Forest Orchidville Farm To Table @ 82 Sungei Tengah Rd

If it was not for my colleague, I would not have known that there is such a place called Orchidville at Sungei Tengah Rd. Located in a somewhat remote area and accessible by car. There is ample parking within its own compound and because it is a farm to table concept, almost all ingredients would have been homegrown.

The restaurant itself was huge and one could hold a wedding banquet here. The setup is typical Chinese restaurant with round tables and most importantly, it has lots of space between tables. Very comfy.

interior

There was a standee outside the restaurant proclaiming "Volcano Chicken" which piqued my interest. Never in my life, had I eaten any Volcano Chicken before...but alas, it is only available if you had pre-ordered it at least a day in advance. Aiyah. If anyone had tried this before, do drop me a message and let me know what was your verdict.

want to try this next time

The lady staff asked if we'd like "buah long long" juice. In my part of the world, it's called buah kedondong but ok lor, I like! It's English name is kind of hard, Spondias dulcis (or umbra) or 沙梨 in Chinese. Whatever it is called, I like to eat the fruit with dark sauce mixed with chili padi and sugar. In juice form, it must not be too diluted. Read about the health benefit of buah long long juice. The version at Orchidville was indeed refreshing and appetizing.

buah long long juice 

For food, we ordered crispy pork knuckles (one of their signature), stir fried sweet potato leaves, deep fried soon hock and a plate of seafood mee sua (rice vermicelli) for the birthday boy.

sweet potato leaves

seafood mee sua

The sweet potato leaves was very good. So good that we polished everything on that plate. Not even a single piece of leave left...

The mee sua was a surprise too. The texture of the noodles was quite firm and overall, it tasted like a plate of mee goreng instead.

deep fried soon hock

The fish was my favourite dish from the meat kingdom that night. It must have been a while since I've enjoyed a non-fillet kind of fish that wasn't in a burger form nor was it called sutchi. The flesh was sweet, the sauce on point and those crispy bits of minced garlic was just wow. That sauce and white rice, what a wonderful companion those two made. Happy belly times.

crispy pork knuckles

It was rather rare to have crispy pork knuckles in a Chinese zichar place. Though this was a signature dish, it was rather unfortunate that the meat turned out somewhat dry. The skin had a crisp outer but it was also somewhat chewy. I liked that this was eaten with the fresh green lettuces, so it felt rather balanced. The sweet savoury brownish sauce helped to moist the meat a bit but it wasn't a strong flavour.

There is a bowl of hae bee hiam that diners could help themselves to, so maybe that'll lift up the flavour when one does a meat wrap.

Overall, the food was inexpensive (mainly due to the 20% discount during dinner for the month of July) and portion was good.

Worth a visit with the family.

Orchidville

Address: 82 Sungei Tengah Rd, Singapore 698985
Website: http://www.orchidville.com.sg/
Contact: 6552 7003 / 9739 9602
Business Hours:
Daily Lunch: 1130am to 230pm
Daily Dinner: 530pm to 930pm

[Busan] Kyochon 1991 교촌치킨

We chanced upon this Korean fried chicken place after we've had our dinner at Bonjeon Dwaejigukbap. Hmm, to forgo or to eat somemore? This was in addition to the shared burger, chocolate pie and ice-cream from McDonald's after dinner...

Korean fried chicken? Can't say no

Decided to check out the place and it was smallish. All the tables appeared to be taken. There were about 4 tables for dining in. A group of young adults were at the entrance, and it seemed like they were awaiting for their take-away order.

We decided to order some and managed to get ourselves a small table. What did we order? Why, chimaek 치맥  of course! Chimaek is Chikin (chicken) and meaekju (beer) !

half pint of Cass draft beer

The ice-cold beer was refreshing and shared amongst 4 pax. Smallest unit seemed to be half pint. Not expensive. However, we seemed to have underestimated the portion of the chicken. We ended up with a tad too much! Seemed like we had three big chicken for 5 pax. Am sure we could've finished everything, only if we didn't have the earlier food...

original fried chicken

fried chicken overdose!

Loved the pickled radish 치킨무 also known as chicken-mu. Tangy and reduces the oily-ness of the chicken. The chicken were fresh from the oven and tasted so good! Liked the garlic soy and honeyed ones. Didn't try any spicy ones though.

It was the guilt (of too much food) and the oil that prevented us from eating them all. In SG, for the same price, we could only get measly portions of these fried chicken but in South Korea, it came in good generous portions.

Right across this shop, it appeared to be a club? Not too sure but there were pretty girls hanging around outside that shop and occasionally calling out to guys who happened to walk past.

Kyochon 1991 교촌치킨 초량점

Address: 6 Jungang-daero 209beon-gil, Choryang 2(i)-dong, Dong-gu, Busan, South Korea
Website: http://www.kyochon.com/menu
Contact: +82 51-441-9994
Business hours:
Daily 12 pm to 2am

[Busan] Bonjeon Dwaejigukbap 본전 돼지국밥

First evening in Busan, and I had arrived from Seoul via KTX while the rest of the gang, were coming in from Jeju. So interesting, right? Keke.

First meal, we agreed to have local food. The top must-eat foods in Busan seemed to be 밀면 milmyeon (wheat noodles), 돼지국밥 pork and rice soup (dwaeji gukbap),  어묵 eomuk (fish cake), and 냉채족발 (naegje jokbal) pork trotters with chilled vegetables. On hindsight, we did 3 out of 4 which was quite a feat, yes?

Let's start with dwaeji gukbap or loosely translated as pork rice soup. Bonjeon Dwaejigukbap was about 5 minutes from the KTX station and within walking distance to McDonalds too. We were hungry and weather was nicely cooling. There was a line outside of the shop by the time we were there at about 7.23pm. Waited for 20 minutes before we got seated.

Busan KTX station

Bonjeon Dwaejigukbap (left) shares the same building as Motel 3.6.9

The place had local tourists plus the foreign tourists like us. The place is casual and no-frills. The ahjumma running the place was rather strict and placed more emphasis on guys. Pretty traditional I'd think.

menu

The menu was rather straightforward too. Reasonably priced and slightly cheaper than Seoul. We ordered almost everything from the food menu.

Once the order had been taken, the staff will bring forth the side dishes. On the table, there was a pot of something that looked like chinchalok, fermented small fish. Tasted extremely salty and not pungent as chinchalok.

Jeotgal 醢

raw green chilies and onions, kimchi and spicy spring onions (back)

The kimchi was refillable, if you wish to have more. The green chilies were rather powerful and I learnt it, the hard way. The burn was strong and stayed for quite a while (about 10 minutes).

super spicy!

Initially thought that the sundae gukbap 순대국밥 would taste funky but it was pretty good. The sundae was cooked till soft and when eaten with the light tasting soup, it warmed our tummies and hearts.

순대국밥 

There was a gukbap with pigs stomach and that tasted really familiar. Much like the pig stomach soup back home. All the soup bases are similar and very mild tasting. One could add the jeotgal to season it a bit.

pig stomach gukbap 섞어탕반

Actually, the ahjumma did share with us on how one should be eating the gukbap. She said, add a bit of the jeotgal to the soup and then throw in a bunch of those seasoned spicy spring onions. Depends on your preference actually. One could do original and then alter the taste with the side-dishes.

돼지국밥 (pork bits rice soup)

For the premium set, the boiled pork belly was sliced thinly but intact while the regular pork rice soup had smaller bits of the pork meat.

pork belly gukbap

porridge and beer?

Good thing about dwaeji gukbap is that you won't end up feeling bloated or very full. The amount of rice in the soup was either half or about two third of a normal bowl.

Bonjeon Dwaejigukbap 본전 돼지국밥

Address: 3-8 Jungang-daero 214beon-gil, Choryang-dong, Dong-gu, Busan, South Korea
Phone: +82 51-441-2946
Business Hours:
Daily 830am to 930pm