Yum Cha will be launching 3 special dim sums just for Mothers' Day this year and these exclusive dim sum will be available from 1st to 14th May at both Yum Cha Chinatown and Yum Cha Changi outlets.

I was invited for a food tasting session at Yum Cha to try their Mothers' Day exclusive dim sum as well as many of their regular items and I got my friend Sam to join me for the tasting session. If you haven't decided where to bring your mum for a good meal for Mothers' day, you can consider bringing her and your family to Yum Cha. =)

I took the MRT to Chinatown and when we stepped out of the station, we saw the beautiful sky with fluffy clouds.It was a short walk from the train station to Yum Cha restaurant. There is still the "Chinese New Year" feel around Chinatown area especially with all the hanging red/ yellow lanterns.Yum Cha restaurant on the left side. We went up to the restaurant using this escalator. There is a lift to go up to the second level as well.Reached!The following 3 items are the special Dim Sum introduced to this year's Mothers' Day menu.

Braised Pork with Preserved Vegetable Buns ($2/ pc)

This is a classic Chinese dish, probably has a long history. As they are small and easy to carry, these buns were eaten during war time when people were fleeing from the war in China before settling down in different parts of Asia.Tender pork belly is braised in their secret recipe sauce for hours to create a sweet and succulent taste that is balanced by a soft steamed bun. Be warned... pork belly is used here so expect to find lots of fats in the bun! I don't mind actually but I thought they didn't put in enough of the preserved vegetables to distinguish them from the normal "Kong Ba" pau. Pan-fried Salted Fish Bun ($5/ 3 pcs)

This is quite an unique item that I had not tried before elsewhere. This is a traditional Chinese dish which is originated from Guangdong province. It is said that these salted fish buns were the favourite of Emperor Kang Xi of the Qing dynasty. The filling of the bun is made from salted fish paste and minced meat. If you are worried about the sodium level, the buns were not too salty surprisingly as there was a good balance of the proportion of salted fish paste and meat. The third item in the Mothers' day special menu is Almond Tarts. ($3.20/ 3pcs)

They do look like Hong Kong bird nests' egg tarts with the almost translucent colour on top, isn't it? They are served in bite-sized portion and are served warm. Although I am not usually a big fan of almond paste, but I love these almond tarts. Other than the above 3 special Mothers' day items, we were also served their normal ala-carte dishes.

Steamed Fish Maw with Shrimp Paste ($4.80/ 3pcs)

One of my favourite dishes. Succulent prawns wrapped in fish maw.Prawn and Mango Sesame Fritters ($4.20/ 3 pcs)

Another must-order dish when you are at Yum Cha restaurant.Scallop Pea-Shoot Dumpling ($4.60/ 3 pcs)

Something new to me but I find that the skin was a bit too thick.Salted Egg Prawns

Very nice presentation. The prawns were deep-fried to crisp with the shells and I ate the shells as well. We felt that maybe they could add in more salted egg to give them a stronger flavour. For those who will peel off the prawn shells, you may not be able to really taste the salted egg flavour.Black Pepper Lotus Beef Slice

Love the colours for this dish! Of course, the food was good too. Beef was tender and I also like the fried lotus roots, I think it will be better if the lotus roots were cut a bit thicker so that we can feel more crunch with every bite.7 Flavour Tofu

People at my table all didn't really like the seasonings of the tofu sprinkled on top. I guess most of us love our tofu with sauce/ gravy.Fried Vermicelli Seafood

The dish was served with generous portion of ingredients such as prawns, scallops and fish slices.Liu Sha Bao ($4.50/ 3pcs)

Their liu sha bao were nice too.Thanks Yum Cha for inviting us to the food tasting session. We had a great feast!

Yum Cha Chinatown

20 Trengganu Street (Off Temple Street)

#02-01 Singapore 058479

Tel: 63721717

Email: chinatown@yumcha.com.sg

Opening Hours:

Weekdays: 11am to 11pm

Sat, Sun and Public Holiays: 9am to 11pm

Crystal Jade started its restaurant operations at Plaza Singapura in 1999 as Crystal Jade Kitchen. In recent years, due to growing demand, it also offered steamboat during dinner time. This outlet had recently been revamped to "Crystal Jade Steamboat Kitchen" whereby you can find all-you-can-eat steamboat with free flow drinks and soft ice-cream. How about their usual Cantonese ala-carte dishes and dim sum? Good news for their die-hard fans. Traditional Cantonese favourites such as dim sum, roasted meats, congee etc will still be served for lunch and dinner so that you can have best of both worlds. Crystal Jade Steamboat Kitchen offers a wholesome spread of more than 35 ingredients including sliced meat (beef/ chicken/ pork), mussels, mushrooms and vegetables.

The sliced meat here were for display purposes only. Those that you order are kept refrigerated and will only be served to you upon orders. This is to ensure freshness of the meat. Let us walk through the buffet section...There are many different types of condiments for buffet diners to create their own dipping sauces. Looking at the colourful bowls here make everything so appetizing. For me, I took a bit of each condiment and mixed them together. I like the sesame sauce and their housemade special sauce, so I put more of these 2 sauces into my dipping bowl. Other condiments include Sambal Belacan, Thai dipping sauce, fresh cilantro, spring onions, garlic etc. To make the steamboat buffet even more value-for-money, you can also find free flow of drinks (Soft drinks or hot beverages such as coffee and tea) and soft ice-cream here. All are included in the buffet! As we were happily chatting away, we didn't realize that the induction cooker was actually embedded in our table until Samantha showed us. See! It was nicely camouflaged in the table. For this tasting session, we were served with two different types of soup bases, namely pork's bones soup (left) and curry soup (right). Crystal Jade Steamboat Kitchen offers diners six different soup bases. The other soup bases include Tomato Soup, Miso Soup, Superior Soup and Spicy Mala soup. The temperature control was found underneath at one side of the table. It is really easy to operate, just need to press either the "up" or "down" button to control the temperature.

While waiting for our soup bases to boil, we enjoyed their cooked items such as Deep Fried Fish Skin, Deep Fried Chicken Skin and Deep Fried Mushroom Stems that were offered at the buffet line. They served as pretty good snacks, crunchy and not oily.We were served with some of their popular ala-carte roasted combination platter and dim sums before we dipped into the steamboat.

Roasted Combination Platter ($25.80/ per serving)

This is one of your "must-order" dishes if you are here at Crystal Jade. As I was typing this post, just by looking at this photo of the roasted combination platter, made me drool and want to go back so much to the restaurant. The roasted duck meat was tender and I loved the caramelised crispy duck skin. The duck meat had a rich flavour as it was seasoned with various Chinese herbs stuffed in the stomach before being roasted. The roasted pork belly was juicy with a crisp pork-crackling. The quality pork belly was seasoned with salt and five spice powder and roasted for 1.5 to 2 hours. Last but not least, the honey barbecued pork, with fats that melt in your mouth, was flavourful and tender too. Plum and mustard sauce were served with the platter as dips. It is recommended to dip the roasted duck meat with the plum sauce and the roasted pork belly with mustard sauce. Dim sums served at Crystal Jade definitely are of a certain good standard.

Steamed Shrimp Dumpling "Ha-Kau" ($4.60/per serving of 3 pieces) Deep-fried Yam Puff with Minced Meat ($4/ per serving of 3 pieces) Generous minced meat fillings inside.

Steamed Pork and Shrimp with Crab Roe Dumpling "Siew Mai" ($4.20/per serving of 3 pieces) Pan-Fried Fish Cake with Radish ($4/ per serving of 3 pieces)

This dish was something new to us. We were introduced to this old-school dim sum in Hong Kong that is now difficult to find and of course, I have not seen this in Singapore so far. This dim sum is made by stuffing minced fresh fish cake and radish between two layers of wonton skin. After feasting on the roasted meat platter and dim sums, let us get back to our steamboat.

Beef slices - note that they are all very thinly sliced so they will be cooked easily. Chicken Slices. Pork Slices.Home-made Minced Pork Paste and Home-made Minced Chicken Paste were served in small square trays. Diners can try to scoop them and shape them into meatballs to cook them in the soup. I tried the pork bones' soup first as I was afraid the curry would numb my taste-bud. In fact, I love the pork bones' soup so much that I had several bowls of it until I was too full to really try the curry soup. The soup was light and sweet. Will be great to end off your meal with a sweet note by having some soft ice-cream.It was an enjoyable meal at Crystal Jade Steamboat Kitchen. Sam and I had a great steamboat dining experience in a very cosy and comfortable setting. Thanks Joh Ju from Pinstripes Communications for this invitation and of course, Samantha from Crystal Jade for hosting the dinner.

My foodie friend, Pauline won a pair of passes to Miss Tam Chiak Blog Party at Cafe Brio, Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel earlier this month. She brought me along to the party and it was nice to meet Miss Tam Chiak in person and we even shared the same table.

The high-tea session comprises of many local delights such as Nonya Laksa, Bak Kut Teh, Rojak, Nonya Kueh as some International fares such as Japanese Sushi and Western desserts. There is also an outdoor BBQ station.

The colourful spread of sushi that they have. They don't have my favourite salmon sushi though. I had a handroll too. We can choose the ingredients that we want at this live station. The chef was very humourous. He said if we wanted everything in one handroll, he could do it for us too! Haha... Miss Tam Chiak's friend, Derrick (www.sgonfoot.com) was very nice to prepare rojak for every table. Thank you so much! Laksa Live Station I enjoyed my bowl of nonya laksa with cockles which was delicious with the rich and flavourful gravy. I had a plate of Nasi Lemak too.Outdoor Barbecue Station (Charcoal-Fired Grill)

We don't normally see barbecue station in other typical high-tea buffet but be warned, this area was really like a burning furnace, very very hot here! Need to "suffer" a bit for your BBQ chicken wings, sausages, sweet corns and satay! Beef, Chicken and Mutton Satay. I ended off the session with a piece of sweet strawberry flan and for Pauline, she had ice-cream! A nice group photo with Miss Tam Chiak (Maureen)! Being the host of the event, she was seldom at her seat as she was busy going around to interact with her guests. Hope to have a chance to meet up with her again.Congratulations to Maureen and also thanks Pauline for bringing me along to this party!

My parents wanted to give me my birthday treat in advanced for me as they would be away in Indonesia for their holidays during my birthday. Hubby suggested going to New Ubin Seafood as he had tried their steak before and he said all the food was great.

Hubby made a reservation at 11.30am for 4pax (my brother was in Korea so he couldn't join us) and we reached there slightly earlier when there was no crowd yet. We were given a seat just in front of the water feature on the left.Menu We all ordered lime juices as it was complimentary. Water feature behine us. Fried Mee Special ($12/ S)

We could find many sea of goodness here such as baby squids, clams in a thick gravy and topped with lots of lard. We all loved it very much. US Black Angus Ribeye Steak ($12 per 100g/ min 500g), served with caramelized onions, idaho potato wedges on a wooden platter. Condiments include sea salts, ketchup and wasabi sauce.

Most people visit this restaurant for the steak. This is a must-order!

We had our steak "Medium Well" and it was so flavoursome and juicy! You could feel my happiness as I chewed each cube of steak in my mouth. A plate of fried rice will also be served to you if you ordered the ribeye steak. It was actually fried with the fats from the beef! You can eat this on its own. My dad doesn't take beef, so we ordered Signature Meat Platter for him to share with mum. It consists of Kurobuta Ribs, Chicken Satays and Smoked Duck Breast. ($50/platter) Hong Kong Kailan Special - prepared in two styles. ($12/ S) Overall, it was a great meal! I am missing the steak, the pork ribs and the hokkien mee now. Hope to visit it again to also try their soft boiled egg with foie gras.New Ubin Seafood

Many of you will know that you can find very cheap and reasonably good food at Teban Gardens Food Centre. I had reviewed previously that a bowl of fishball noodles cost only $2. There is one western food stall "Do & Me" located right at the end of the food centre. I decided to give it a try. I placed my order and then was told to go back to collect my food 5 minutes later. I was pleasantly surprised when I went to collect my fish and chips. My food was presented on a very nice white try, with different partitions for the side dishes such as baked beans and coslaw too! I posted this photo on instagram and many people asked me which hawker centre I got this nice presentation of food from. Although the portion of fish was a bit little, but overall taste and presentation wise was good. Reasonable for $6.