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!
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!
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Bright red signboards
We had originally planned to eat something else, but the fish head curry offer made us changed our mind 🙂
You see we have a soft-spot for fish head curry, and we tried to sample any place that we can lay our hands on. So this big vertical banner was just calling to us, and we definitely can’t refuse.
We almost always passed by this restaurant whenever we walked along Upper Thomson but never really took notice. Maybe its because Indian cuisine has never been one of the those that we craved for most of the time.
The restaurant was brightly-lit and had quite a simple setting. There was a mounted TV set that was showing some Hindi movie that kind of reminded us of Bhutan. 🙂 The waiters were polite and took our orders swiftly.
Bar counter with menu
Had a late afternoon meeting nearby and so we decided to explore this area!
Hubby read that the burgers here at Market Grill were excellent; so this was our first choice, with a backup plan to go to the Muffinry in case it was crowded here. Well, you always gotta have a backup plan when reservations are not allowed 🙂
Happy to say that on a Wednesday evening around 7pm, it was only half-full, with the tables mostly filled up, but the bar counter seats completely available. We were allotted a table beside the wall but the seats were very close to the next table. I guess the rent in the city centre is definitely not cheap so they need to squeeze every inch into sell-able space.
All on its own
Since we were in the vicinity idling and nua-ing in a new-found cafe, we again relied on our trusty 4SQ to help us locate any interesting places for dinner. And so 4SQ suggested, and we decided to come to this famous 亞華肉骨茶餐室 (Ya Hua Bak Kut Teh Eating House) around the corner.
The restaurant occupies the entire ground floor of the Isetan Office Building, and tables extend out to the corridor. It appeared that business was quite good because it was quite full-house when we arrived. And we saw a group of tourist-like customers guided in by their tour guide too.
Thematic posters
We walked past this restaurant the last time but didn’t venture in because although it calls itself a cafe, it’s more like a restaurant.
So tonight when we ran out of ideas for dinner, this restaurant just jumped out of our mind!
The wall posters in this restaurant has, of course, the black sheep theme! There’s even a poster of The Last Supper but all the disciples are black sheep! Haha…
There are not many tables and seats inside, but the ambience is quite relax and with smooth piped-in music, the environment makes for an ideal setting for a quiet meal with love ones.
Signature Bak Kuk Teh
In the area to meet friends and decided to check out the food options along this stretch of road (which has changed a fair bit due to the construction of Downtown Line, and sadly, our favourite Liu Sha Bao is GONE!!).
The bak kut teh signboard caught our attention and we decided to give it a go, despite the lack of crowd.
The interior was simple, and kind of reminded us of the Malaysian-styled kopi tiams which we saw in Malacca and Penang – simple in ambience but winning customers over through good food. Would this BKT shop give us the same experience?
Popular place for dim sum
The restaurant opened swiftly at 6pm and many tables were already filled! But the restaurant is huge and we got a table and seats at a corner of the air-con room.
There are also seats that do not have air-con and there’s also a long queue for takeaways. We were just glad we were here when they opened or we might have to have a long wait too!
The internal decoration is typical Chinese-style with Chinese paintings lining the walls. To order, we just need to tick our selections on the menu and a waitress will put in our order to the kitchen.
What we liked about Swee Choon is they put the number of pieces per serving so we know exactly what (and how much) we are getting. Neat! 🙂
So we were trying so hard to get seats at Teppei that we gave up. Then came G’s friend, JY, who happened to know a chef in a Japanese restaurant, and she had seats for Omakase dinner! She very generously offered to bring us along and we were so excited (even though it’s not Teppei, haha…)!
High tabletop
Needed to go Orchard for an escape game in the afternoon, so we stopped by Sumiya Charcoal Grill Izakaya because we didn’t managed to dine here the last time.
This restaurant belongs to the RES Group, the same group that also owns Ichiban Sushi, Shimbashi Soba and the whole lot of 10 Japanese restaurants (Shokutsu 10) in nex. We thought we would be able to use our Ichiban rewards card but we can’t; they have their own rewards card. 🙂
The deco is quite modern with high tables and chairs which are not typical of Japanese restaurants.
As part of the welcome (and farewell, I guess) a waitress will strike a drum whenever customers enter (or leave) the restaurant. It actually startled us because there wasn’t a lot of customers at this time when we were there. Haha…
Eat.Eat.Walk.Walk . 吃吃走走 