Today I got my coffee fix at the Shaw House starbucks for the second time (I work nearby). Popped by at around 8.40am and there was already a queue. I ordered a caramel machiatto the first time, and a caffe mocha the second time. I noticed the caramel machiatto here seemed less sweet as compared to the other branches I'd gotten from, which I'm fine with because the coffee taste is stronger...but it's also slightly more bitter, so to those who enjoy their coffee really sweet, they wouldn't be too pleased with this version. Perhaps my barista that morning had gone easy on the caramel in my coffee but I felt that it was less sweet! Other than that, I'm usually pleased with the consistent standards of Starbucks. My machiatto is always frothy at the top, piping hot coffee at the bottom, and it goes down well, giving me my much needed caffeine jolt!

Today I decided to revisit my resentful relationship with mocha, and give mocha another try. My first instinct would be to try their Caffe Mocha since i don't really enjoy the iced Starbucks beverage except maybe the super occasional green tea latte with ice cubes. The Caffe Mocha was at first sip, bitter -really bitter in my opinion, for a mocha drink. It seemed like a caffeinated mocha drink infused with dark chocolate -not my kind of thing. I like dark chocolate, but it just didn't seem to go down well at all. This drink felt too thick on my tongue when I sipped it, the flavours weren't delicately balanced enough for me. I've decided that I'm never going to drink mocha again!! It's simply not my thing!

Note briefly that my usual drink orders are Chai Tea Latte, Green Tea Latte, Vanilla Latte and Caramel Machiatto (to give you an idea of my usual taste & preferences).

Service wise, this place doensn't really have fantastic service, seeing as they face a lot of the morning work crowd so they have a lot of coffee and breakfast items to churn out by 9/ 10 am. But it's alfescro setting makes it great for a chillout in the day. A pity there are renovations nearby at Shaw + RP ... makes the place a lot less ideal for a hangout..

Visited the Bugis Junction outlet of twelve cupcakes last week... To be honest I never really caught on with the cupcake craze in Singapore. Girls go ga-ga over these sweet creations topped with sinful piped cream and gimmicky decorations... Never understood why.

I've personally tried the oreo cupcake, rainbow cupcake (which isn't really rainbow save for the sprinkles (-.-")), chocolatechocolate cupcake and the red velvet cupcake. Out of all, I've only re-eaten the red velvet one. The oreo cupcake is not bad, but I found the oreo cream quite oily and disgusting. I'd rather they just made a cookies and cream cupcake and forgo the cream, but then it wouldn't be called a cupcake would it?
The rainbow cupcake was a normal cupcake with rainbow sprinkles on top of its (butter?) cream, and I didn't really like it. It didn't suit my taste at all and the cream was too thick and rich.
The chocolatechocolate cupcake would perhaps be the safest best out of all (apart from red velvet) because I've not met anyone who didn't like it (sure I've met crazy fans of it, but those that weren't cupcake fans were rather neutral towards this flavour). It's very chocolatey, topped with yet, even more chocolate cream.
What I perhaps enjoyed (or rather, went down much better) would be the red velvet cupcake. Red velvet is all the rage now and this cupcake fuels this insane fad! The red velvet cupcake came with cream cheese piped on top of it with a little cute red heart (that was admittedly a nice touch).I say I felt the red velvet cupcake was the best because it didn't taste too sweet, and the cream cheese actually went quite well with the cupcake. Don't get me wrong, all their cupcakes are fluffy and delicious, but I didn't like it when it was too sweet/rich. The red velvet felt like it wasn't as cloying or sweet as the others although I felt that they could have used slightly less cream cheese (I'm not a huge fan of cream, sorry.). Most of their cupcakes are priced at $3 each, and the special flavours are slightly more. Honestly it's a bit pricey, given that it's just a small cupcake, topped with loads of cream and packaged in a visually aesthetic way.

Friday night a Shin Kushiya which happened to be a public holiday is just crazy!! I'm lucky we made reservations ...We were ushered to a table at the far end, near the glass window so we had a nice night view of the outside (which was quite pleasant I guess!).

We ordered a platter of yakitori which was the chef recommendation: it consisted of prawn, pork belly, mushrooms, pork wrapped tomato and black pepper chicken. My favourite out of all has got to be the chicken, its the most tender and the chicken falls apart in your mouth because it's so tender. All the sticks are brushed with this fabulous yakitori sauce which is just delicious. We also ordered a BBQ squid, the pork-wrapped salmon, quail eggs and a chicken stick brushed with roe. The pork-wrapped salmon was surprisingly better than I expected. I had expected the pork to overwhelm the salmon but I was wrong: instead, I bit into a whole chunk of medium-cooked salmon that was just the right blend of freshness and the smoky BBQ. The BBQ squid was also good; but perhaps I prefer bbq squid in a local setting, dipped in belachan and with lime squeezed over. Nevertheless it was well cooked, not too tough.The standards for their bbq sticks are quite high, but in my opinion, a lot of them were too salty for my liking. Maybe it's because we tried too wide a range of things, and I usually would only eat several sticks with rice as that is sufficient for me(think: tori q portions), hence maybe the saltiness was too overwhelming I felt slightly queasy towards the end of dinner.

But I have to add that the freshness of the food is there, and the impeccable style of cooking ensures that there is a fragrant BBQ aroma on top of the tender meat.

Service wise the servers are generally polite, but I'd have to say maybe they were too busy. It took awhile to get their attention and even when we did, it took quite long for them to get back to us/serve the food. It's lucky that we weren't very hungry! Price wise it's also not very cheap -we didn't order much, generally a stick to try but the bill came up to nearly $50 for those few sticks...but if you like barbecued meat on a stick, it's worth every penny.

I visited the famous south buona vista road duck rice today for lunch with my colleagues cos of the thread that we read on facebook -ITS CLOSING SOON!!!! Its not my first time at Lim Seng Lee, and even though I have to admit that the taste of the braised duck is good, the dishes are a tad pricey. This probably attributes to the fact why I have no gone back that many times even if I were in the area.

We ordered the tofu($6), kangkong($6) and the braised duck($20) to share for 4 people.The tofu I'd have to say, looks bland and the presentation isnt great at all, but taste-wise, the standard is there! It's refreshingly light but also tasty enough for me -not too salty, which I like a lot. The braised duck was also up to my expectations, it was tender and the sauce drizzled over was just the right consistency. The sauce isn't starchy like those prepared elsewhere, and the taste is meaty with a hint of sweetness that whets your appetite. I dont normally like gravy, nor do I like duck, so this is a big thing for me to enjoy this meat dish.

The kangkong is a huge letdown -we could literally COUNT the strands of the vegetable on the plate even though it was a portion for 4. It was unusually slimy in my opinion and a general fail where kangkong is concerned. Sure, the taste was alright but it was a killjoy when the vegetable wasn't cut neatly (there were portions where the leaves and stem were extremely long, and some random short stems -very unacceptable to me!!) It isn't worth it for the price.

Also, it gets super crowded during the lunch hours so you'd be very lucky to get a table if you have more than 4-5 persons dining together. The intensity of the lunch rush also makes it very difficult for you to get good service (if any at all!) but I wouldn't fault them on it. The chaos is just too much. Overall, while this place is indeed a must-try (I have to admit that everyone should try it at least once), it is too pricey for me to feel that parting with my money for this food experience is to die-for.

I had dinner at the Orchard Central branch of Ootoyo and we were very lucky to get a table given that it was quite crowded that day (perhaps we had gone too late at around 8). I ordered the chargrilled chicken set that comes with a decent portion of tenderly grilled chicken, with a hard boiled egg, salad on the side, chawanmushi, and the standard rice +miso rice. This has always been my favourite value-for-money set that I've been consistently trying. The chicken is really nicely marinated and the sauce goes well with the taste. However, I didn't like that the hard boiled egg was literally, hard boiled, and it was cold and hard, not at all moist!

My company ordered the katsu toji, which is katsu drecnched in a japanese egg-gravy sauce. The sauce was surprisingly tasty and not too salty. The katsu was just average, (in my opinion; Tonkichi (just one level below) serves way better katsu!) but the sauce compensated for it.

Ambience wise it is not too bad for a chillout place after work, they also have promos for their Kirin drafts the last time I visited.