Bedok Blk 85 Ba Chor Mee

The Ba Chor Mee at Bedok North Blk 85 Market is my all time favourite.  I have been eating this since my school days.  It used to be so much better, the soup was thicker and the portion was bigger.  Most importantly, the grandma put her thumb into the soup which was probably made it tasty! Haha

The standard of the soup had deteriorated.  It was not as thick as before, though it still tasted good.  Going to Bedok North Ba Chor Mee was like a ritual, have to be back regularly.

The standard orders were:

BBQ Chicken Wings

Sambal KangKong.  This was not the regular, this time making a guest apperance.

BBQ Stingray from Chan's BBQ.

Satay

Here comes the star of the day.  For $2.50 you will get a bowl of the noodles and 4 meat balls.  Unlike other Ba Chor Mee, you could not choose dry/soup option.  There was only the soup version.  They have won the Singapore Hawker Master 2010 - Ba Chor Mee category award.

http://www.sph.com.sg/article.display.php?id=6121

After meal, we adjourned to Cheesecake factory in East Coast Road.  Sometimes we would stay to have the dumplings, but most of time, it will end with cheesecakes.

Xing Ji Rou Cuo Mian
Blk 85 Bedok North St 4 #01-07

Dinner @ Le Bistrot

Polo and I went to try out a french restaurant, recommended by a website.  Ibanker was supposed to join but something happened at her home, and she could not make it.

Le Bistrot was your rustic style of french restaurant, located near the Singapore Indoor Stadium, and was easily reached by the circle line MRT.  I also made use of this chance to test out my new Canon macro lens.

The pricing of Le Bistrot was based on the number of courses that you ordered.
Entree + Main course = $50
Main course + Dessert = $50
Entree, Main course & Dessert = $60

For entree, we tried the  Soupe à l'Oignon Gratinée (Because Polo said it was highly recommended by folks in HungryGoWhere).  We also tried the Poor Man's Caviar, which was verrine of eggplant and garlic purée, chicken liver mousse and Pernod crème fraîche, and it was served with chargrilled bread.

For mains, we had the duck leg confit with honey-mustard vinaigrette and creamy potato purée.  Duck confit was a bit too salty for my liking.  I had better confit before.  We also had the sautéed strips of beef tenderloin in a cep (porcini) mushroom and crème fraîche enriched sauce, served with pilaf and a tarragon pesto.  Not bad, but quite normal.  Portions were alright though, not the usual tiny french serving.

Close up of the confit:

Desserts are selection of cheeses, served with honey, fruit conserve and salad and the warm dark chocolate ganache and pistachios in feuilles de brick pastry, served with pistachio crème Anglaise and vanilla bean ice cream.  Cheeses were good, but the chocolate was too sweet for me.  I liked dessert, but at the same time, I do not like it too sweet.  So it was difficult to find desserts that I like.

Total damages were close to $300 including wine.  Hits and misses, I would rate it a 7/10, and I do not think that i would be back.

Le Bistrot

2 Stadium Walk #01-03

Singapore Indoor Stadium

6447 0018

UK Dec 2010 Part 1

My trip to UK started with a little glitch, and turned out to be a little adventure.  About 3 hours away from London Heathrow, there was an annoucement in the plane.  The captain of the flight informed that Heathrow airport was shut, and they had to divert to Frankfurt.  When they landed in Frankfurt, they would have to negotiate with the airport to see if they can go into Heathrow today, and if it passed the maximum working hours of the air crew, we would have to stay a night in Frankfurt! 

The passengers onboard were surprisely calm, and some even clapped.  I had the last meal on board, and the plane landed in Frankfurt.  Upon landing, priority was given to the first class, business class and those seated from row 32 to row 43 in the Economy class.  I used to choose the first cabin of the economy class when i fly, because I wanted to be the first few to get out of the plane.  However, after a few incidents of non stop crying babies, I decided to move to the middle cabin.  I was banging my head when those in the first cabin of the Economy class were been checked into Le Meridien Frankfurt.  Our hotel was not that bad, but it was near the airport, and it was 30 minutes from the city center, while Le Meridien was right smacked in the city center.  In addition to that, we had to wait for about 4 hours in the plane to wait for the hotel to prepare the room.  SIA ground crew has adviced that it was better for us to wait in the plane then to wait in Frankfurt airport, as it was chaotic there.  The air stewardess were trying to make our wait in the plane more comfortable by giving out snacks and drinks, and they also allowed the passengers to go into the Business Class cabins.  I was too lazy to move, and I just sat to watch my movie. 

Hours later, we finally disembarked the plane and boarded the bus to get to our hotel.  Upon arrival at the hotel, it was another round of waiting, this time waiting to check into the hotel.  I finally checked slightly before noon, and officially started the waiting game.

There was a counter assigned to the ground crew of SIA in Germany.  We saw a lady and a gentleman at the counter.  At the side of it, there was a flip chart, with a big SIA written on it, underlined.
On the chart was "Lunch at Universal" 12-2pm
Next update: 7pm

Many people were asking the crew when we could fly, which the crew had no idea.  The gentleman was the nicer one among the two, he was friendly, and though many people kept bugging him, he maintained a nice smile on his face.

I joined the people to ask question, though my question was quite lame.  I wanted to know how to get to the city centre, and to my delight, the lady told me that many people asked the same thing, so they were arranging transport for us!! Wow!

After my lunch, I saw new things on the chart "Bus to Xmas Far in City - Pick up 230pm; Return 530pm.  That's what I called service.  Well done, Singapore Airlines.

Christmas market was quite an experience.  It was snowing heavily on a Sunday afternoon, yet the Germans did not seem to be bother.  They were seen drinking their mull wine and having their sausages outside.  I walked around, looking for an ATM to withdraw EURO, and also trying to cope with the snow.  Lesson learnt:  Never open your mouth wide when it was snowing heavily. 
The snow got into my mouth, and it was like ice!
Lesson 2:  Hood did not help when it was snowing heavily.  You need an umbrella.

Struggling to take the photo with umbrella, gloves and snow!

After wandering around the market, I finally found an ATM.  I withdrew 50 EURO, and happily went back to look for a place for my German snacks.  I bought a sausage, and went to a stall that was selling mull wine.  I was told by a nice couple that when I returned my mug, I would get 2 EURO back.  By the way, all the signs at the stalls were in German.

The mull wine was hot!  The first sip almost burnt my tongue.  The second & third sips tasted awfully too.  However, miracously after the 3rd sip, it tasted good.  I could feel the warmth travelling down from my throat to my stomach, and whole body.  I was not cold anymore.  Ah, so this was the secret of the Germans!

I continued my Christmas market tour after the snack, though not long after, I had to make another coffee stop as it was getting wet and cold, and dark.  The sky darkened at 430pm!!

I was so tired that the first thing i did when i went back to the hotel was to take a nap, before my dinner.

The flipchart now said "Next update:  Tomorrow 7am"  Breakfast at Universal"

Okay, no point worrying, hit the sack and see what tomorrow will bring.  Maybe all the snow in Heatrow has melted when I woke up.

I had a good rest, and woke up around 0730Hr the next day.  I got changed and went down to the lobby, in anticipation of good news.  I was greeted with "Next update:  1pm"  So i had no choice but to have my breakfast and decided to go to town to walk around.  I bought an all day pass for 5.15EUR and took the shuttle to the airport, followed by the train.  I managed to find my favourite brand G star, and i made my way back to the hotel for the 1300Hr update.

The station manager told us that we had a choice.  We could either take the land transport, which was the 13 hours bus ride to London, or we could wait for the airport to reopen.  After some thoughts and discussion with a few Singaporeans, I have decided to take the bus.  At least I could be certain that I could reach London.  Once decided, I felt like a burden was off, and i asked Robin, a Hong Konger and Joel, a Malaysian studying in London if they wanted to go the town with me. 

We took the same route to the town, and walked around the market.  The weather was better today.  The snow had stopped, and because it was a Monday, it was not as crowded.   We had our sausages and mull wine, so that we could skip the dinner in the hotel, which would pretty much looked like lunch.

Snow in the market was gone!  In a day!

 Nutella crepe!  Yummy

After dinner and freshing up, I boarded the bus at 2030Hr.  SIA has also prepared some snacks and water for us.  There were a total of 5 buses, and we departed together as a convoy for safety.  In 2 days, I went through 4 countries - Frankfurt, Belgium, France and London!  I finally reached Heatrow at 1000Hr the next day.  Heathrow was indeed chaotic.  There were long queue and tents set up outside T3, and people were queueing to get into the terminal, amidst the bitterly cold weather.  I prayed that the airport would open soon, which it finally did on 26 Dec 2010.

Taste Paradise at ION Singapore

I used to walk pass the Taste Paradise at Mosque Street, but never had the chance to try it. I finally had the chance to try Taste Paradise, though not the one at Mosque Street, but the more upmarket one in ION.  Thanks to one of my department head, CK.

A group of us went there for dinner, mainly because CK liked the Peking Duck.  We started our dinner with smoked salmon as appertiser.  Kind of strange for Chinese restaurant.  Maybe I am still stucked in the era of peanuts for chinese dinner.

Peking Duck.  As in most places, they would push the duck to prepare it in front of you, and they also helped you to roll it up nicely once they were done with skinning the duck.  It was quite good.  Crispy and not too oily.  However, my heart still goes to the Best Peking Duck (to me at least) - The Da Dong Duck in Beijing.  Other than Da Dong's Duck waas crisper, you also got to do it youself.  You rolled the skin, and could selected how many pieces of skin you wanted (this is important!  You can make youself a jumbo roll), and you can choose how much sauce you wanted. 
Taste Paradise's Peking Duck was decent, but pretty normal.

Next dish was this greeny thing, the wasabi prawns.  Though I am not supposed to eat prawns, I ate one to try it.  Wasabi was liek sort of gravy, "wrapping" the prawns.  I thought while it was tasty, it lacked the powerful oomph of the wasabi that you normally have when you had wasabi.  The kind of oomph that went though your nose and hit you.

This was one of my favourite dish, spinach with 3 different kind of eggs- Salted eggs, Century eggs and eggs.  It was like a soup, yet thicker than soup! 

Beancurd with mushroom.  Pretty normal.  This was a tofu dish with mushrooms. Average, I think Crystal Jade and Jumbo did a better job in this comparement.

These were the remaining of the duck that was stirred fried.  Cabbage were provided to wrap the the meat to neutralize the taste and it was rather salty. 

Here comes the dessert.  This was mango sago, though i liked the way it was served.  There was dry ice at the side and gave it the effect.

Happy 2011

Time flies.  I started writing my blog early Jan 2010, and it has been one year! I remembered one of the lame jokes that I have heard "Why did John (name has been changed) throw the clock out of the window?"
"Because he wants to see time flies!"
Absolutely lame, but time do fly.  Before I realise it, it is the beginning of the new year.

How has 2010 treated you? 
Any resolutions for 2011?
It is the best time to take stock and count your blessings.

Whatever it is, I hope 2011 will be a better year for everyone, in every aspect of their life.  And don't forget to Thank God for 2010 and 2011, and more years to come.