粥面故事 @ Minzuyuan Road, Beijing

Located at No. 2 Minzuyuan Road, Chaoyang District of Beijing. This outlet was still open for snacks when we reached the hotel at about 230am in the morning. The other option would be McDonalds but we wanted to try our first local food.

order here

shop interior

waiting for food

It's like an oriental fast food joint that serves porridge, noodles, rice and side dishes. Individual order of rice or noodles costs around ¥10 - ¥20 but top it up a little more to somewhere around ¥25 to get a set that consist of either a drink or a 肉夹馍 (rou jia mo, a kind of chinese burger), and a salad.

梅菜扣肉

delivery is available

肉夹馍 (rou jia mo)

Also tried side dishes like pancakes and vegetable guo tie.

vegetable guo tie (锅贴)

白菜牛肉饼

flat piece of dough with thin spread of beef (oily)

Its rice dishes and century egg porridge with lean meat was quite nice. Average spend per pax would be around SGD5+ for a set meal.

Crystal Jade @ Causeway Point Woodlands

Everywhere seemed rather packed on this public holiday and it was difficult to find a restaurant that can accommodate 7 pax with no reservations. Was told of a 30 minutes wait for the first restaurant that we enquired. Fortunately, Crystal Jade managed to get us seated within 2 minutes.

Ordered a pot of pu-er tea while we contemplated on the dishes.

pu-er tea

table for bigger groups

wet towel

Dad wanted to try fried rice, so we got a medium plate to share on top of dishes like tofu, vegetable, pork, chicken and steam rice.

braised pork with preserved vege (梅菜扣肉)

The steel burner not only gleames and shines but it did a great job in heating up the food. So much so that the waitress had to turn off the fire after less than a minute.

don't underestimate the fire

fatty portion was nice

The 梅菜扣肉 dish was not too salty and the ratio of fat to meat was just 1:4. Surprisingly, there wasn't alot of preserved vege in this dish.

Vegetables is a must, so we had spinach stir fried with garlic.

spinach (菠菜)

Loved the greens. Nicely tender and none of that 'old' fibrious texture.

spicy chilies

beancurd dish

chicken with black snow fungus

The fried rice was a tad dry, so the bubbling sauce from the chicken dish made a good companion. The chicken dish tasted quite homely.

Service in general was good. The staff who took our orders would come by repeatedly and ask if we needed to add anymore dishes as she strongly feels that our order was insufficient.

Seoul Yummy @ The Central, Clarke Quay

Located at Level 3 of The Central. Had a late dinner with my niece. First impression of the place? It felt somewhat smallish.

Placed our order and was served with complimentary banchan right after. Liked the anchovies, tofu and kimchi.

kimchi, anchovies, tofu, peanuts, radish and potato

For drinks, I had the Korean pear drink (@$3.90++). The glass was rather slim so one could finish the drink in no time. It tasted kind of familiar. A bit similar to Qoo minus the jelly and substituted with small pear cubes.

Korean pear

My niece wasn't feeling hungry so we ordered small snacks to share.

fried kimchi dumplings (@$6.90++)

closer view

seafood pancake (@$7.90++)

The kimchi dumplings and seafood pancake were disappointing, in terms of size, price and taste.

tender beef (light portion @$9.90++)

The beef was sweetish and nice. This was a smaller portion. The regular ones would costs about six dollars more.

Service was intriguing. The lady who brought out the dishes to our table was sullen looking and deposited the items onto the table disinterestingly.

Dinner for two costs around $38.

Pinos Pizza and Pasta @ Wisma Thrifty, Petaling Jaya

Located at a little rundown looking Wisma Thrifty (there's a Courts inside) at Jalan Barat, Petaling Jaya, a friend bought us there to try simple Italian food.

And by simple, it means that the menu has only that few items. The mains consist only of pizza and pasta. Just 10 types of pizza and 8 types of pasta. That's it. A no frills joint.

quaint serving dish

For pizza, we tried their Super Special aka "what also have" kind of pizza. It has mozzarella cheese, chicken, capsicum, seafood, pineapple, anchovies and olives.

Super Special Pizza

thin crust

We liked. Not a big pizza, perhaps just nice for two pax, although I suspect a guy could finish this on his own.

Carbonara

Also tried the Carbonara and boy, it was tasty! Yums! The sauce was just right, not too watery, flavourful and noodles well cooked. Best of all, the cream was not overpowering. Polished it up in seconds.

Also tried another pasta dish, the Tony's Special Ala Mama. This has the tomato based sauce, anchovies, chicken sausage, olives and lots of chili padi. Hahaa, my friend had to reach out for her cold drink every now so often!

Prices for the pasta and pizza ranged between RM12 to RM18, if not wrong.

Paradise Dynasty @ Lot One Choa Chu Kang (Part II)

Birthday lunch treat from bro, yippee! It's weekend plus Mother's Day celebration, and that meant the queue was about 10-15 minutes wait.

Nevertheless, we got a comfy table and the floor manager/supervisor was apologetic about the longer waiting time. Liked her pro-activeness in offering explanation, and it made us feel valued as customers. Good approach!

tick your orders

Ordered the Paradise Dynasty 4 Flavours Pork Dumplings (those signature colourful xiao long baos), appetiser of beef organ and a prawn fried rice.

spicy beef organ cold dish (@$8.80++)

beef tripe and sliced beef shank

The spicy beef organ cold dish was enjoyable. Lots of heat but shioks.

Prawn Fried Rice with vegetables (@$10.80++)

yummy looking

吃饭咯~

The fried rice was nice and ample enough to feed two pax comfortably. Purposely chose this prawn fried rice because it has chopped vege bits in it. So pretty!

Dynasty 4 Flavours Pork Dumplings

from top, clockwise: cheese, original, foie gras, crab roe

The colourful xiao long bao's indeed made me want to take a bite into them and to discover how does these exotic flavours tasted like.

I would not have been able to imagine how does a cheese xiao long bao is suppose to taste like. Could you?

cheese pork dumpling

cheesy strand

insides of cheese xiao long bao

Actually the cheese dumpling tasted like the regular xiao long bao, with just that tiny bit of cheese inside. It's like 98% pork dumpling original taste with 2% cheese hint.

The foie gras was somewhat indecipherable. It's definitely different tasting but it also doesn't seem to taste nor smell like the foie gras that we know.

crab roe pork dumpling

So the curiosity for these exotic flavoured xiao long baos were finally put to rest with this visit.
 
The service here, in overall was quite good. Tea was topped up without us having to ask for it. A meal for two would typically cost around $20 per pax.