We chanced upon this Cantonese desserts cafe after a deliciously good time at Kin Kin Chilli Pan Mee. Initially, it looked like a medicinal-herbal shop but upon a closer look, it's actually a dessert place! Thank goodness for keen eyes. The name is HerBeans, a play on the words "herbs" and "beans" which referred to the key ingredients of most of the desserts found here.Most of the desserts in a bowl are priced at $3 each, but their specialty herbal jelly range is priced at either $9 or $15 as they had more precious and rare ingredients like Ginseng, Rahmannia and White Phoenix. Each of us ordered a dessert and share to try the flavours. I tried the white fungus with rock sugar and found it to be refreshing and light. It definitely has health as the prime consideration but it is not tasteless either. Homemade can be the most suitable adjective to describe most of the other desserts. I think this place will be perfect for older patrons and for office goers to grab some desserts for colleagues, but younger people might not take to the mild flavours.HerBeans

526 MacPherson Road

Singapore 368216

Korean cuisine would usually not be my top choices but more of a go-when-someone-recommends/craves-for-it kind of thing. I visited Crystal Jade Korean Ginseng Chicken & BBQ for a colleague's farewell - with an established name like Crystal Jade made me more confident of the quality of food there. There were even service staff streaming around in their hanboks!We began with six banchan side dishes that seemed more of a fusion between Chinese and Korean styles. The first mandatory side dish was the kimchi made from cabbage which wasn't very spicy. There was also kongnamul, cold bean sprouts drizzled with sesame oil. The rest were variants of vegetables - I only liked the bottom right side dish because it was lightly stir-fried and had this hazy onion taste.Another dish that we tried was the Seafood Pancake. It was a fragrant good deal of omelette and flour, crispy without being burnt. However it would be better if they were more generous with the ingredients given how much it was priced at.The budae jjigae, or Army Beef Stew was our choice for hotpot! The soup base was quite spicy for me, pushing my limits on how much I can take. With rice, it was more or less bearable. There are also a lot of ingredients though not a lot of variety - what you see is pretty much it. There were glass noodles to go along. There was so little or almost no beef to speak of, I felt like it was indeed a real army stew with scarce resources. All I remembered was eating a lot of processed meat.Fruits that weren't sweet to end off the meal! Another restaurant that failed to change my opinion on Korean cuisine. I am convinced that it's just because restaurants in Singapore cannot replicate authentic Korean food or perhaps I haven't found the right one. Recommendations, anyone? Togi Charcoal BBQ & Salad Bar at TripleOne Somerset is pretty good though.

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I wanted to eat chee cheong fun but there wasn't any selling in the whole of Food Republic so I thought char kway teow is a good substitute. The wokhei fragrance filled the atmosphere near the stall so I was attracted to it. Bought a takeaway from this stall.

My take on it: The portion is pretty large for the smallest packet they had available. The first few mouthfuls were delicious and generally reached my expectations. However, it got really oily after a while and not very nice. Maybe I should have gotten a lime to defuse the jelat taste in my mouth, but I probably wouldn't be trying it again. Good enough to fill your stomach but will not make the cut if you're looking for a good char kway teow.

Ofira Amazing Thai Food is one of the restaurants at the basement of Far East Plaza. Since I've been working in the region for the past one month, I thought of trying out this Thai eatery which I've always breezed past.Not only was I curious, I was nursing this constant nagging craving for mango sticky rice even though I had one every two weeks in recent months. I have no idea why because every time I eat it, I get slightly disappointed but I know this dish can outshine a lot of other desserts given this magical combination. Well, Ofira continues to fail my expectations when it comes to this dessert... although this isn't a fair judgment to this popular eatery since I only ate one non-signature dish.

Chomp Chomp Food Centre is one of the classic hawkercentres in Singapore where you can bring your foreign friend to introduce all kinda of hawker food. They have everything under one roof. Literally. This place is also next to Serangoon Gardens where there are plenty of bars and restaurants. Bookmark this under the next place to visit for a group outing!Satay beehoon ($4) is like an extension of the satay but with more ingredients, including taupok, prawns, vegetables and of course, silky beehoon. Quite rich in flavours and more of a main dish on its own rather than a mix-and-match with the rest.