Food Opera has led me to think that it is the food court that gives false impressions of what Singapore hawker fare tastes like in the comfort of air-con. In my most honest opinion, many of the stalls need a massive improvement before our reputation as a foodie heaven takes a beating. Ridiculously sky-high prices (as compared to the quality offered) do nothing to help that.

One of those days I find myself trying Char Kway Teow at Yong Xin Fried Hokkien Mee out of curiosity. Priced at $5//6/7 according to their sizes. $5 size as depicted below. It is a very huge plate of extremely oily mess, and I can't even taste the char kway teow at all. Except the occasional Chinese sausage and beansprout, nothing else impressed me. I could not even finish half of it even though I was very hungry at the beginning, it was so jelat! :/

Tori Q is my favourite to-go rice box, but this outlet's service and quality is quite disappointing despite being located in ION orchard. The service is rude and demanding, as if the customers owed them something. It is really quite appalling. On top of that, the rice is too soggy. Definitely lost its former standard of what it should be. The meat itself is still quite delicious in general. The rice is an important part of the whole rice box, but a pity it was not done properly. $5.70 for the one above. Too expensive for this quality.

Quite disappointing .... tried my favourite flavour of bubble tea - pudding milk tea. The milk tea itself is quite diluted, and the pudding is not mashed up so it's impossible to suck it up from the straw unless I manually stir it with the straw. The amount of pudding is also pathetic. Tried this and probably won't ever go back to try other stuff cos really quite substandard for a bubble tea. It is $3.20, cheaper than elsewhere but still this standard really quite cannot make it. The person serving was also quite unfriendly and disinterested in taking orders.

For lunch, I decided to try the new Tangy Sesame Fillet-o-Fish that was advertised on TV. It really looks interesting and my friends were raving about it so I gave it a try. I didn't find it as impressive as everyone was saying. It was just the usual fillet-o-fish with the new sauce. It was also too small for $3.95, it was almost like the chicken burger. The sauce was only a bit spicy and almost tasteless like mayonnaise. There was absolutely NO sesame taste (I only realised there should have been sesame after researching for its actual name for this review).

There was also the "double-fillet" option for $4.95 and thank goodness I didn't opt for that.

I ordered a Double Chocolate Ice-Blended ($4.50) from Artistry after class, and was totally thrilled by the super cute and pretty packaging of the cup! Check out the adorable cartoon images. But when I drink the double chocolate ice-blended, I was quite disappointed by its taste - it was really just like that, and I could honestly get the exact same thing at 90 cents at about a five minutes' walk away in Canteen B. See my review (http://sg.openrice.com/singapore/restaurant/commentdetail.htm?commentid=46439) It totally taste the same, just in different packaging.

Maybe it's this flavour that's not nice, but my friend who ordered the milk tea thought that the flavour wasn't strong at all. I tried that and yes, the flavour is quite faint and almost like plain water. Another friend of mine bought the Earl Grey Pudding Milk Tea - again, there was not much taste in it and the earl grey pudding got all stuck at the bottom of the cup.

Maybe they just opened and wasn't up to standard yet, but I really think that the quality of the drinks is quite bad. For the same amount of money, I'd rather buy Starbucks. The plus point about this is that you're really just paying for the ambience (cool greenery and sophisticated decor) but if you're buying it on-the-go, it's not worth it.