Iced Tea
Latte as usual
We made reservations for Sunday 9am… It was an early brunch 🙂 We had wanted to return here to try the food after a lovely night out previously.
We arrived at 9am sharp and were the first customers… And remained as the only customers for the next 30min or so. The kitchen only starts at 9.30am, so we had plenty of time to browse the menu.
Homely interior
This is one of the newer restaurant along this stretch of eateries, and we had wanted to try out the famed pesto sauce here for a while. Today is the day!
It was completely empty when I arrived around 7.15pm, and was very quickly offered a drink while I waited for hubby to arrive as I enjoyed the warm homely interior of this little restaurant.
This place makes their own pasta sauces, and sell them in little bottles that you can cook at home. They also offer cooking lessons for anyone who is interested in preparing your own pasta.
Reviews on the Net have mentioned that they do slow cooking and everything is prepared from scratch so we were prepared for a wait. But we were early and there was only another table around.. 🙂
Clean lines
Earl Grey
Hubby loitered around this area while waiting for me to knock off, and chanced upon this cafe! So he found a quiet little corner and spent almost 2 hours here, enjoying his cup of Earl Grey ($4.50), while people-watching… Nice place to chill! The seats are quite spread out so there is plenty of privacy for conversations 🙂
Since he already had such a comfortable lounging chair, we decided to stay here for dinner as well.
Note: ReStore has ceased operations at this location.
A cafe and a furniture shop!
We were milling around the area and discovered a still-open cafe nearby! At first glance, ReStore looked more like a furniture shop than cafe 🙂 Turned out that they do serve waffles, coffee and tea, as well as restored furniture!
This little space was filled with tables and chairs of various sizes and styles, with an additional row of chairs hanging by the walls. Seemed slightly cluttered and a little squeezy, and I didn’t feel particularly safe sitting under the chairs, but it was quite empty when we reached, so we managed to find a nice spot to chill. It was a Berry Good Waffles ($9.80), Skinny Latte ($5) and Straits Chai Tea ($5) for us 🙂
Sunday Market
We had originally wanted to visit this place before we got sidetracked and went to C.A.N Cafe instead, so here we are today to try it out!
The decoration was rather rustic with simple chairs and tables (and simple toilet).
The menu was rather strange and n the sense that some teas were listed under “caffeine addicts”, while others were listed under “tea”, so I guess Earl Grey does not contain much caffeine? Anyway, I opted for the Chai Latte ($5) instead of the Thai milk tea ($7) because the former was hot while the latter was cold. Hubby went along with his usual Skinny Latte ($5).
What we saw from bar counter
We had initially wanted to go to Artistry, but they had stopped serving coffee, so after a quick hunt for other still-open options, we ended up at Symmetry Cafe.
It looked more like a bar, but at least coffee was still being served 🙂 So hubby had a Cold Brew ($7) while I had a White Tea – Nymph of the Nile ($8).
While waiting for our drinks, we were served with a glass of grapes on crushed ice… Very pretty!
Happy couple!
Dining in the dark
As part of the special day, we decided to have an unique experience 🙂
NOX Dine in the Dark has an unique concept. Customers are led to a completely dark room to have a culinary journey through taste, smell, touch and sound, in total darkness!
Its a cafe cum hostel
It is a special day today! It almost became ultra-special when the both of us were feeling a little under the weather and almost couldn’t go for our date 😨
Anyway, we decided that we would go ahead with our dinner plans and just chill prior to that. So we were actually chilling out at the National Library, trying to browse some books for the upcoming trip (Ok, maybe not that chill…) when we decided to go and really chill at some nearby cafe.
That was when I remembered this Sugar app and yippee! I bought my first item on Sugar – $2 cafe latte at (working title), and that was how we ended up here.
That was also how we realised that there were really many, many cafés in this area, with more being renovated and coming soon 😱
We decided to pop by The Cathay to have some coffee after dinner. Hubby was keen to try out The Assembly Ground but there weren’t any seats available, so we left our contacts on the waiting list and went to explore the mall, as we were told that it would be a 45-minute wait.
Through this little exploration, we found this mall to be rather “healthy”… Vending machines for cups of fruits or freshly squeezed orange juice, anyone? It’s really fresh, because we got to see the unpeeled oranges make their move after someone fed the machine some notes! Wow!
There was no call from The Assembly Ground after we were done exploring the entire mall, so we decided to return back to check the queue. To our shock, we saw the staff welcoming people inside with obviously no reservations whatsoever! So I quickly enquired about the waiting list, and she took out a list where only less than half the names were crossed out. She explained in a rather apologetic manner that the kitchen was already closed and there were only drinks and cakes available. That was fine with us since we only wanted drinks, but I was rather displeased because whoever the staff in charge of the waiting list could have called up to inform about the available seats and whether we would still want to go over when the kitchen has closed, or at the point of us leaving our contacts, could have told us that the kitchen would be closing shortly and if we still want to be on the waiting list? That would have been sufficient information for us to decide if we wanted to hang around, or look for something else. Bad first impressions for us! 😦
Yang Ruam
Tom Yum Hua Pla
Our first time trying out Bangkok Jam, though we see its outlets all the time. Well, actually we decided to try it out because it was relatively empty when queues have started forming at the other cafés and restaurants 😦
We shared the Yang Ruam, which is a platter of mixed grill of chicken, beef short ribs, squid and prawns ($25), as well as the Tom Yum Hua Pla, basically fish head in Tom Yum curry ($23).
The platter looked quite tiny when it arrived, and not as appetizing as the picture in the menu, but it was better than expected! Hubby loved the chicken, which was grilled to perfection, with crispy skin and very tender meat. The squid was also grilled just nice; tender and easy to chew on, without the elastic “skin” that we sometimes found in other squid items that really destroy the dining experience because it was not chew-able and could tangle! The short beef ribs were slightly overdone, but still quite tender. The prawns were also overcooked, with meat stuck onto the shell.
The fish head was too spicy for hubby, while I felt that it was too fishy – not too fresh I think? Quite disappointed as we were both fish head lovers 😦
Overall, we don’t mind coming back to try the other foods!
Contact:
|
Eat.Eat.Walk.Walk . 吃吃走走 