Island Cafe @ Tangs

Do you find difficulty in finding a nice and quiet place along Orchard Road to meet up with your girlfriends? Well, all the eateries are usually packed during the weekends. So we decided to head for Island Cafe at Tangs. That's of course after spending a few hours shopping at Tangs!

We ordered a few dishes to share as we weren't that hungry! We ordered the Black Pepper Crab Tung Hoon which consists of wok-fried glass vermicelli with fried softshell crab (crispy and not oily) with assorted seafood. Simple delicious! We should have ordered another plate!

We craved for a bit of fried food so we ordered the Asian Platter. The platter consists of satays, crispy wonton, fried springroll, chicken wings and achar. The satay sauce is really good! So creamy and peanuts. However, if you're more health conscious, then you better order Tauhu Telor!

 

We ordered the signature dish here! The Crayfish Laksa is unbelievable! The spicy coconut gravy is so thick and creamy and packed with ingredients like prawns, quail eggs, fish cake, cockles and crayfish! However, if you don't like crayfish you can ordered the non-crayfish version. The portion is really huge so it's advisable to share. In another words, share the guilt!

Remember to ask for their homemade sambal chilli! So delicious! This is a great place to meet up and chit-chat as the place is not noisy and too crowded. But most importantly, the food is really great and tasty! Most of the food items are priced at S$15- S$20 so the prices are so reasonable too! We will definitely dine there again!

Food:  Excellent

Ambiance: Excellent

Service: Excellent

Price: $20/pax

TA NGS, L4
310 Orchard Road

Singapore 238864
Tel: 6311 3424

Din Tai Fung @ Wisma Atria

Sometimes, when the weather is too hot and humid, I would opt for a simple lunch. Nothing too greasy and spicy. Also, I will try to avoid fried food as I'm the "heaty" type. I need to drink a lot of cooling tea and green tea to cool down my system.

So I went Din Tai Fung at Wisma Atria for a simple lunch. This is the famous dumpling house franchise from  Taiwan and they have been voted the Top 10 restaurant in the World.  I really like their steamed Xiao Long Bao. The skin is so tender and the soup base so tasty. I understand that you need to freeze the soup base and put the frozen cube into the bao. So when the bau is steamed, the frozen base will melt so that's how you can the soup base will flow out when you bite into each xiao long bao. The minced pork is well-mirnated that you don't taste the pork smell. The kitchen is an open-concept so you can see the chefs hard at work making ll those dumplings. To keep their dumplings fresh, they will only steam them with there's an order.

The skill of the chef is very important to ensure that the skin of the bao is not too thick and not too thick that it will break when you pick it up with your chopsticks. So how many Xiao Long Bao can you eat? I can eat an average of 6 pieces. I heard some people can eat 18 pieces at one go! It's very light unlike steamed char siew bao.

Do you like to dip your bao in vinegar and shredded ginger sauce? I used to hate vinegar as I find them very sour. However, I have recently acquired the taste for vinegar. To tell you the truth, a good vinegar is actually not sour.

I also ordered a bowl of noodle with pork chop cutlet. Yummy! The BreadTalk people who owned the Din Tai Fang franchise in Singapore has opened 7 outlets in Singapore. The restauarant is always packed with people epsecially the Paragon outlet so go early to avoid the long queue. Frankly speaking, it's quite tough to get a large family table. However, there are plenty of 2 seaters and 4 seaters.

Outlets: Paragon, Wisma Atria, Raffles City, Jurong Point, Tampines Mall, Junction 8 and 313 @ Somerset (*New)

Food:  Excellent

Ambiance: Good

Service: Good

Price: $20/pax

Long Beach @ Dempsey

Who can resist seafood? Can you? Well, not me since I'm a self-confessed seafood lover! I find seafood light and tasty unlike meat. It won't bloat you up after a sumptuous meal. We ordered the Seafood set lunch menu for 10pax at Long Beach @ Dempsey . The Seafood Soup is really tasty, filled with crabmeat, conpoy, fish maws and mushrooms. It's also not too salty.

A seafood meal is not complete without crabs. We opted for Black Pepper Crabs rather than chili crabs. I read in an article before that the chef at Long Beach restaurant was the first to invent this dish! The peppery taste blended very well with the crabs. The restaurant uses Sri Lanka crabs so the crabs are very meaty (more than 2kg each).

Next, we had the Handmade Silken Tofu with special sauce. The tofu is so smooth and soft that it just melt in your mouth.

The "Dong Po” Ribs with Honey Sauce is simply delicious. The ribs are so tender and juicy. Double yummy!

The Nyonya Assam Steamed Sea Bass is also very fresh and delicious. The assam paste is not spicy but rather sweet and sour. Very appetizing indeed!

The Glutinous Rice with Chinese sausages and mushroom is a famous Cantonese dish. It's very filling so we decided to eat a few spoonful. It's very tasty and fragrant. 

My apologies for the blur pix. Is it the side-effects of MSG? Chinese restaurants usually like to add a bit of MSG into their dishes. To be honest, I'm quite sensitive to MSG. My face muscles will feel tight and I will feel very thirsty and sleepy after that. I dislike these symptoms. How about you? Do you experience any MSG side-effects? Their dishes are so tasty so they should not put any MSG at all. The Tiger Prawns Crispy Noodles is very average but al least the prawns are fresh and juicy.

The Yam Paste dessert (Orh Nee) is creamy and nice. Not too sweet nor stachy. This Teochew dessert is always a hot favourite with my family. Long Beach has many outlets all over Singapore but we like the Dempsey outlet best as there are plenty of parking lots outside the restaurant. It's an established seafood restaurant so you can be assured of the freshest seafood. Beside the typical seafood dishes, this outlet also offer fusion seafood dishes. The dishes are served a bit too quickly so I feel a bit rushed. So we requested for the dishes to be served at a slower pace. It's a nice place to enjoy your tasty seafood!



Food: Excellent
Ambiance: Excellent
Service: Good
Price: $40/pax

Long Beach @ DEMPSEY

Tel: 6323 2222
25 Dempsey Road


Open daily: 11am - 3pm (Lunch)
                : 5.30pm - 1.30am (Dinner)

Nadaman Japanese Restaurant

Nadaman has been voted as one of the Top 10 Japanese Restaurant in Singapore by many food bloggers. The Nadaman Group has established many renowned Japnese restaurants in Japan and Asia. I'm honoured and happy to be able to enjoy this fine dining experience with my family. The ambiance of the place is relaxing as well as elegant. The place is quite dim and there is a sushi counter where you can see the Japanese chefs preparing the freshest sashimi, sushi and California rolls.

We ordered the Set Dinner Menu which consists of appetizer, main course and Japanese desserts. The appetizer consists of Japanese salad, green tea cold tofu, prickled seaweed, a plate of freshest sashimi and California rolls.

Is this part of appetizer? Chawanmushi, "tea cup steam"  is an egg custard with Japnaese fish cake, ginkgo nut and chicken pieces. The custard is really smooth and soft. Double yummy!

For the main course, you can either select grilled salmon, teppanyaki beef or baked cod fish. All the three main tasted heavenly. The portion served is quite large so we were rather full at this stage.

The next dish was the tempura set consisting of prawns and vegetables. The tempura batter is very crispy but I find the tempura pieces a bit too oily for my liking. The restaurant should use more oil-absorbent paper to absorb all the oil.

We ordered 2 ala carte for our kids as they are small-eater and can't possibly finish the set meal. The salmon and beef set are equally good.

So sorry, I enjoyed the dinner so much that I forgot to take pixs of the delicious green tea ice-cream. The food here is definitely pricey but you can be assured of the freshest and best quality food. The ambiance is so relaxing and the food is served at appropriate time so that you have time to talk and enjoy the food, no rushing feeling. Hope to return for another delicious Japanese luxury meal again!

Food: Excellent
Ambiance: Excellent
Service:Excellent
Price: $95/pax

Shangri-la Hotel Singapore
22 Orange Grove Road
Lobby Level
Tel: 65 6213 4571

Opening Hours
12pm – 2.30pm, 6.30pm – 10.30pm

Dress code: Smart causal