Zaffron Kitchen @ East Coast Road

Located at 135/137 East Coast Road, this place is across the road, at the opposite side of 112 Katong. Was there for dinner on a Friday evening.

can't miss the bright cheery signboard

On our day of visit, the place was still fairly empty at 7pm as the dinner crowd only started to come in from 730pm onwards. The place has a nice ambiance, looking bright and cosy.

children's corner

menu

cheeky prints

The popcorn machine is not for display only, as we found ourselves a bowl of popcorn for our table.

complimentary popcorn

Our dinner group consist of one guy and three ladies (with not so big appetites), so we ordered a korma chicken, tandoor tikka malai and naan (plain and cheese) to share.

our order

The food was served in about 10 minutes after our orders were keyed into the system. Quick and efficient.

plain naan (top left), cheese naan (bottom left), tandoor malai chicken and korma chicken

The korma chicken was non-spicy and tasted creamy and sweet. It has bits of cashew nuts in it as well. Good sauce for the naans.

korma chicken gravy

Speaking of naans, I quite adore the cheese naan.

a basket of cheese naans

cheesy center

just like pizza~

Also tried a bit of the plain naan, and for some reason, it seemed to be slightly chewier than the cheese naan. Hmm.

Feeling the need to have more gravy for the bread, I requested for curry gravy from the staff and they obliged. The fish curry gravy was nicely sweet, tangy and slightly spicy. Yummy.

yummy fish curry gravy

The carbs were nice, but we need meat! The tandoori malai chicken tikka were served in bite sized chunks. Flavourful with a hint of smokeyness.

tandoor malai chicken tikka, with green sauce

bite me

meaty goodness

For drinks, my friends had the good old teh to go with this meal. For me, I had the iced plum lime.

thirst quenching iced plum lime

cold water, is also available

This meal costs about $57 in total.

Oriole Cafe & Bar @ Pan Pacific Serviced Suites, Somerset

Located at Level 1 of 96 Somerset Road, Pan Pacific Serviced Suites. If travelling via MRT, alight at Somerset MRT, come up and walk towards Marche and walk straight out of Somerset 313 building. There's an Irish pub to the right (Broitzeit as well), while Bedrock Bar & Grill and Oriole are on the left.

Was there on a Saturday afternoon and thought it was a good time to have lunch there. The weather was extremely hot, so we opted for indoor seating. Menus were brought out promptly.

mascot on menu

salt&pepper shakers, sugar and cream

Then we realized how noisy this place is. The sounds of people chatting reverbrated through-out the indoor seating area, well, at least at the section where we were! This isn't a place for quiet chatter, unless everyone has the same mind to lower their voices. Lively, I'd say.

the view from our seats

Service was quick and unobstrusive, and the place has a nice ambience if you can tune out all the loud noises. We ordered a chicken quesadillas and a Jamaican jerk chicken.

chicken quesadillas (@$15++)

The quesadillas (spicy tomato salsa, onion, mozzarella, tortillas) were quite pretty looking and served with some fried potato wedges and greens. Had a taste too and the shell was pretty crispy when eaten right away and the chicken pieces were quite tender. Liked the salsa too. Pretty light tasting.

yummy

Jamaican jerk chicken came towering with onion rings.

many rings to rule them all

deliciously tender charred jerk-rubbed chicken

The onion rings here suffered from a case where the batter were thick and hard, and the onions could barely be tasted. The corn salsa with little bits of cucumber and tomatoes, were refreshingly sweet and tangy. Nice. And the chicken, it tasted like baby chicken. Tender. And it was flavoursome, especially the charred bits.

But what's this 'jerk' that the chicken was rubbed with? A check with wiki revealed that the jerk spices had two main items; allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers. Other ingredients in the rub are cloves, garlic, salt, cinnamon, scallions, thyme and nutmeg. Hmm, but the chicken wasn't spicy at all. Some may find it a notch salty but not overly. Iced water would be handy.

The meal costs $40 and we didn't order any coffee as we felt rather full after lunch. It was also nice to have attentive service staff who held the door open when you enter or leave the cafe. Thank you.

Ginza Bairin @ JCube, Jurong East

Was invited to a tasting session at Ginza Bairin's second outlet in Singapore. Located at B1 of JCube, this shop has an open feel to it and seats 44 pax. The layout of the outlet gave it a somewhat fast-food joint kind of atmosphere, but did you know that Ginza Bairin in Japan, has already established 85 years of experience in Tonkatsu making?

shop interior

Coincidentally, June is also the month where rice planting festivals are held in Japan. What's more apt than for us to celebrate it by savouring rice dishes!

cute logo of shamisen playing pig

rice as a symbol of life

rice, our staple food

A trivia that I found interesting was that due to severe rice shortage at the end of the second World War, Ginza Bairin's founder, Nobukatsu-san had an idea and decided to pair katsu with bread instead of rice. The Katsu sandwich remains as one of its signature dishes till date. Talk about turning adversity into opportunities!

Coincidentally, we started the night with the Pork Katsu Sandwich, which is served in a box.

Pork Katsu Sandwich

closer view of the Pork Katsu Sandwich

The sandwich is simplicity personified. Firm pieces of deep fried breaded pork, coated with special home-made sweet sauce (Nobukatsu-san's recipe that has apples, onions and a blend of vegetables) and assembled ontop of soft white bread.

nice to meat you

The Pork Katsu Sandwich is suitable if you're looking for a light meal, or a snack in between meals.


Next, we had the Special Katsu-don. This was one item that I had wanted to try ever since my friend had it when we were at the ION Orchard outlet.

Special Katsu-don (Pork) existed since 1958

look at that wobbly egg~

mouthwatering looking piece of tender meat, yums!

precious rice with onions and sweet sauce

Seeing a wobbly egg on the verge of bursting was a fascinating sight. Imagine runny egg yolk on piping hot rice drizzled with sweet sauce...mmm

dazzling golden rice

Enjoyed the Special Katsu-don very much. The meat was tender and juicy, with its outer layer having absorbed much of its sauce, giving it a slightly sweet taste. The runny egg yolk mixed into the steaming hot rice gave it a silken soft feeling when eaten. Yums.

After that, we had the 'Special' Mixed Fry Set. Special because this was purposely mixed so that we can try the ebi fry, cheese pork fillet katsu and black pig katsu plus curry rice, all at the same time. Not sure what is the usual combination for the mixed fry set though but from the picture of its menu, it seems like it has ebi fry, cheese pork fillet and chicken karaage.

the flags are specially done for the event, so normally, it won't be served like this!

curry rice, (left to right) cheese pork fillet katsu, ebi fry and black pig katsu

The curry here is sweet and has a good consistency, which means it was neither too watery nor too thick. Has small bits of potatoes in it as well. Note that the curry will gradually thickens when its temperature cools.

curry

cheese pork fillet katsu, look at those crunchy crumbs~

say cheese~

Can you tell from the pictures just how crispy those crumbs were? They were seriously crispy. Apparently, the breadcrumbs or panko here is the reduced sugar version and the deep frying uses cotton seed oil.

black pig katsu

looking rosy

eby fry

The eby fry was firm to the bite but a little overcooked. The cheese pork fillet katsu was quite a huge chunk of meat and has a stronger pork taste compared to the black pig. Am not sure but cheese, meat and curry all translated into quite an overwhelming dish for me. It was a little too rich. The black pig katsu while retained its clean flavour, was rather lean and not as tender as the meat from the Special Katsu-don dish.

Lastly, we had the Spicy Tonkatsu Ramen, a dish that is touted as a Singapore Exclusive.

Spicy Tonkatsu Ramen

look at the red chili oil, and by spicy I mean SPICY but shioks!

slurpilicious soup~

Was kind of surprised when I first tasted the minced pork that was laced with lots of chili oil. It was rather cold. Probably had to mix it into the soup? The soup was nicely cloudy and flavoursome. Thankfully, not too salty too.

springy noodles

The chili oil did a good job in clinging onto the strands of sprightly noodles. Gave that extra kick with each slurp. Nice.

Ni Tamago

For menu and promotions information for Ginza Bairin JCube, here's the link to their website.

Thank you Ashley and Athena, from The Brand Elixir for the kind invitation to this event and thank you to the good people of Ginza Bairin @JCube.

It was also nice to see in person food bloggers like Charlene from Gninethree, Dawn from 365days2play, Jasper from Six&Seven and Melissa from Melicacy. Please vote for them for the Singapore Blog Awards 2012 (Best Food Blog category) here.

Bar Bar Black Sheep @ Bukit Timah

Located at Cherry Avenue, this place always seemed to have a crowd on both occassion of visit. The concept is pretty simple; it has three stalls offering Indian, Thai and Western fare. Food and beer/wine. Good combi, yes?

the Thai and western food stalls

It was post dinner when we visit, so we got some light bites to go with beer. The food was from Smok'Inn Frogz Kitchen. Had onion rings and fish fingers. Can't remember the exact prices but each were below $10. Yep, they were deep fried and very oily.

onion rings, served with ketchup

onion rings close up view

fish fingers, served with fries and tartar sauce

fish fingers and fries

The onion rings got soggy pretty fast. Had better ones elsewhere. The fish fingers were a little burnt, the batter was thicker than expected and the fish meat was soft. The fries were alright though.

Had a funny incident with the beer. Ordered a jug of Kronenbourg Blanc and the guy delivered to us, and we paid. He came back with the change. And after a few minutes, we realized we didn't have any glasses to pour out the beer. Hahaa! The guy forgot to bring us some.

finally, glasses for beer

a jug of Blanc @$25

Payments are in cash terms. This place opens till late.