Freshness Burger @ The Central Clarke Quay

Located at The Central Level 1, accessible by outerside of the building at a corner near the bus stop. Visited this outlet on a weekday night. Actually wanted to eat ramen but Marutama was kinda packed, so went to Kusabi but was turned away at 855pm because the service staff said last order is at 9pm. Hmmm... maybe she doubted that I could order in less than 5 minutes or the kitchen people might have already packed up for the day? Not sure.

So there I was at Freshness Burger at 9pm. The shop was empty saved for a two or three occupied tables. I ordered salsa hamburger, chicken nuggets and a cranberry soda drink. From the menu, it looked like they do not have any set meals, hence everything is ala-carte mixed and matched. Currently, they have a promotion where you can get $2 off your meal if you order a burger, a side and a drink.

dinner

The regular burgers are quite expensive. Imagine paying $6.90 for a classic burger with cheese? The salsa burger that I ordered fell under the hamburger option and costs $3.50.

salsa burger

thin patty, loads of chopped onions and lettuce

Salsa burger was enjoyable, with its tangy tomatoes. The patty was thin though.

chicken nuggets

tender and hot~

The chicken nuggets were quite a good buy at $2.80 for about 6 pieces. Served piping hot. Yums. As for the drink, I would not recommend cranberry soda to anyone. It was way too sweet and tasted strange with the soda.

Total meal costs $7.80 (after $2 discount).

SoHo7 Cafe & Bistro @ 36 Armenian Street

Located at 36 Armenian Street, this place is very near the Peranakan Museum. That is, if you know where is the Peranakan Museum located in the first place. Somewhere near Fort Canning, Hill Street and SMU. For those who are driving, there is an open space carpark nearby.

It was raining cats and dogs on the day of visit. This place is small and cosy. Not too many tables and can get rather packed at midday. Even the kitchen looked compact.

coffee counter and kitchen view

As it was brunch time, my friend ordered the eggs benedict and I followed suit with a tassie eggs benedict. Basically both plates have spinach, some dou miao, two poached eggs, two small squares of bread, and half a baked tomato. The only difference is that default eggs benedict have ham slices while mine has the smoked salmon.

For drinks, I had an espresso macchiato and later on, a latte while my friend had tea. The espresso macchiato was foamy and not too bitter.

espresso macchiato

tassie egg benedict

egg benedict

Our orders arrived in good speed. Was certainly 'eggcited' to start eating!

looked at the beautiful poached egg

yummy yellow bread

smoked salmon

tomato drizzled with sauce

The poached egg ooozes with runny yolk, which we mopped up using the yummy bread squares. But the bread was a little too tiny, not enough!

perfectly runny yolk!

However, we could taste the vinegar on the poached eggs. Maybe more hollandaise sauce would be better or less vinegar when cooking the eggs?

For desserts, we had the fruity berry stacked pancakes. It arrived looking quite pretty!

fruity berry pancakes with maple syrup, chantilly cream and cinnamon sugar dusting

What's a Chantilly cream? Fancy sounding sweetened whipped cream apparently.

chantilly cream on the side

The berries were quite sour mostly, so we really needed all the syrup, cream and sugar dustings!

fluffy pancakes

maybe it was the rainy day, but I think the latte art in my cup looked like a teru teru bozu (てるてるぼうず)

Service was efficient and friendly, plus they do serve hot water here (and iced water too, if you like). The total bill came up to about $42 for 2 pax.

Sho Teppan @ ION Orchard

Located at B3 of ION Orchard, this place was not crowded during weekday lunch hour. There was a 1-for-1 main course promotion for AMEX, so we took advantage of that.

counter where staff cooked teppanyaki and/or made lemon tea

sauces for sukiyaki and teppanyaki

pictures of diners adorning this part of the wall

We were seated at the far end of the shop, and they gave us the booth seat. Nice. We had a view of the kitchen counter top. I think they were making lemon tea in that steel pot. Spied that they took out many many bags of tea from that pot before adding loads of sugar into it.

The main dishes here are either hotpot (sukiyaki/shabu shabu) and teppanyaki. For teppanyaki, you can opt to have the staff cook the meat for you or DIY. We ordered the wagyu beef shabu shabu and wagyu beef teppanyaki (DIY). That's the most extravagant main course at $21.90++. They have kurobuta pork, chicken, scallop and seafood as well with prices ranging from $15++ onwards.

Most of the sets come with rice and salad, while the teppanyaki will get a bowl of miso soup as well. The hotpot and teppanyaki are cooked via induction cooker at your tabletop.

hotpot

teppanyaki

The hotpot has the usual vegetables, golden mushroom, tofu, one shitake mushroom and negligible amount of japanese tang hoon. The teppanyaki has loads of onions and sliced shitake mushroom with julienned carrots.

salad

teppanyaki sauce, use the wooden ladle to move the meat around in the pan

The teppanyaki beef was slightly overcooked because the meat was still left in the pan after the heat was turned off.

wagyu teppanyaki

beef with onions and mushroom, on rice

The service staff forgot to bring the meat for the shabu shabu until we reminded them to do so.

wagyu beef, with not so much marbling

pick up a slice of meat, hold it using chopstick, then immerse it into the boiling soup while saying, "Shabu...shabu...." repeat about 3 times

The shabu shabu'ed meat was much more tender because I took it out just when it was about to turn from pink to cooked. However, the sukiyaki sauce was slightly too salty for my liking. Preferred the teppanyaki sauce plus the sesame sauce that came together with the shabu shabu set.

We paid $19 (inclusive of taxes and a drink) per pax.

Tea Lounge @ The Regent Hotel

Located at the Regent Hotel at Cuscaden Road. If you are walking from Orchard MRT, head towards Wheelock and then towards Hilton Hotel until you come towards a small road at the Forum. I was a bit lost there, so I asked the security uncle the location of Regent Hotel. He said alot of people had asked him the same question. Hahaa!

the back of Regent Hotel, if you're walking from Forum

hotel lobby

Tea Lounge reception

our table

On weekdays 12-5pm, they have the English Afternoon Tea set @$36++ per pax. Can choose 2 drinks; for example free flow of coffee and one flavour of tea, or two flavors of tea with refillable hot water. There are about 12 selections of tea flavours to choose from. If you are not into coffee nor tea, then there is the last option of chocolate (hot/cold) drink.

menu

teacup with strainer

tea room blend

Tried the tea room blend and afternoon darjeeling. These flavours sits well with conservative tea drinker like me. Not too exotic. There is one really smoky flavoured leaves from China with name that is too funky for me to remember! The rose flavoured was really fragrant and nice too.

coffee

sugar cubes

We sipped tea and chit-chatted while waited for the finger sandwiches.

finger sandwiches

roast beef horseradish sandwich (right)

roast beef

The roast beef finger sandwich has a certain pungent smell to it (probably from horseradish?). An acquired taste.

guessed this is the free range chicken on brioche?

smoked salmon on sunflower bread

organic egg mayo

is this the McLelland smoked cheddar cheese on the right?

The best tasting finger sandwich, I felt was the brown colored bread (soft) with cheese (McLelland smoked cheddar?). Nice and yummy. All in all, the finger sandwiches were quite 'dry'. And looks can be deceptive. After that plate of petite looking finger sandwiches, I felt the tummy filling up fast, especially when combined with two cups of hot tea.

After the finger sandwiches, out came the 3-tiered pastries. It was really pretty to look at. Somehow it lends to the atmosphere of a 'proper' English afternoon tea.

3-tiered pastries

First tier, was the scones. Plain and raisin scones. Scones with jam, lemon curd and clotted cream. The best combination ever!

scones

clotted cream

lemon curd

strawberry preserve

yummy!

Devonshire clotted cream (should be quite high in fats content!) gave the scones a smooth and creamy bite while the strawberry preserve or lemon curd added a touch of sweetness to the buttery coarseness.

a bite of scone, a sip of tea

Second tier was the savouries. By now, the pace is definitely slowing down.

savouries

crispy pastry (cheese straw)

sausage pastry

pie

mushroom spinach quiche

cross section of quiche

I liked the pie on this savoury plate, while most of the people in the group preferred the quiche. After having our fill on the savouries, we were all quite stuffed. Before starting on the sweets, we had our pot of tea changed to a different flavour.

sweets

am quite tickled by this dessert, looks like a smiley face with sunglasses

sour alert!

is that a flower petal?

nice mousse like dessert with berry

chocolate truffle

madeleine (didn't like this, as it didn't taste fresh)

raspberry coconut delice

The service crew were friendly and obliged with hot water refills, more clotted cream and preserves. We spent a leisurely two hours or so at the lounge. An indulgence indeed.

We paid $34 per pax as there was a UOB credit card promotion.