Marché Mövenpick @ Suntec City

It's been ages, Marché. Visited the one at Suntec City Tower 3 on a weekend, for a lunch gathering with university friends. The place is kids friendly, with a small play area where children can climb up and down the treehouse, except that it was not really a treehouse. The queue was quite daunting at about 1230pm.

If you have small children, then it will quite worth it to get the kids meal. For just $10.90, there's a main course and one glass of juice. There's also a free paper mask that the kid can colour. Nice.

kids meal

free mask with color pencils

The place is not very big but it does offer quite a good selection. For example, plenty of greens for healthy eaters, pizza made upon order, paella, the all-time-favourite rosti counter, savoury and sweet crepes, grilled meats and seafood, soups, oysters, cakes, drinks etc.

Being market style concept, just bring the Marché card issued upon entrance to the food stall that you are interested in. Make your order and pass them to card to swipe. Collect food, cutleries and enjoy.

vegetable counter

salads

savoury crepe

Finally decided on roast beef for lunch. The beef is sliced upon order. The staff was pretty generous with the meat, but the table was aghast when the plate was brought back. "It's raw!" Everyone protested. Hmm, actually quite true. Hence, to be safe, decided to bring it back to the grill station.

roast beef @ $24+

The beef was then grilled for about or minute or two on each sides. Was a tad worried that it might become too tough. Fortunately, the meat was still good! Meat was still tender and the slightly charred area was really flavourful. Liked the portion of the meat. Carnivorous cravings, satisfied. The meat was served with salad leaves, a dollop of mash potato and brown sauce. Liked mine with mustard.

grilled beef

thankfully pink

As the children were busy at the play area, the adults chit-chatted. Was considering desserts and coffee. The coffee counter do have a limited selection of cakes, pastries and bread. The staff recommended to get a set for just $4.90. The set has coffee/tea and a cake. For more pricey cakes, a top-up is required. For this coffee counter, one need to pay in cash instead. I think that's fine as one cup of coffee is already $3.50.

cake and coffee set @$4.90

insides

Actually, the cake tasted quite good. Dark and rich, yums. Good value.

Real Food 真食 @ Novena Square 2

Located at basement of Novena Square 2, this place is popular as it serves food suitable for vegetarians and vegans in a cafe setting. And, for the record, the food tasted good. Concept is simple: Queue, Order and Pay at the counter. Get a basket containing the cutlery with a number tag and food shall be served to you at your table.

A drink that I quite liked is the Daylesford organic carbonated drink of the Lemon Lime & Bitters flavour. Nice and refreshing.

Daylesford Organic Carbonated Drink - Lemon Lime & Bitters @$5.80

The wait for food, did take a while. But the place had stocked up on magazines and books, so feel free to browse. During the time of visit, saw copies of Monocle magazine too.

dumpling soup (vegan, soy) @$7

The dumpling soup looked good with those plump dumplings and with some leafy vegetables for a dose of green. Ingredients included tofu, mushrooms, carrots, french beans and chestnuts.

Mine was from the All-Day-Breakfast menu; the Rise-n-Shine Breakfast. It has a side of potato salad, lots of salad leaves, sauteed mushrooms and two sunny-side up eggs buried underneath the greens, and half a grilled tomato, served with bread. What a lovely warm crusty bread to go with the eggs. Would've been perfect if the eggs were runny.

Rise-n-Shine Breakfast @$9.80

Old Hong Kong Kitchen @ Novena Square 2

Was in the mood for some dim sum. What's my current must-have for dim sum in a non-buffet setting? Simple steamed cha siew bao (叉烧包). Its centre must've burst forth to reveal the delicious lustrous fillings of sweet cha siew. The darker savoury variant is preferred but nowadays, most are of the reddish variant cha siew.

At Old Hong Kong Kitchen, this week's cover charge was the braised sweet beancurd skin.

cover charge

For our drinks, the service staff recommended the rose tea with goji (枸杞) berries. Ok. But it was such a tiny pot with equally small dainty cups, that we had to have it refilled multiple times since there were four of us sharing this. Very light tasting, slight sweetness but missing the fragrant rose smell.

rose tea with goji berries

Let's roll out the dim sums! Ooh, we ordered 7 baskets of stuffs to share amongst the four of us.

boluo (菠萝包) bun

If bo luo bun means pineapple bun, then how come it doesn't contain any pineapple? 'Coz it just look like a pineapple with the baked cruncy top, that's all.

Those crunchy bits at the top, what are they made of? Recipes indicated that it's made of cake/bread flour, caster sugar, butter, egg yolk, milk powder, evaporated milk, condensed milk and baking powder.

The above Q&A was just to satisfy my own curiosity.

deep fried prawn beancurd roll

The deep fried item was crunchy and served piping hot. The sauce does enhance the taste. Quite nice.
Next, serve me a soft fluffy cha siew bao with delicious moist savoury sweetish pork fillings. Yummy.

cha siew bao

pan-fried turnip cake (萝卜糕)

3 treasures chee cheong fun (三宝猪肠粉)

The turnip cake and cheong fun were pretty run-of-the-mill. The turnip cake lacked the chinese sausage fragrance. The cheong fun sheet was nicely chewy and not too thick but the fillings distribution was not quite even. This version has scallops, prawns and cha siew in its own strips.

Alas, by the time I remembered about the har gao, the dumpling skin had already hardened. =(
Nevertheless, this har gao was packed tightly with firm prawn in it.

har gao (虾饺)

Just when we thought that was the end of lunch, out came the deep fried yam puffs. Oops, everyone had forgotten about this order.

deep fried yam puffs (芋头角)

The yam/taro dumplings were nicely done with adequately crispy outershell and biting into this dumpling yielded a very nice prominent yam taste to it. But, since we had so many items prior with the same cha siew fillings, this was unfortunately rendered towards monotony.

The meal cost about $76 for 4-pax. The dim sum items ranged from $5+ to $6+ each.