Mountain of Seafood PaellaSeafood Paella, $14.40
(Normal portion - $11.90, top up $2.50 for extra rice)

I tried the highly-raved Seafood Paella by Le Patio.

It looks good and smells good, but didn't taste like how I'd expected.

On the day that I tried this, the entire dish was too mushy.

I thought there'd be some flavour in the pretty yellow-coloured rice, but it tasted just like normal rice. The chicken was also mushy all over. The mussels were slightly smaller than the size of cockles, and were stuck stubbornly to the shells. Overall the entire dish lacked flavour, let alone any seafood fragrance. Only the prawns were good and had a little crunch texture to it.

However, I visited the stall within the first 2 weeks of the opening of PasarBella - this was before the actual grand opening. The food was still rather inconsistent, and I've seen the paella being either too mushy or burnt.

I'm going back to try it again, as they have now settled into the business. Hopefully the cooking is more consistent and the paella tastier.

Went to Seventh Heaven at Orchard Central for their ice cream buffet, so I managed to try about 12 flavours in all.From top left to bottom right:
- Rum & Raisin
- Granny Smith & Cream Cheese
- Red Velvet
- Grape Sorbet
- Butterscotch Pecan
- Choco RumFrom top left to bottom right:
- Buttermilk Raspberry
- Yuzu Sorbet
- Kumkat Sorbet
- Durian
- Matcha
- Kopi

My favourite out of the entire lot has to be Granny Smith & Cream Cheese; feels like eating a very light cheesecake icecream. Tastes just like cheesecake too!

Rum & Raisin, and Butterscotch Pecan were milky and good, although a tad sweet.

I thought I would have liked Red Velvet, Choco Rum, Buttermilk Raspberry, Durian, Matcha and Kopi, as these are flavours that are rather common and generally well-liked. However for me, I find the flavours too artificial, tastes off from how it should originally taste.

The Sorbet category - Red Sorbet, Yuzu Sorbet, and Kumkat Sorbet - are those that I probably wouldn't try again unless their recipe is tweaked. I'm a sorbet lover, but I didn't enjoy the consistency and texture of the sorbets here.Grape sorbet (and Kumkat Sorbet) are too thick, too sweet, and melts into a paste.On the other hand, texture of yuzu sorbet is very different from the above 2 sorbets. This one is more towards ice flakes and separated. Even the service staff had trouble bringing the icecream into a complete scoop, because it kept falling apart. On the bowl, it also melted extremely quickly.

Had a disappointing dining experience here.Stir-fried vegetables

This is very much just garlic stir-fried with vegetables. Acceptable but not nice.Sour and Spicy soup

The smell of the vinegar was very strong, and another diner seated 3 chairs away commented that she could smell the sourness from where she was. I could only taste vinegar in this, not sure if I was supposed to taste anything else.Seafood Hor Fun

This may look nice on the surface, but the dining experience goes downhill from here.

The horfun was in a mushy chunk underneath the sauce. I feel that the chef didn't even bother to give the noodles some taste by stir-frying it, or even mixing it with the sauce. The minimum that could have been done was at least to separate out the noodles so that it wouldn't coagulate together. Only the top layer of noodles had some sauce on it. Beneath it was white, bland, and tasteless, separated from the sauce. Trying to mix up the noodles to bring the sauce to the bottom was a chore, because the sauce was thick, heavy and very starchy. The entire thing was bland and terrible. The only thing worthy of some praise was the 3 small pieces of prawns that were fresh and chewy.Fried Dumpling

I ordered a normal portion of fried dumplings, I got 6 pieces of fried dumpling skin. 'nuff said.

I'm usually easy-going in the sense that even if the food is not nice, I'll still just take it as one meal settled, and try to finish my food. I seldom refuse my food! I forced myself to drink up the vinegar soup but really couldn't swallow the seafood horfun because I really don't fancy chewing on a chunk of mushy flour that still tasted dry and terrible even after trying to mix up the sauce more evenly.

I feel coffeeshops are capable of serving the same food at a much better standard, at only a small fraction of the price. Granted, Crystal Jade is a more luxurious restaurant, but it's not worth paying an exorbitant amount for food that I couldn't even swallow. I'd probably not return to Crystal Jade Kitchen, but I remain a fan of their other concepts like Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao and Crystal Jade Steamboat.

Generally, they offer very nice cakes and pastries.

Although I dislike pastries in general, I remain their fan for the nice food they serve; my favourite takeaway has to be their macarons!

Here's a very cute doggie for a birthday cake.I couldn't figure out a way to cut this birthday cake without destroying the beautiful design. In the end, the best way was to cut it horizontally across the body, which make me feel a little sad actually, having to decapitate such a cute doggie on my birthday. Also, I only ate the strawberries because my taste buds didn't approve of the heavily-slathered overly-sweet cream on the cake. In fact, I'd say about 60% of the cake is made of cream.

Very beautiful in design but not so much in taste. This should be the one item on the menu that I won't buy.

On a side note, I can't wait to buy and add my own designs on their DIY cakes!

I tried their Hong Kong Egglet at the outlet at Jurong Point, and got myself hooked. However Jurong Point is really too out of the way for me, so this time round I made my way to White Sands.

All the flavours on the menu - Original, Pizza, Cheese, Chicken Floss and Shrimp, are all made from the same original batter, just added with different toppings, except for Chocolate. The batter for the latter is standalone - chocolate batter, and I wondered how different it would be from the usual.Chocolate Egglet, $2.50
Made from Chocolate batter and chocolate chips.

Being a cheese lover, I also ordered another Cheese Egglet.

I think the standard of this outlet in White Sands pales in comparison to their Jurong Point counterpart. Their batter is so watery that the moment the assistant poured it into the egglet pan, some splashed out from the sides - I knew I couldn't expect too much of it. I find that they are also not very skilled in controlling the preparation of the egglet; I witnessed the assistant messing up and having to throw away 2 pieces.Here's showing that there wasn't enough control over the batter to "close" the egglet properly. The texture was a disappointment, when I ate it, the egglet "crushed down" in my mouth as if it was hollow. I feel the lack in chocolate taste didn't make the cut for this chocolate egglet; not only that, it also dilutes the fragrance of the original batter, which would otherwise have been savory.