Cedele by The Bakery Depot was founded by Ms Yeap Cheng Guat in July 1997. After spending many years in the multi-nationals, Ms Yeap decided to put her baking passion to test.
The flagship store in East Coast is the first of many more to come, till date Cedele has 14 outlets island-wide.
Cedele Bakery is known for their wide range of sandwiches, delicious repertoire of bread, and cakes.
There are two outlets in Raffles City (I didn’t know until later), one in basement and another in level 3. A friend and i visited the one at basement of raffles city.
I like their concept of self pick-up for some of the pastries and bread.
For the sandwiches, you get to choose from different type of bread, milk bap, oatbran, country white, wholemeal linseed, and organic wholewheat.
Tuna Salad Sandwich ($6) Savory tuna sandwich with chopped red bell pepper and celery, and finished with a lot of cold fresh lettuce.
My friend chose country white for his bread, but he found it a tad too dry and hard. The fresh lettuces are refreshing and there’s a generous spread of the tuna.
Mocha ($3.50) I’m not really a big fan of mocha, but my friend find it to be all right. And at $3.50, its really cheaper than your Star Bucks and Coffee Bean.
The emphasis for Cedele is more on their bread, sandwiches and pastries. I applause them for their affordable price range for their coffees.
Chocolate Banana Espresso Cake ($6) Melts in your mouth, this is a soft chocolate cake sandwiched with fresh caramelized banana, topped with espresso chocolate frosting, and finished with crunchy walnut strussel, oat strussel.
The banana taste is evident in the Chocolate Banana Espresso cake, and the walnut adds a crunchy bite to the cake. But I’m still not quite convince by chocolate banana cakes. Not that the ones here aren’t good, just that chocolate and banana doesn’t really suits my taste bud.
Total Bill was $18.13 for one sandwich, one drink and one cake. Cedele looks promising with its wide range of sandwiches, and cakes. Furthermore, the drinks like mocha and latte isn’t very expensive, price ranging from 2 bucks to 4-5 bucks. I think i will be back to give their sandwiches and pastries another try.
Just for your information, LIC usually does not like to repeat going to a same restaurant or cafe because he’ll rather spend the money trying out new stuff at other places.
But in the case of Cedele, their prices are quite reasonable and affordable, so yeah, look out for Cedele II!
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
Department store sure gives one the feeling of 'everything'. Everything that you would like to have, they should have them too. Indeed, from apparels to beauty products to even food, tangs vivocity have them all.
Was shopping at the tangs vivocity - beauty products section with my gf on this particular day. She was looking at some of the beauty products from one particular counter, when the sales rep put down her work and walked over to her. Well, a pretty nice gesture i can say, as this will makes the customer feel important.
After which, the sales rep start to talk about the advantages of the particular product and the ways to use it. She even place some of the sample for my gf to try and feel the texture and smell. As the product is relatively new, my gf asked a couple of questions to really understand the porducts. Surprisely, the sales rep is not at all annoyed and instead explained each questions carefully.
Being satisfied with the product, my gf decided to make a purchase. The sales rep even offered to bring over to the cashier and wrap it up for her. A very good customer service that serves the customer from the beginning up till the end where the product is being purchased.
Indeed, i am very impressed with their great service. :)
At around 9pm, where most of the dinner crowd and diners have completed their meals, i am still at novena square looking for food to eat. :P Guess, it would be rather difficult to find food (not too expensive kind) at this point of time.
Surprising when i reached the outlet, there are still couple of diners having their dinner. Thinking that i may still have a chance to order some food, i quickly browse through their menu. They offered quite a wide variety of food, from sandwiches to western chicken chop to even asian congee. But, i guess the most worth your money meal will have to be their set meal.
Their set meal are mostly in western style with a variety of meat that includes dory, chicken, beef, pork and even turkey. Beside the main dish, they also have a soup of the day, garlic bread, drink and dessert.
I had placed the order of a turkey breast set meal and at the point of sales, i was given the soup of the day, the drink and the dessert. A pretty nice gesture for someone who is real hungry. :)
The soup of the day was dark mushroom soup. Well, most of the time, the mushroom soup that we drank are using the light coloured mushroom. And, this dark mushroom tasted rather special, with a very nice fragrant, but it lacks the creamy taste the lighter mushroom has.
The garlic bread that comes along with the soup has a sufficient amount of garlic spread on it and tasted super crisy. Not only is the circumferenc of the bread crispy, the inner portion of the bread is also crispy. Every bite of the bread, will bound to have the 'crack crack' sound.
As for the main course, i find that their portion is pretty sufficient, accompanied with two sides. The two sides that i have is the mixed beans (sweet corn, carrot and peas) as well as the fries. As for the turkey breast, i find that it is pretty well done. Well done in the sense that, it is not over cooked, one will still be able to taste the juicness of the meat.
Overall, a pretty decent type of meal with a resonable price.
Its pretty difficult to find shops, selling the traditional snacks, pastries, cookies and biscuits nowadays. However, this shop that i am going to review today, certainly has injected some form of traditional flavoured into my senses.
The items sold in this shop includes the commonly seen tar sah pia (both sweet and salty), pong pia, malt candy biscuit, walnut biscuits, almond cookies, pineapple tarts, egg tarts and even peanut candy (soft, hard and crispy version). Looking at their wide range of goodies, it is not difficult to imagine how i could drawn to them and buy a couple of cookies to try them out.
Theres simply too many items for me to try out all at once, thus i only tried out the few more popular items, such as the mini tar sah pia, the pong pia, the egg tart as well as the pineapple tarts.
If i were to rank them, the first place will definitely have to be the pong pia. Although the filling of pong pia is malt candy, it does not taste sweet at all. Not only that, the filling was extremely fragrant and nice. I was pretty surprise when i tasted it at first. Later then i realize, the sesame seeds in the filling must have played a part in the fragrance.
The second place will be the mini tar sah pia, the salty version kind. Well, guess the mini version looks rather cute and tasted not too bad either. The first bite onto the tar sah pia tasted pretty spicy. Yes, you have seen it correctly, spicy. Although the spicy is not too strong but its enough to taste it. Its filling also has some sesame added into it, making it tasted more fragrant.
As for the egg tart and pineapple tarts, i find them rather so-so. I found the egg tart crust too thick for my liking. As for the pineapple tarts, i find its filling lack of some significant pineapple taste.
As for the service wise, the pretty friendly staff is willing to explain each item and it ingredients used to one carefully. However, do expect to wait for a little while during its peak period as there is only one staff in the outlet.
Overall, i believe these biscuits are still worth to give them a try.
Popped by Tampopo (タンポポ) for dinner one evening since I was in the vicinity. Tampopo, which means dandelion(a kind of flower) in English, shares the same name with a popular culinary movie in Japan in the mid eighties. The movie focuses on Ramen, which incidentally, is what Tampopo is known for.
Located within Liang Court, Tampopo portrays itself as a casual Japanese diner and shares the premises with Tomton, its sister restaurant which specialises in Kurobuta pork.
Shabu Ramen - Billed as THE ramen to try, as featured in the Straits Times, the shabu ramen had a flavourful soup base with a strong hint of pork yet didn't come across as too overwhelming. According to the menu, the soup is made by boiling pork bones for 2 days, which I guess explains its rich flavour. The ramen was springy with lots of bite while the thinly sliced pork was tender and a tad chewy.
Omelette Rice - The omelette rice, or Omurice, was quite well done in my humble opinion (not that I've tried alot though). Moist and fluffy Japanese rice with a few token pieces of chicken wrapped up in a nice thick layer of soft and milky scrambled eggs.
Special Loin - This is Tomton's specialty and I am most inclined to agree. The meat was lightly breaded and very crispy on the outside yet retaining its tenderness and moisture inside. It tasted fresh with not a bit of the oily residue taste that tends to plague deep fried pork cutlets. Really excellent piece of pork but rather small for $17.
Cheese Chiffon - I ordered this dessert because the other chiffons were sold out. And I actually regretted it as it spoilt what would have been a satisfying meal. The chiffon, though light, was practically tasteless and I certainly didn't appreciate sporadic gratings of cheese which did nothing more than allow the chiffon to live up to its name? Maybe it just didn't do it for me.
I liked the food and $55 for 2 pax isn't too expensive a price to pay. There is a wee bit of a ventilation problem there so you might walk out faintly smelling of food. The place can get crowded so going early especially on weekends is recommended.
Lil’ Foot Pâtisserie, an online blog pastisserie selling exclusive gourmet pastry. Most of the pastries there are in limited quantity, but they definitely do not lose out in quality.
We had the chance to sample the Rocky Road Mousse Cake as one of my friend ordered it from Lil’ Foot Pâtisserie for Petrina’s birthday while we were at Peach Garden celebrating.
Crunchy walnuts and chewy marshmallow in every bite awashed with thick creamy chocolate ganache!
Our Rocky Road Mousse cake is the round 7 inch which can serve 8-10 people and it comes at a price of $38. There are even different flavours of marshmallows inside the cake!
Maybe i’m a little behind time, but this is actually the first time that i had a cake which is filled with marshmallows in between, and the result is wow!
Lil’ Foot Pâtisserie doesn’t have many variety of cakes available, but for the lack in choices, the ones that they offer certainly are excellent and is priced reasonably. I’ll be looking to get other cakes from them soon. So stop getting your cakes from boring places you-know-where (i’m not naming the bakeries)
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
Peach Garden Chinese Restaurant @ OCBC Centre 33rd Floor is co-owned by Angela Ho and Veronica Tan, former managers of the established Hua Ting restaurant. The pair struck out on their own in 2002, and the rest like they say, were history. Peach Garden is now one of the Chinese restaurants on the radar of corporates.
Located at the 33rd floor, the restaurant offers diners a splendid bird’s eye view of the Singapore River and the city area.
The modern contemporary Chinese decor will make diner feel right at home.
It will be highly recommended for customers to make a reservation before going, as the window seats are usually taken up. One of the waitress greeted us at the main lobby on the ground floor, after checking our reservations, we were guided up to 33rd floor.
Peach Garden is popular for their Cantonese dishes, and dim sum. The selection for dim sum isn’t wide with 23 different types, however for what they lacked in variety, they make it up in quality.
Most of the dim-sum comes in basket of 3 each, but as we got 8 person, they were flexible to allow us order 8 pieces of dim-sum instead. So i’ll be putting the price for all the dim sum here for per piece rather than per basket.
Baked BBQ pork pastry ($1.30) The baked BBQ pork pastry, or more commonly known as char-siew sou, i find it to be quite all right, but the others didn’t like it because they had better ones at Yan ting @ St Regis before.
Baked Mini Egg Tart ($1.30) The baked mini egg tarts were fine, the skin was crispy, and the egg filling is just nice. However at $1.30 each, they are terribly expensive since i had better and bigger egg tarts at much cheaper price before.
Steamed Fresh Prawn Dumpling ($1.60) The steamed fresh prawn dumpling, or more affectionately known as har-gau. The ones at Peach Garden has a wholesome shrimp wrapped within the skin of the dumpling.
But at $1.60 for each har-gau, they are priced slightly higher than your normal ones at other places.
Steamed Siew Mai with Phoenix prawn ($1.60) The rendition of siew mai or pork dumpling is redefined at Peach Garden. Whereas your typical siew mai taste mainly of pork, the ones here has a phoenix prawn, which gives the siew mai a prawnier taste.
Steamed BBQ pork bun ($1.20) I always love to eat steamed BBQ pork buns from chinese dim sum restaurant, well because they are not the same as the ones you get from outside.
The ones in restaurants are usually consist of three parts, i’ll tear off each part and slowly savour the sweet char-siew with the bun.
Fried Carrot cake with X.O sauce ($8) When you read fried carrot cake, please erase off all of whatever memories you had of carrot cake. Now when we are talking about fried carrot cake with X.O sauce here, its not your ordinary black or white char-kway in the hawker centre.
The carrot cake here is slightly crispy on the outside, and very soft on the inside. But i couldn’t taste much of the X.O sauce, and at $8 per small serving, i find it to be quite on the high side.
Steamed yolk cream bun ($1.20) The signature dim-sum of Peach Garden, its delicious steamed yolk cream bun. The beautiful golden yellow custard filling oozes out when i prise it open.
Steamed rice roll with prawn ($4.50) The steamed rice roll with prawn, or your Chee Cheong Fun is served in two versions, one with prawn at $4.50, and the other steamed rice roll with chicken at $4.
The Chee Cheong Fun was quite disappointing here, it didn’t taste as well i thought it will, its quite ordinary to tell the truth.
Boiled porridge with century egg and pork ($3.80) The boiled porridge with century egg and pork is one of the disappointment for the meal at Peach Garden. Too salty, we ordered 4 bowls and almost couldn’t finish it.
Steamed Xiao Long Bao with Conpoy ($1.30) I’m not really a big fan of Xiao Long Bao, i guess the ones here are average, a couple of us didn’t really find it to be good.
Baked Spare Rib with BBQ Sauce ($7 per piece) The signature baked spare rib with BBQ sauce comes at a hefty price, at $7 per piece, you can easily have a plate of spare ribs elsewhere.
But to be fair, the presentation of the spare rib was done nicely, and the rib is bigger than your normal ribs, with the BBQ sauce combining well with spare ribs.
There were difference in portions of the ribs, so depending on your luck, some of us got slightly bigger ribs with more meat, while some got thinner ribs.
Total Bill was $178.20 for 8 person, after a 15% credit card discount. The price comes much cheaper than i had expected so it was a surprise, and if you do not included the $7 spare ribs, it will be roughly $16 for person instead of about $22.
Results were mixed, some like me found it to be quite good, while others find that Peach Garden didn’t match their expectations. I guess everybody has different taste buds, but personally, i find Peach Garden to be quite good, the price may be slightly above average, but given a rationale person taking the menu and not over-ordering, the result is good dim sum at reasonable price.
Service-wise we also encountered mixed results. The waitress were way too fast in serving the dim-sum. As the table was all food bloggers, all of us were busy taking photos of the food, and before we managed to finish taking the photo of one dim sum, the other dim sum was served.
I felt that the waitress should have taken note that we were not ready for the serving of the other dim sum, but sad to say they failed to do so. Also, they missed out our order of Xiao Long Bao and the ribs, and also forgot to bring us our additional order of the har-gau.
But they did slightly make up when they helped us putting the birthday cake (one of us birthday celebration) into a beautiful plate, and they also provide a knife which had remote control to play birthday song music.
All in all, at 33rd floor offering a wonderful view of the city, the quite reasonable pricing of the dim-sum, it offers me an excuse to revisit Peach Garden again. And Peach Garden has two other outlets at Novena and Thomson Plaza!
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
” Contemporary Cantonese cuisine, with splendid bird’s eye view of the city “
Since my mum is looking for a new watch, we decided to check out the watches here.
There were a couple of customers but only 1 salesgirl was at the shop then. Nevertheless, our needs were not neglected. The friendly salesgirl approached us after attending to the other customers and was helpful enough to offer a few recommendations of watches to my mum. She was very patient with us, especially my picky mum who could not decide on which watch to get.
My mum also decided to replace the battery for her present watch. However, upon checking on the battery lifespan, she advised my mum not to replace the battery as its lifespan was not up yet.
In the end, we didn't get the attery replaced, neither did we purchase any watches from the shop. But we were really pleased with the service provided by the salesgirl.
Even before the start of the Great Singapore Sales, many places have started their pre-GSS already.
Happened to be around the area so I decided to check out the jeans here as they were having a sales too. Haha
The shop was really packed with people then. Their sales items have been placed on a shelf and we customers just have to look through the stacks of folded jeans to look for good buys. With so many customers taking out then throwing back the "unwanted" jeans, the salesperson still managed to fold back the jeans quickly and arrange them back onto the shelf neatly. Yes! This definitely makes it much easier for other customers to look for what they want. It's so unlike of most other places where sales equal to looking for things you want through a heap of clothes.
Canele Patisserie Chocolaterie - A high end dessert cafe under the Les Amis group of restaurants and helmed by Executive Pastry Chef Pang, who was an ex member of the Singapore National Culinary Team.
Located at the picturesque and upmarket Roberston Walk, Canele's flagship outlet is a rather nice place to chill for after dinner desserts or afternoon tea. Takeaways are also available but if you choose to dine in, please be aware that a 10% service charge will be levied.
Nougatine - Filled with Nutella, Salty Caramel, Caramelized Filos, Nougatine Ice Cream, Vanilla Creme Chantilly - For starters, the Nougatine seemed rather interesting with the addition of salty caramel. However, taken as a whole, it reminded me uncannily of peanut butter with its smooth sticky texture and buttery undertones. I liked the caramelized filos, which are essentially paper thin pastry dough coated with a layer of caramel and left to harden. Flaky yet stick to your teeth.
Jupiter - A most aesthetically pleasing slice of cake which was bought off the display shelf. Extremely rich and topped with a thin cylindrical shell of chocolate, Jupiter boasted caramel and a layer of wafer in between the spongy cake. Did I mention the dark glistening chocolate that engulfed the entire cake? Overall a very nice but sinful dessert.
Black Forest 2007 - I cannot comprehend the rationale behind inserting a year into the name of a cake. But that's besides the point. The point is, as pretty and minute a piece as the black forest cake may be, it certainly wasn't outstanding, not even close. The berries were soaked in Kirsch but the amount of cream was too much for me to stomach. And it certainly didn't help that the cake did come across as a little too dense and moist.
Berry Black & Bushman Brew - Interesting names for the teas but unfortunately rather overpriced for the mediocre quality. And its all because Canele doesn't serve ice water.
With the prices Canele is charging, I can see why its a high end dessert outfit. I appreciate the creativity and quality behind the desserts but certainly not the prices nor the tiny portions.
1=SGD 0.0587
Cedele by The Bakery Depot was founded by Ms Yeap Cheng Guat in July 1997. After spending many years in the multi-nationals, Ms Yeap decided to put her baking passion to test.
The flagship store in East Coast is the first of many more to come, till date Cedele has 14 outlets island-wide.
Cedele Bakery is known for their wide range of sandwiches, delicious repertoire of bread, and cakes.
There are two outlets in Raffles City (I didn’t know until later), one in basement and another in level 3. A friend and i visited the one at basement of raffles city.
I like their concept of self pick-up for some of the pastries and bread.
For the sandwiches, you get to choose from different type of bread, milk bap, oatbran, country white, wholemeal linseed, and organic wholewheat.
Tuna Salad Sandwich ($6)
Savory tuna sandwich with chopped red bell pepper and celery, and finished with a lot of cold fresh lettuce.
My friend chose country white for his bread, but he found it a tad too dry and hard. The fresh lettuces are refreshing and there’s a generous spread of the tuna.
Mocha ($3.50)
I’m not really a big fan of mocha, but my friend find it to be all right. And at $3.50, its really cheaper than your Star Bucks and Coffee Bean.
The emphasis for Cedele is more on their bread, sandwiches and pastries. I applause them for their affordable price range for their coffees.
Chocolate Banana Espresso Cake ($6)
Melts in your mouth, this is a soft chocolate cake sandwiched with fresh caramelized banana, topped with espresso chocolate frosting, and finished with crunchy walnut strussel, oat strussel.
The banana taste is evident in the Chocolate Banana Espresso cake, and the walnut adds a crunchy bite to the cake. But I’m still not quite convince by chocolate banana cakes. Not that the ones here aren’t good, just that chocolate and banana doesn’t really suits my taste bud.
Total Bill was $18.13 for one sandwich, one drink and one cake. Cedele looks promising with its wide range of sandwiches, and cakes. Furthermore, the drinks like mocha and latte isn’t very expensive, price ranging from 2 bucks to 4-5 bucks. I think i will be back to give their sandwiches and pastries another try.
Just for your information, LIC usually does not like to repeat going to a same restaurant or cafe because he’ll rather spend the money trying out new stuff at other places.
But in the case of Cedele, their prices are quite reasonable and affordable, so yeah, look out for Cedele II!
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
” The Bread bakery cafe “
Rating given:
Department store sure gives one the feeling of 'everything'. Everything that you would like to have, they should have them too. Indeed, from apparels to beauty products to even food, tangs vivocity have them all.
Was shopping at the tangs vivocity - beauty products section with my gf on this particular day. She was looking at some of the beauty products from one particular counter, when the sales rep put down her work and walked over to her. Well, a pretty nice gesture i can say, as this will makes the customer feel important.
After which, the sales rep start to talk about the advantages of the particular product and the ways to use it. She even place some of the sample for my gf to try and feel the texture and smell. As the product is relatively new, my gf asked a couple of questions to really understand the porducts. Surprisely, the sales rep is not at all annoyed and instead explained each questions carefully.
Being satisfied with the product, my gf decided to make a purchase. The sales rep even offered to bring over to the cashier and wrap it up for her. A very good customer service that serves the customer from the beginning up till the end where the product is being purchased.
Indeed, i am very impressed with their great service. :)
Rating given:
At around 9pm, where most of the dinner crowd and diners have completed their meals, i am still at novena square looking for food to eat. :P Guess, it would be rather difficult to find food (not too expensive kind) at this point of time.
Surprising when i reached the outlet, there are still couple of diners having their dinner. Thinking that i may still have a chance to order some food, i quickly browse through their menu. They offered quite a wide variety of food, from sandwiches to western chicken chop to even asian congee. But, i guess the most worth your money meal will have to be their set meal.
Their set meal are mostly in western style with a variety of meat that includes dory, chicken, beef, pork and even turkey. Beside the main dish, they also have a soup of the day, garlic bread, drink and dessert.
I had placed the order of a turkey breast set meal and at the point of sales, i was given the soup of the day, the drink and the dessert. A pretty nice gesture for someone who is real hungry. :)
The soup of the day was dark mushroom soup. Well, most of the time, the mushroom soup that we drank are using the light coloured mushroom. And, this dark mushroom tasted rather special, with a very nice fragrant, but it lacks the creamy taste the lighter mushroom has.
The garlic bread that comes along with the soup has a sufficient amount of garlic spread on it and tasted super crisy. Not only is the circumferenc of the bread crispy, the inner portion of the bread is also crispy. Every bite of the bread, will bound to have the 'crack crack' sound.
As for the main course, i find that their portion is pretty sufficient, accompanied with two sides. The two sides that i have is the mixed beans (sweet corn, carrot and peas) as well as the fries. As for the turkey breast, i find that it is pretty well done. Well done in the sense that, it is not over cooked, one will still be able to taste the juicness of the meat.
Overall, a pretty decent type of meal with a resonable price.
Rating given:
Its pretty difficult to find shops, selling the traditional snacks, pastries, cookies and biscuits nowadays. However, this shop that i am going to review today, certainly has injected some form of traditional flavoured into my senses.
The items sold in this shop includes the commonly seen tar sah pia (both sweet and salty), pong pia, malt candy biscuit, walnut biscuits, almond cookies, pineapple tarts, egg tarts and even peanut candy (soft, hard and crispy version). Looking at their wide range of goodies, it is not difficult to imagine how i could drawn to them and buy a couple of cookies to try them out.
Theres simply too many items for me to try out all at once, thus i only tried out the few more popular items, such as the mini tar sah pia, the pong pia, the egg tart as well as the pineapple tarts.
If i were to rank them, the first place will definitely have to be the pong pia. Although the filling of pong pia is malt candy, it does not taste sweet at all. Not only that, the filling was extremely fragrant and nice. I was pretty surprise when i tasted it at first. Later then i realize, the sesame seeds in the filling must have played a part in the fragrance.
The second place will be the mini tar sah pia, the salty version kind. Well, guess the mini version looks rather cute and tasted not too bad either. The first bite onto the tar sah pia tasted pretty spicy. Yes, you have seen it correctly, spicy. Although the spicy is not too strong but its enough to taste it. Its filling also has some sesame added into it, making it tasted more fragrant.
As for the egg tart and pineapple tarts, i find them rather so-so. I found the egg tart crust too thick for my liking. As for the pineapple tarts, i find its filling lack of some significant pineapple taste.
As for the service wise, the pretty friendly staff is willing to explain each item and it ingredients used to one carefully. However, do expect to wait for a little while during its peak period as there is only one staff in the outlet.
Overall, i believe these biscuits are still worth to give them a try.
Rating given:
Popped by Tampopo (タンポポ) for dinner one evening since I was in the vicinity. Tampopo, which means dandelion(a kind of flower) in English, shares the same name with a popular culinary movie in Japan in the mid eighties. The movie focuses on Ramen, which incidentally, is what Tampopo is known for.
Located within Liang Court, Tampopo portrays itself as a casual Japanese diner and shares the premises with Tomton, its sister restaurant which specialises in Kurobuta pork.
Shabu Ramen - Billed as THE ramen to try, as featured in the Straits Times, the shabu ramen had a flavourful soup base with a strong hint of pork yet didn't come across as too overwhelming. According to the menu, the soup is made by boiling pork bones for 2 days, which I guess explains its rich flavour. The ramen was springy with lots of bite while the thinly sliced pork was tender and a tad chewy.
Omelette Rice - The omelette rice, or Omurice, was quite well done in my humble opinion (not that I've tried alot though). Moist and fluffy Japanese rice with a few token pieces of chicken wrapped up in a nice thick layer of soft and milky scrambled eggs.
Special Loin - This is Tomton's specialty and I am most inclined to agree. The meat was lightly breaded and very crispy on the outside yet retaining its tenderness and moisture inside. It tasted fresh with not a bit of the oily residue taste that tends to plague deep fried pork cutlets. Really excellent piece of pork but rather small for $17.
Cheese Chiffon - I ordered this dessert because the other chiffons were sold out. And I actually regretted it as it spoilt what would have been a satisfying meal. The chiffon, though light, was practically tasteless and I certainly didn't appreciate sporadic gratings of cheese which did nothing more than allow the chiffon to live up to its name? Maybe it just didn't do it for me.
I liked the food and $55 for 2 pax isn't too expensive a price to pay. There is a wee bit of a ventilation problem there so you might walk out faintly smelling of food. The place can get crowded so going early especially on weekends is recommended.
See all my pictures here.
Rating given:
Lil’ Foot Pâtisserie, an online blog pastisserie selling exclusive gourmet pastry. Most of the pastries there are in limited quantity, but they definitely do not lose out in quality.
We had the chance to sample the Rocky Road Mousse Cake as one of my friend ordered it from Lil’ Foot Pâtisserie for Petrina’s birthday while we were at Peach Garden celebrating.
Crunchy walnuts and chewy marshmallow in every bite awashed with thick creamy chocolate ganache!
Our Rocky Road Mousse cake is the round 7 inch which can serve 8-10 people and it comes at a price of $38. There are even different flavours of marshmallows inside the cake!
Maybe i’m a little behind time, but this is actually the first time that i had a cake which is filled with marshmallows in between, and the result is wow!
Lil’ Foot Pâtisserie doesn’t have many variety of cakes available, but for the lack in choices, the ones that they offer certainly are excellent and is priced reasonably. I’ll be looking to get other cakes from them soon. So stop getting your cakes from boring places you-know-where (i’m not naming the bakeries)
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
Rating given:
Peach Garden Chinese Restaurant @ OCBC Centre 33rd Floor is co-owned by Angela Ho and Veronica Tan, former managers of the established Hua Ting restaurant. The pair struck out on their own in 2002, and the rest like they say, were history. Peach Garden is now one of the Chinese restaurants on the radar of corporates.
Located at the 33rd floor, the restaurant offers diners a splendid bird’s eye view of the Singapore River and the city area.
The modern contemporary Chinese decor will make diner feel right at home.
It will be highly recommended for customers to make a reservation before going, as the window seats are usually taken up. One of the waitress greeted us at the main lobby on the ground floor, after checking our reservations, we were guided up to 33rd floor.
Peach Garden is popular for their Cantonese dishes, and dim sum. The selection for dim sum isn’t wide with 23 different types, however for what they lacked in variety, they make it up in quality.
Most of the dim-sum comes in basket of 3 each, but as we got 8 person, they were flexible to allow us order 8 pieces of dim-sum instead. So i’ll be putting the price for all the dim sum here for per piece rather than per basket.
Baked BBQ pork pastry ($1.30)
The baked BBQ pork pastry, or more commonly known as char-siew sou, i find it to be quite all right, but the others didn’t like it because they had better ones at Yan ting @ St Regis before.
Baked Mini Egg Tart ($1.30)
The baked mini egg tarts were fine, the skin was crispy, and the egg filling is just nice. However at $1.30 each, they are terribly expensive since i had better and bigger egg tarts at much cheaper price before.
Steamed Fresh Prawn Dumpling ($1.60)
The steamed fresh prawn dumpling, or more affectionately known as har-gau. The ones at Peach Garden has a wholesome shrimp wrapped within the skin of the dumpling.
But at $1.60 for each har-gau, they are priced slightly higher than your normal ones at other places.
Steamed Siew Mai with Phoenix prawn ($1.60)
The rendition of siew mai or pork dumpling is redefined at Peach Garden. Whereas your typical siew mai taste mainly of pork, the ones here has a phoenix prawn, which gives the siew mai a prawnier taste.
Steamed BBQ pork bun ($1.20)
I always love to eat steamed BBQ pork buns from chinese dim sum restaurant, well because they are not the same as the ones you get from outside.
The ones in restaurants are usually consist of three parts, i’ll tear off each part and slowly savour the sweet char-siew with the bun.
Fried Carrot cake with X.O sauce ($8)
When you read fried carrot cake, please erase off all of whatever memories you had of carrot cake. Now when we are talking about fried carrot cake with X.O sauce here, its not your ordinary black or white char-kway in the hawker centre.
The carrot cake here is slightly crispy on the outside, and very soft on the inside. But i couldn’t taste much of the X.O sauce, and at $8 per small serving, i find it to be quite on the high side.
Steamed yolk cream bun ($1.20)
The signature dim-sum of Peach Garden, its delicious steamed yolk cream bun. The beautiful golden yellow custard filling oozes out when i prise it open.
Steamed rice roll with prawn ($4.50)
The steamed rice roll with prawn, or your Chee Cheong Fun is served in two versions, one with prawn at $4.50, and the other steamed rice roll with chicken at $4.
The Chee Cheong Fun was quite disappointing here, it didn’t taste as well i thought it will, its quite ordinary to tell the truth.
Boiled porridge with century egg and pork ($3.80)
The boiled porridge with century egg and pork is one of the disappointment for the meal at Peach Garden. Too salty, we ordered 4 bowls and almost couldn’t finish it.
Steamed Xiao Long Bao with Conpoy ($1.30)
I’m not really a big fan of Xiao Long Bao, i guess the ones here are average, a couple of us didn’t really find it to be good.
Baked Spare Rib with BBQ Sauce ($7 per piece)
The signature baked spare rib with BBQ sauce comes at a hefty price, at $7 per piece, you can easily have a plate of spare ribs elsewhere.
But to be fair, the presentation of the spare rib was done nicely, and the rib is bigger than your normal ribs, with the BBQ sauce combining well with spare ribs.
There were difference in portions of the ribs, so depending on your luck, some of us got slightly bigger ribs with more meat, while some got thinner ribs.
Total Bill was $178.20 for 8 person, after a 15% credit card discount. The price comes much cheaper than i had expected so it was a surprise, and if you do not included the $7 spare ribs, it will be roughly $16 for person instead of about $22.
Results were mixed, some like me found it to be quite good, while others find that Peach Garden didn’t match their expectations. I guess everybody has different taste buds, but personally, i find Peach Garden to be quite good, the price may be slightly above average, but given a rationale person taking the menu and not over-ordering, the result is good dim sum at reasonable price.
Service-wise we also encountered mixed results. The waitress were way too fast in serving the dim-sum. As the table was all food bloggers, all of us were busy taking photos of the food, and before we managed to finish taking the photo of one dim sum, the other dim sum was served.
I felt that the waitress should have taken note that we were not ready for the serving of the other dim sum, but sad to say they failed to do so. Also, they missed out our order of Xiao Long Bao and the ribs, and also forgot to bring us our additional order of the har-gau.
But they did slightly make up when they helped us putting the birthday cake (one of us birthday celebration) into a beautiful plate, and they also provide a knife which had remote control to play birthday song music.
All in all, at 33rd floor offering a wonderful view of the city, the quite reasonable pricing of the dim-sum, it offers me an excuse to revisit Peach Garden again. And Peach Garden has two other outlets at Novena and Thomson Plaza!
You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )
” Contemporary Cantonese cuisine, with splendid bird’s eye view of the city “
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Since my mum is looking for a new watch, we decided to check out the watches here.
There were a couple of customers but only 1 salesgirl was at the shop then. Nevertheless, our needs were not neglected. The friendly salesgirl approached us after attending to the other customers and was helpful enough to offer a few recommendations of watches to my mum. She was very patient with us, especially my picky mum who could not decide on which watch to get.
My mum also decided to replace the battery for her present watch. However, upon checking on the battery lifespan, she advised my mum not to replace the battery as its lifespan was not up yet.
In the end, we didn't get the attery replaced, neither did we purchase any watches from the shop. But we were really pleased with the service provided by the salesgirl.
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Even before the start of the Great Singapore Sales, many places have started their pre-GSS already.
Happened to be around the area so I decided to check out the jeans here as they were having a sales too. Haha
The shop was really packed with people then. Their sales items have been placed on a shelf and we customers just have to look through the stacks of folded jeans to look for good buys. With so many customers taking out then throwing back the "unwanted" jeans, the salesperson still managed to fold back the jeans quickly and arrange them back onto the shelf neatly. Yes! This definitely makes it much easier for other customers to look for what they want. It's so unlike of most other places where sales equal to looking for things you want through a heap of clothes.
Yes, thumbs up for their service!
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Canele Patisserie Chocolaterie - A high end dessert cafe under the Les Amis group of restaurants and helmed by Executive Pastry Chef Pang, who was an ex member of the Singapore National Culinary Team.
Located at the picturesque and upmarket Roberston Walk, Canele's flagship outlet is a rather nice place to chill for after dinner desserts or afternoon tea. Takeaways are also available but if you choose to dine in, please be aware that a 10% service charge will be levied.
Nougatine - Filled with Nutella, Salty Caramel, Caramelized Filos, Nougatine Ice Cream, Vanilla Creme Chantilly - For starters, the Nougatine seemed rather interesting with the addition of salty caramel. However, taken as a whole, it reminded me uncannily of peanut butter with its smooth sticky texture and buttery undertones. I liked the caramelized filos, which are essentially paper thin pastry dough coated with a layer of caramel and left to harden. Flaky yet stick to your teeth.
Jupiter - A most aesthetically pleasing slice of cake which was bought off the display shelf. Extremely rich and topped with a thin cylindrical shell of chocolate, Jupiter boasted caramel and a layer of wafer in between the spongy cake. Did I mention the dark glistening chocolate that engulfed the entire cake? Overall a very nice but sinful dessert.
Black Forest 2007 - I cannot comprehend the rationale behind inserting a year into the name of a cake. But that's besides the point. The point is, as pretty and minute a piece as the black forest cake may be, it certainly wasn't outstanding, not even close. The berries were soaked in Kirsch but the amount of cream was too much for me to stomach. And it certainly didn't help that the cake did come across as a little too dense and moist.
Berry Black & Bushman Brew - Interesting names for the teas but unfortunately rather overpriced for the mediocre quality. And its all because Canele doesn't serve ice water.
With the prices Canele is charging, I can see why its a high end dessert outfit. I appreciate the creativity and quality behind the desserts but certainly not the prices nor the tiny portions.
See all my pictures here.
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