Monday, May 27, 2013

WATAMI Japanese Casual Restaurant

Still in my Japanese food craze.

This time my dining companion is my polytechnic classmate, close friend, Abi😋 We decided to head to the somewhat still considered newly opened mall near Buona Vista Mrt station, The Star Vista! I go there for service very Sunday as well, so it's not relatively "new" to me in the sense. 

But still have not explored everywhere yet. Watami is located at Level 2, just visible once you go up the escalator fon the sheltered area all the way from the train station, easily spotted & accessible as well. 

We wanted to go for Coco Ichibanya, for curry rice but decided to go for Watami instead, Watami do have a queue sometimes and it happens that there's NO queue at all today, so why not! :)

When we entered, we were immediately guided to our table at the side, nice place, we had a very quiet dinner as there was no one at all, only 2 other tables were occupied.

When we wanted to place our orders, the staff took quite a while to respond although there are no other customers requiring their attention, we had high patience level so it's fine, just that every time we tried call them, we were required to use call out many times with big hand gestures to alert them, once my friend had to walk to them personally for some attention, and they told her to "wait".

That aside, Abi ordered the Chicken Katsu Don and I got the Hire Katsu Tamago Toji. Both were served on a sizzling hotplate but now was cooked in front of me, using the potable gas stove so it was quite unique, seeing the egg and salty broth bubbling and creating a nice aroma, Abi's one came cooked and without the gas stove, I wondered why, because the table beside had the Chicken Katsu Don as well and had the gas stove, nevertheless, it was great experience.

Broth was slightly too salty for our liking and I tried her Chicken pieces, not bad, more tender than my pork loin though. 

We were feeling sooo full half way through and the portion is huge, for me at least, if you are a big eater, you will like Watami! I would suggest you and your companion share a portion first if both of you are small eaters, like me.




There's always room for dessert right? We ordered the Matcha Parfait (Green tea ice cream with cream and kanten-white jelly, with red bean toppings & not forgetting our favorite riceballs)

This was like the "highlight" of the meal for me, I love ice cream, I love matcha, totally great, portion was so small though, the both of us gobbled everything up in no time! It is $3.80 per portion, well worth it. 

Except to note: sadly the picture and the real thing is totally different, the vanilla soft serve cream shown on the menu was high, higher than the matcha ice cream, but the real thing is different, still nice though, just a tad disappointed with the great difference in illustration and actual dish. 

The Star Vista (near Buona Vista Mrt station)

Watami Japanese Casual Restaurant 
#02-16 
11:30AM-10:00PM


Friday, May 24, 2013

FIG & OLIVE

Family time again :)

This time we headed to Fig & Olive in Jurong point, to have dinner.

Ordered a few mains, as they were having a 1-for-1 deal, if you want to go for a simple westernize meal and save money at the same time, you can head to Fig & Olive while they still have the promotion going on. That's if taste and quality of the food is no biggie to you..


Tomato based Pasta with roasted chicken with mushroom sauce -

Personally I feel the tomato sauce is a tad too sour and the pasta is dry, like it has been cooked and left there until someone orders it and they will topped it off with sauce and out of the kitchen the dish go.

Chicken is quite tender but slightly chewy, and we did not finish it.

Grilled Chicken Pasta with Mushrooms in Carbonara Sauce 

Grilled chicken with tomato sauce, carbonara pasta and baked potatoes

The good thing about this restaurant is that they allow a "refill" of the carbonara sauce, the pasta was dry in all cases, so we asked if we could have more sauce, the staff gladly took our plates into the kitchen and returned with more cream sauce on our pasta, a plus point! 

I love the baked potatoes that comes as a side on the third dish (last picture), soft and the skin was still intact, I love potato skin, the creamy sauce on the potato was great as well. 

Overall experience was alright but I do not think I will go back on purpose (like to hold gatherings here, suggest or meet friends for dinner here) 

Personal opinion/verdict:-
Food: 6/10
Service: 7/10
Ambience: 6/10

If you want a simple meal that's affordable and is not particular or picky over the taste, you might consider coming here :)

Jurong Point
Fig & Olive
JP2 #B1-62/63
10:30AM-10:30PM

BENTEN CAFÉ | Japanese Cuisine


    Caesar Salad

    Seaweed Carbonara with Bacon

    Salmon Curry Rice 

   Salmon Potato Cheese

   
Chocolate Pudding parfait with vanilla soft serve below, strawberries, cornflakes, whipped cream and fudge
 

 Strawberry Parfait with Cheese cake, purée, soft serve, cornflakes, whipped cream!

       
Matcha parfait, with waffle stick, strawberry, red beans, soft serve, whipped cream.

Hcad a great meal at a Japanese Restaurant with the love ones before catching a movie "The great Gatsby" 

For the starter we got Caesar salad which i feel is average, the vegetables were watery so the taste got somehow affected, and the salmon potato cheese was served on a hot plate, food kept hot, I mean really hot, till the last bite, it's actually just French fries at the bottom, with salmon fish slices and awesome cheese topping.

Mains:
The salmon curry rice was super delicious, same goes for this dish, up to the last spoon, the rice and curry was still pipping hot. Worth getting this, the curry is great, like the other curries, but I think I tried better ones :) worth the try though. 

Followed by, seaweed carbonara, wow this is light, not the average thick ones we get elsewhere, so not necessarily we will start getting sick of it after a few bites! :) I think the curry rice would be the best dish among all that we have tried, based on my own opinion! 

Desserts time! of course we had to try the desserts, the artificial desserts display were too good to resist. 

We ordered 3 parfaits! Chocolate pudding, strawberry cheese cake and matcha. whee blissful meal. Everything about the dessert is great great great. free feel to just order, the vanilla soft serve thing at the bottom is really soft and yum. 

Nice place for dinner, but it can be quite noisy and disrupting because it is an open area so many other shoppers will be walking pass you and looking at your food.

Jurong Point
Benten Café
#03-20/20A/K4
11:30AM-10:00PM

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

EVERYTHING WITH FRIES

HEY!!!


I foresee that the food posts are going to be more and more frequently shown now, especially since now I have free time on hand to blog as well as try new food with my food buddies. Some post may not be recent, it may just be a simple food review of a cafe/restaurant/food I had tried about I would like to talk about and recommend you guys to try it :) Yummy and good food needs to be shared!



 Well, this post would be on EVERYTHING WITH FRIES, I think many of you would have tried it before, I have not tried it so I decided to go with one of my girlfriends who hasn't tried it too, she had the Battered Fish Sandwich and I got the Char-grilled Char Siew. 


For the starter, both of us got the one-egg special soup which taste really good, I am impressed that it is only made using 1 egg, how is it even possible wow, the soup was light, salty and flavourful, I love the egg crumbs on top, really added texture to the soup, a must-try.




The one egg soup!
(House special made just using ONE egg)



 Char-grilled Char Siew
(Handrolled Por Belly roulade, char-grilled with garlic sauce)



Battered Fish Sandwich 
(Battered white fish, handmade mushroom cheese sauce)


Honestly, I am not a meat lover but I like pork belly, like from those hawker stalls, pork belly rice, hence I decided to be go ahead and ordered the pork belly roulade


The first few bites were heavenly, the fat from the pork belly is juicy and all, it's the kind that melts in your mouth, the meat is succulent, but being a person who does not really like meat, this is good enough to make me like it, portion is huge, because I couldn't finish it :( I didn't finish the shoe-string fries as well (we both got the herbs topping).


My friend got the fish sandwich, the batter is crispy and inside the white flesh is super soft, might consider getting the white fish next time if I do go back.

Consider going there with your friends, for a simple gathering, oh and yes they do have desserts, like cupcakes, cakes etc, never got to try as it was getting late & we were both stuffed.  



Bugis Junction 

200 Victoria Street #04-05 Singapore
Tel: 6338 0135

Latest Macdonald's Hype.

The beginning of food posts starts now!!

I'm pretty sure most of you all there already saw the Macs advertisement on the new red peri scorcher burger that is competing with the all-time favourite Macspicy (my favourite as well), after the Macspicy beat the Pepper Flamer burger, it has a new competitor.


Here's how it looks like, I was trying it for the first time, and decided to go for a double, it was great, the battered chicken thigh was awesome, tasty and crispy, bursting with flavour and oil oozing out. The sauce was a tad too tangy/sour for my liking, it was good nevertheless, worth a try, although it is more of a cripsy chicken burger with a little spicy and sour sauce, the bread was fine :) GO TRY YOURS NOW!

My personal opinion & verdict: 7/10

Macspicy is still my top personal favourite from Macdonald's.



Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Back after a long time!

Hi everyone, 


I'm back again after a pretty long break from blogging yes?
Hehehe to say the truth, I actually forgotten about this blog, totally *super guilty*

Alright, shall I do food posts?






I reckon I should since I have been eating so much good food these few months.
The next few posts would be all on FOOD.

Heheheh for more pictures on my food journey, follow me @rachaelwong on Instagram ^^


*Warning: Do not view my instagram at night/when you are hungry