We decided to go Farrer Park MRT station to City Square Mall for our dinner as we never been there before. There are quite a lot of people shopping at the City Square Mall by the time we are there. After some walk plus looking at the directory, we decided to have our dinner at Barbacoa mainly because they do not charge GST and Service Charge.What is great about the restaurant is that all their menu are all set meals which include free soup of the day and also dessert. Talk about value meals. The restaurant are nearly full when we are there and we are lucky to be able to get a table without much waiting.

The tables are quite space apart with each other and I notice that all the staff working there are youngsters (even the chef). The staff are friendly but seems to be quite busy serving the customers that they do not really help to refill the water unless you request for it.Though it is free (One time serving), the soup is only acceptable standard as there are much milk and cream rather than the natural corn smell and taste. As it came free with the meal, we cannot complain about it too much.The sausages are nicely cooked and prepared and the presentation is great. Meat of the sausages are juicy and the cheese sausages are nice too.

Basically, the concept of the restaurant is allow you to choose your own pasta making of ingredients which include the follow:

Step 1:
Choose your pasta base => $5.50
White Creamy // Base Pesto Olio // Base Red Tomato

Step 2:
Choose your ingredient => Vegetables @ $1.00 // Meat @ $2.00 // Seafood @ $3.00 Tje pasta was totally tasteless and for the pan fried dory fish, it is very salty!!!. The pasta with white creamy base is totally tasteless while the grilled chicken meat is also very plain as they believe that the chicken never went through marination process.

In my own opinion, these 2 dishes failed badly.Considering this dish as a better ones than the pasta (Create yourself type) but not of any better too. The meat is a bit too tough even though the outside looks like it is being cooked nicely as the presentation of the dish is nice and appealing. I loves their side salad and salad sauce though it is not the main food in the dish.You can choose either 2 flavor of their ice-cream when I am there (Maybe depends on availability). I choose corn flavor instead (Other flavor is strawberry). Nothing great or bad about this ice-cream.

We decided to have our dinner over at this hawker/restaurant stall named “Hiang Ji Roasted Meat & Noodle House” at one corner of the back lane outside Toa Payoh HDB as the staff is very persistent in getting us to dine at their place and since I saw that there are quite a lot of customer eating at this place, we thought that their food should be quite nice to eat.

The restaurant is actually a stand alone hawker stall with their own sets of tables and chairs. We looked through the menu and started to order our dish. Overall, the staff are very attentive and is quick to answer our queries and request.Very bad choice to eat at this place as the rice is very hard. Should be never put enough water to cook or taken out before it is fully cooked. Meat wise is even worst!!! There are not much edible meat given but mostly is bones while the meat texture is quite tough and when you eat, you could even eat or bite into some crushed bones (Though the duck did taste nice) which gives an overall bad dining experience at this stall. There are no side soup given as what other duck rice stall would do and I think the only good thing is their sauce.The duck meat for the noodle is a bit better but mostly is fatty skin while lower is all bones again. (The duck must be a very thin as they do not have much meat to be eaten). Noodle wise, is very dry and not really nice to eat.Chicken noodle in terms of meat is much much better than the roasted duck rice / noodle but there are not much taste from this dish.The chef did put a lot of fried garlic and fried Lard onto it

Since we had been eating at the same old places in Raffles City, we decided to try some other restaurant instead and in the end, decided to eat at a Japanese Restaurant, “Daikokuya (大黑屋)”This was a small restaurant located at one side of the shopping mall and most of the tables and seats are quite close to each other. We were quite lucky as we were allocated with a table as soon as we entered the restaurant. The staff are all very busy due to dinner peak hours and there were people starting to form a queue outside while we are ordering our dishes.This Ramen was stated as one of the Chef’s recommendation Ramen in the menu but when it is being served to me, I felt that it was very much like those hawker / coffeeshop handmade noodle texture and taste. The ramen is being served with a few ingredients including boiled egg added onto it and a bowl of soup. I would say not a bad dish to try though there should be some better ramen within these menu.Ramen tasted something like those instant noodles (More QQ texture) being added to a salad dish with some mayonnaise cream added onto it. The overall taste was quite refreshing and acceptable for the first time but it seems to be quite oily from the mayonnaise cream after you were nearly finishing the food. Would prefer if they add those 0% fat salad sauce instead of cream sauce.

NYDC at Wheelock Place was located at level 2. The queue over at NYDC was still fine (Maybe still early) so we do not need to wait for long to be allocated a table for 4 pax. The staff were friendly even though they were quite busy during the evening dinner rush hours and the place are quite spacious with enough walking space for the staff to serve the dishes to customer.I loves the minty lime flavor as it was just nice in between of sour and sweetness. The blackcurrent Soda was ok only for me. From the menu, you can opt for a scoop of ice-cream to boost up the drinks at an additional of $3.50.The base of the pizza was crispy and highly recommended by my sister. I felt that the chef should add in more cheese (I loves cheese) to make it every nicer as just mushroom by itself will not taste great for a pizza standard.The chicken chop was served in a thick portion which was just nice for me to finish it and feeling very full. Meat itself was tender and I loves their Cajun cooking style which enhanced the overall taste of this dish. The dish was served together with boiled broccoli and herb butter rice.By default, this dish was being prepared using white cream but my sister opt for the choice of preparing it using tomato sauce version. I would say though the pasta was nicely prepared, I do not really like the taste of the sauce as it was being prepared with very little tomato sauce. Overall still a fine dish.

Turf City now had become a hub for many different restaurants, we walked around and decided to go for a new Korean restaurant named “Han Sang Korean Restaurant & Market” which was located next to Giant Shopping mall (Enter from outside near carpark) having business as both restaurant and a Korean supermarket (Though did not really sell a lot of Korean stuff).

This restaurant actually serves buffet or ala-carte dining. There were quite a lot of people dining at this place when we were there and most of them are having buffet style which you can eat all you want from a buffet bar in the middle of the restaurant. We decided to just go for a la carte meal instead after taking a look at the price and the buffet dishes being displayed (Not much choices, high in price so not value for $).

In term of staff, I do not think they were very friendly type though I would say they were not rude too. Just normal serving and you must get their attention in order to get what you wanted. We just looked through the menu and chat while waiting for our dishes to be served.One thing to note about these side dishes were that they are only set of serving per table. You need to ask the staff to refill any finished dish so we need to get the staff attention to refill these plates every now and then as 3 of us were eating such a small dish. The Kimichi were very spicy which was not really to my likely while the potato salad seems nicer to eat. Peanuts were too hard and rest nothing much to comment.This set comes with a stone pot rice and so called “Side dish” which were those photos I took above. We order a total of 4 set meals yet just 1 set of side dish. You need to mixed the rice as soon as it was being served as it was super hot and the rice might get burned (Which mine already got some burned at the side) if you were slow. The hot rice was quite nice to eat though the rice itself should be using those cheapo type as they do not taste really nice to eat.Cooking style the same as those saba fish type except this dish was using mackerel as the ingredient. Not bad and it was nicely cooked and prepared.This was a pork meat soup based on kimchi and as I said earlier, the kimchi served here was too spicy for my likely so I did not really drink this soup except for the ingredients inside like mushroom, meat, and beancurd.The bulgogi chicken was not bad in term of taste though I think I was looking for water when I was eating this dish. It seems like they had added some ingredients which cause my throat dry and requesting for water to wash it away (Hope was not MSG).