Ssikkek BBQ @ United Square

Was at Ssikkek to celebrate cousin's birthday. The buffet price for adult is $24++ for dinner. Cooked dishes include teokbokki 떡볶이, japchae 잡채, porridge 죽, deep fried chicken wings, sweet sour pork etc. 

signboard

cooked food

Not a minute to be wasted as there is a 2-hour time limit for the buffet. Guessed that's the norm nowadays for Korean BBQ buffets, yes?

let's get cooking - marinated spicy chicken and pork belly

Lots of meat options, so started with pork belly and spicy chicken. The spicy chicken is recommended. However, lettuces are hot commodities as it wasn't replenished quick enough on our day of visit.

just a little bit more

While waiting for the meats, have some porridge to line the stomach or soups. The drinks, like what others had mentioned, were pretty diluted.

porridge

The place was pretty crowded but its service crew would still come by to change the grill. However, do be careful to place your bag away from the chairs near the grill as the staff managed to spill oil onto my bag while I was away at the food counter. -_-'''

beef short ribs 쇠갈비

The restaurant was accommodating to birthday celebration as they brought out clean plates for the cake to our table.

cousin's big-40 cake, baked by his lovely wife

Yahava KoffeeWorks @ Jalan Gelenggang

One of those places that either you are staying near the area, or need a car to get there. Or, you may want to follow Derrick's tips on navigating to Yahava via public transportation. How did I get there? Hehe, friends get you everywhere! Special thanks to Ivan and Hence. If you're driving, there's a public car park nearby, with limited capacity of course.

The shop itself has a large sign-board and viewable from afar. Once, you're at its doorstep, you'll notice its door handle/knob that's different from others.

Yahava has a fairly large space to accommodate cafe-goers. At its backroom, one could probably see an on-going coffee appreciation workshop in session. Barista courses are available too. Find out more from this link.

what's available

beans and brews

the mechanics

The place was pretty cosy, very relaxed vibe. Felt almost as if it has a do-as-you-wish kind of atmosphere. Ordered some koffees and cakes to sample.

collective order - affagato, the rose late (for SG50), hot chokolate, mokha and black coffee

danish and scones

cakes

Spent some time choosing the cakes. Finally, made the decision to try matcha and the earl grey cakes.

matcha cake

earl grey cake

Preferred the green tea cake for its spongier and lighter texture. The earl grey cake was a tad too dense for my liking.

In terms of drinks, I totally dig the Rose Latte. You'll love this if you like drinking bandung. However, it can do with more coffee. Well, I did mix it a bit with the Kintamani black coffee and it tasted good!

Rose Latte

my order of Mokha @$5

Yahava KoffeeWorks

Website: www.yahava.sg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YahavaSG

The Prata Place @ Upper Thomson Road

This place is somewhere near Springleaf Garden at Upper Thomson Road and definitely needed a car to get there. Remember the Ultimate Hawker Food Fest that was curated by Ian, Maureen and Derrick sometime in October last year? On its 'Ultimate Ingredient' menu, The Prata Place had showcased its Prata with Poached Egg w/ Hollandaise. It's called the Blaster Plaster! But the sauce seemed to be different...

Blaster Plaster

perfectly runny yolk

The Blaster Plaster really tasted like an angmonized prata. It was more of a regular egg benny but on a crispy pancake instead. Didn't really go well with the curry though. It was like a novelty to eat this with teh tarik, but I prefer the usual pratas with strong curry. Speaking of teh tarik, it's almost customary to have it with pratas, don't you think? Or Nescafe tarik. That works too.

teh tarik less sweet

If weather is too hot, have a glass of teh-o-limau ais (iced tea with lime. That's a thirst quencher!

weather too hot? Or, if curry was too hot

The Ultimate Murtabak is on menu, so we got ourselves that. Ultimate anything, should be worth trying, right? This murtabak has tandoori chicken, mushrooms, onions and cheese. Came in a good size for sharing. Loaded with ingredients and tasted so good with the chicken or fish curry. Personal favourite was the fish curry. Yums and spicier.

Ultimate Murtabak

loaded with ingredients

For munchies that doesn't fill you up, there's pappadum. But I'd think pappadum goes better with rice that's drenched in curry sauce, and with some delicious fried chicken.

snack

Then, the latest on the menu would be Umami 50 which has chicken luncheon meat, chicken floss and mayo. Glad that we ordered this, as it was really tasty! Ate it with fish curry and the combo was just wow. Spicy, savoury and sweet at the same time. Lovely and definitely recommended. Don't forget the fish curry sauce.

Umami 50

Pacamara Boutique Coffee Roasters @ Jalan Pelatina

Located at Jalan Pelatina Upper Thomson Road, this place was crowded during the weekend morning of our visit. Long queues outside after 10am. This place is at the same stretch that houses One Man Coffee, just that it's at the other corner.

beautiful tarts

menu

Coffee with milk comes in a 3 size options; 3, 5 or 7 ounces. 3 ounces would be something of an espresso lungo size. Three ounces is about 90ml of liquid. Tiny when compared to the smallest size of say, Starbucks. Chose the Roadster blend, for a more chocolatey flavour.

Roadster blend 3 ounces @$4.50

cold brew coffee

For food, we had the breakfast set, pancakes and a lemon tart. Shared the food as there are other stops to make that day.

The breakfast set was good, liked the jam that came along with it. Spread it up, mop up the yolk and eat together with those saltish bits of bacon and salmon. Yums.

Signature Breakfast @$20

Pancakes @$16

The pancake stack of course, pretty to look at. It was soft and pillowy. Liked it with lots of maple syrup and mascarpone. Not overly sweet, just nice.

let's drizzle

good for sharing

The green apple looking tart was very pretty, but we got the lemon one instead. The lemony zing was nice and not too sharp. Best consumed with a cup of hot coffee.

lemon tart

good things must share

Pacamara have some interesting craft beers too (for example, milk stout?!), if you fancy that in the morning or on a hot sunny afternoon. 

crowded

Cashback when shopping at Rakuten!

If you're already an avid Rakuten/Groupon/Expedia/Zalora/Taobao shopper, good news! Did you know that there is a company that offers cashback when you shop at online shopping portals such as Rakuten, GroupOn and even Expedia! Yes, no kidding. It exists. Check out ShopBack, a Singaporean-led startup that offers cashback reward ranging from 1% to 12%, depending on portal. This means, one could get paid for shopping online. Interesting.

Here are some online write-ups about ShopBack:

• https://vulcanpost.com/174511/steady-silent-and-deadly-inside-singapores-hidden-gem-startup-shopback/
• https://sg.news.yahoo.com/shopback-online-version-great-singapore-050900409.html
• http://e27.co/shopback-nabs-us600000-funding-led-east-ventures-20150309/

 So, wanting to test this out, I went ahead and registered for an account at ShopBack

ShopBack website

so many merchants in ShopBack

Been eyeing the things in Rakuten for sometime, and just missed the Snaffles offer the other time when it was doing a 1-for-1 for its catch-cakes. But never mind, this time round, found something at half-price. But I was also looking at Japanese Rice and some curries... so many things to buy, so little funds...

ooh, Japanese liquor at half price!

this combination also looks good!

In the end, I chose to get the half-priced liquor. Completed the transaction but nothing seemed to happen with the ShopBack. Hmm, let's get details about Rakuten's cashback here.


Oh, need to wait one day for the cashback to be added to the account. Oops, false alarm! As stated, the cashback will be tracked after 1 day and redeemable after 60 days. True enough, at the next day, the account shows the Rakuten transaction.

pending redeem

All in all, it was a fun experience and there were some other promotions going-on at Rakuten. There was an extra 10% off for Tuesday shopping and an extra 5% when paid via Mastercard using a promo code. So on-top of the 5% cashback via ShopBack, in total, one may save anything from 5% to 15% more. Good right?

For Rakuten, one need to register for an account to shop in Rakuten as guest shoppers will not get to enjoy the cashback. So do remember to read the terms and conditions to make the most out of your online shopping experience!

If you have registered for ShopBack account, and the individual accounts to shop at GroupOn and Expedia, you can click on the links to start shopping (check out the terms and conditions). ShopBack has also conveniently listed out the available coupons and voucher codes that are applicable at the partnering site, on theirs. Most are time-sensitive, so do look-out for it!

Have fun and may you find the best deals!

Updates:

Order received 2 days after ordering from Rakuten - Sake Cellar

bubble wrapped

ta-dah!