each. These 6 items are available till 11am. Diners could add $1 to enjoy it with coffee or tea. For even healthier Breakfast option, both the Bircher Muesli and Crunchy Apple Granola Mix are available.We tried both the Poached Egg & Turkey Ham Swiss Crumpet and Beef Pastrami Swiss Crumpet. Though it was delicious, I find the mayo spread a little too sweet for my palate.Kraftwich has named its fame sandwich Kraftwich ($8.90) too. With 8 fillings; Smoked Salmon, Turkey Ham & Cheese, Tuna & Egg, Vegetarin, Smoked Duck, Portobello and Smoked Chicken to choose from, diners are spoilt for choice. Diners could opt for either the Maize bread or the Mutligrain bread. Both are considered healthy choices.

The top favourite among the group diners for the night was the Smoked Duck. Surprisingly, the Portobello was also very well received. Me too like these 2 items. And the other important factor of the sandwich was bread was fluffy and soft.If bread isn’t your preferred choice, diners could choose to Go Green with Our Kraft ($9.90); replacing bread with greens. Likewise 8 toppings for the salad. Alternatively, diner could go for DIY Your Kraft ($7.90) consisting of mixed veggies and 5 regular toppings of diner choice. There are 20 regular toppings and 9 premium toppings to choose from.
Good news for diners, one could opt for Kraft Me A Meal at $13.90 consisting of a Main, choose either the Kraftwich or Our Kraft Salad (add $1) and a Side, either Mini Salad or Soup. Lastly a drink, Cappuccino or Iced Lemon Tea.As we know Swissbake has various delicious bake which include the pastries, Quiche and Pies should diners wanting to opt for something light there are various flavours to choose from.Sweet Endings with either Daily Cakes or Mug Cakes ($6.90) is always a great way to complete the meal. We tried 4 of the 5 daily cakes. The top choice for most is Paradiso Di Nocciola, followed by Chocolate Fudge. A handful enjoyed the Hazelnut Crunch, which I didn’t. No one chose the Blueberry Cheesecake to be their fave. It was a pity we missed out on the Black Forest Cake.There are 5 flavours of Mug Cakes ($6.90); Chocolate, Chocolate Banana, White Choc Strawberry, White Choc Blueberry and Bread & Butter Pudding. Each Mug Cake come with a scoop of ice cream. We tried only the Bread & Butter Pudding Mug Cake which most of us find it a little too sweet. Daily from 2pm to 6pm, diners could enjoy a pastry and coffee or tea at $6.90 or Cake and coffee or tea at $7.90; value for money.At Kraftwich, there are both Coffee or Non-coffee option. For Coffee, both black and with milk are available. The signature coffee drink is the Salted Caramel ($5.50 hot / $6 iced). I tried their Cappuccino ($4.90). It is a cuppa with low acidity, nutty full body.A handful of Not Coffee selection with the Swiss Pure Hot Chocolate where can customise the level of chocolaty and option of marshmallow are available too. As usual, Assorted Hot Tea($4.90) isn’t missing. A pity there is only an Iced Tea available for selection, the Iced Lemon Tea ($4.90). 2 Frappe ($6.90) are also on the menu, Strawberry Yoghurt Frappe and Banana Choco Cookies Frappe. Lastly the Cold Pressed Juice, Orange ($5.90), Spinach Apple ($6.90) and Beetroot Orange ($6.90).Kraftwich provides delicious and healthy option of both Salad and Sandwiches will certainly attracts the Executive working in the area.

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Aura occupied a unit on the fifth as the restaurant while directly above is the sky lounge. I thought it could be a great place for brunch with my mom on a Sunday. I tried making a reservation via the website twice but failed as it requires 24 hours lead time to reply. As such, on my second failed attempt, I decided to take the risk and walk-in early. Indeed, either go early, as early as 12 pm when it opens or make sure a reservation is made if after 1 pm.Both the restaurant and the sky lounge offer different dinning experience with unsimilar ambience. The feel of the restaurant is more slanted to the fine dinning arena while the sky lounge offer an elegant, relaxed and casual dinning atmosphere. A reservation with tables next to the glass at the sky lounge would be a perfect dinning experience.

Sky Lounge

On weekdays, at the sky lounge, it offers Salad Buffet of roasted vegetables, salads and homemade breads.When weekends arrived, an Ala Carte Menu is offered instead with as much as 12 selection, ranging from eggs, salad, sandwiches to pasta and sweets.


Restaurant

Over at the Aura Restaurant, the weekends Brunch Menu is available. I thought the Brunch Menu was a good way to try as many food as possible. It is priced at $48 per person for food only. If diners prefer to have free flow of Prosecco and Bellini, it is priced at $98 per person.Swiftly the complimentary Focaccia bread was served once order was completed.We were served with the pastas before the remaining apperitzer, I decided to start with Stracci with Duck Ragu. We were mesmerized by its taste immediately.Next, was the Trofie with Truffle Pesto and Prawns. This isn’t for my mom at all. She tried and never turned to it for more. I was neutral though not exactly enjoying it. This surely isn’t for everyone due to the strong aroma from both the truffle and pesto resulting in some kind of acquired pungent flavour. Both the Stracci and Troffie were well made; smooth and soft to the chew.Next, the Parma Ham with Musk Melon and Stracciatella & Tomato Bruschetta, Calarmari and Crab Crostini were served. Nothing outstanding about these. But the soft to the chew calamari is still worth highlighting.3 choices for Mains with Sirloin with Asparagus and Red Wine Sauce and Hokkaido Scallops with Porcini and Beetroot as our order. The third was Black Cod with Tomato and Herb Crust.Luckily, I agreed to Medium Rare for the Sirloin with Asparagus and Red Wine Sauce, otherwise, it would prove a challenge for my jaw. My mom doesn’t usually prefer beef actually wanted more after her first small piece.Hokkaido Scallops with Porcini and Beetroot has good pairing of ingredients. As long as seafood is fresh, it can’t go too wrong.We have both the Bailey’s & Hazelnut Feuillantine and Chestnut Pannacotta with Mandarin Coulis. I started with the former. Hazelnut flavour was strong while bailey was weak to savour. Moving to the latter, we were surprised by how the citrusy zest of orange could be in perfect harmony with the nuttiness chestnut. I was blown away by this dessert. As I have no expectation for it since I don't have good prior experience on anything chestnut.Coffee and Tea were part of the Brunch. I have my usual Cappucino. I like the low acidity, full body and nutty cuppa.Aura Restaurant has a classy dinning environment though it gets noisy when the restaurant was at 80% capacity. The service staff that attended our table was warm, chatty and certainly professional; introducing us the menu and making recommendation to us to help the decision process. Coming to food, we felt they were fresh. Most of which leaned towards our preference except for the more adventurous Triofe with Truffle Pesto and Prawns.

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