Monthly Archives: February 2008

Sahara at Boat Quay and Max Brenner Chocolate Bar at Esplanade

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http://picasaweb.google.c…rennerChocolate

Click on title for photo album.

Today Joyce and I spent the day shopping on Orchard Rd before heading to Boat Quay to meet up with Ron, Timo, and Elina for dinner. This is the first time I’ve eaten at Boat Quay but I’ve walked by there before and I don’t like the people who stand outside their restaurants trying to convince you to come inside. They usually sort of get in your way and shove menus into your face to draw you inside… but Ron wanted to go out there to eat since they were going to check out some bars later on.

We had dinner at Sahara, North Indian and Arabian Cuisine.


Afterwards Joyce and I went to River Hongbao again to check out the fireworks but there were none… either we missed it already or there wasn’t any planned.

But then we treated ourselves to some ice cold chocolate shakes at Max Brenner Chocolate Bar. A couple jumped in front of us to get a table which was a table shared by two other couples… we waited a bit longer but ended up getting our own table only for the two of us. Joyce had a strawberry and dark chocolate shake and I had a milk chocolate banana shake. The strawberry flavor was quite light though, the original version is supposed to be white chocolate (which isn’t really chocolate). But the banana one was pretty nice.

I look forward to going back there again to try their famous fondue.

Lemongrass Thai Restaurant at the Heeren

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The second day of the CNY holiday… again nothing much to do because things are still mostly closed but the movie theaters were open so we went to see the movie called CJ7. It’s a great movie for kids and adults, at least I was laughing and having a good time watching the movie.

Afterwards we went for coffee at the The Coffee Club before exploring Orchard Rd to see if any places were open to shop. The big department stores Takashimaya, Isetan, Tang’s, etc were all closed. Quite disappointing. So we finally decided to go find something to eat.

We ended up at the Heeren Shops at the Lemongrass Thai Restaurant. The place was pretty empty so it was easy to get a large table. We thought it’d be a good deal too since they had a big sign out front where it said we’d get 15% off for using our American Express card.


I enjoyed the meal, especially the pomelo salad. But when we got the bill and tried to pay for Amex, that’s when we got upset. As I mentioned, there was a huge sign out front stating that you get a discount if you use your Amex. The waitstaff told us, “oh… it doesn’t apply on public holidays and today is a public holiday”. So we asked them why they have a huge sign out front… they just looked blankly at us with no answer.

We paid the bill and I don’t think we’ll ever go there again.

River Hongbao at Esplanade Park

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We spent the day relaxing at home but started feeling antsy in the evening and decided to go find some dinner. Since it’s Chinese New Year today, most shops and restaurants are closed but there was a festival of sorts going on at Esplanade Park called “River Hongbao”. It’s a yearly evening during the two weeks of Chinese New Year. They were to have fireworks tonight so we decided we’d try to go check it out and find ourselves some dinner.

Upon arriving to Esplanade Park, we could already smell our dinner… Taiwanese stinky tofu! You could really smell it as you excited the MRT station. The taste was not bad but not quite the same as Taiwan. But as close as you could get. We stayed to watch the fireworks which were quite small in scale but I guess since they had it planned every night for 4 nights, it couldn’t be too spectacular or else it’d be really expensive.

We ended up eating some Taiwanese sausage, Taiwanese chicken chop, ice cream, takoyaki… sounds like a lot of junk food, huh? It was good 😛


It was super crowded though so after an hour or so, we got tired of having to push through the crowd and decided to come home.

Chinese New Year Eve Dinner

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I thought it’d be a quiet day at work but I was wrong. It was very very busy up until the last half an hour. We had a few last minute orders that had problems so it took a while to clarify things but everything got done in time so that we could close at 1:30pm and everyone could go home to spend time with their family on CNY eve.

Here is our Cancer Centre crew (missing a few people who are on leave or working in the lab downstairs). The girls arranged to have everyone wear red today, I swear that I’m wearing a red skirt 🙂

Ron arranged to have our own Chinese New Year eve dinner at our apartment since there were quite a few people staying in SGP for the holidays and didn’t have family here. He did most of the cooking, I only helped where I could.

Our menu included the following:
Roast duck
Pork bone soup with turnips and pork balls
Lemon chicken
Sweet & sour shrimp
Fried rice
Vegetarian vermicelli
Fresh vegetables with dip
French beans
Kang kong with garlic
Taiwanese style sausage with raw garlic
Steamed fish
Yu sheng with salmon
Fresh fruits
Ice cream
Chinese snacks

We ate quite a lot. See here:


We did our own home “yu sheng”. You can actually buy the ingredients at the grocery store and then add the salmon (or any type of fish). The ingredients are things like fried won tons, pickled ginger, peanuts, sesame seeds, and many other little packages of things that I didn’t recognize. Ron’s classmate Jackson suggested we add some other fresh vegetables because it was pretty colorless so we added carrots and cucumbers and celery.

I hope that everyone enjoyed.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

KTV and more steamboat

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This afternoon we went to KTV with our friends Alex and Joyce. We went to K Box on Orchard Rd in Cineleisure. I actually don’t enjoy KTV because I have a terrible voice but Ron enjoys singing and if he’s familiar with the song, can sing pretty well. But, the rest of the group was beyond amazing… they should all quit their real jobs and go sing instead 🙂

Alex singing his heart out (in Cantonese and Mandarin!)

Ron having an “emotional” moment:

After 4 hours of singing (about $25 per person, kind of expensive because of GST and service fees), we went to Chinatown to have steamboat with another group of friends. The name of the place was Golden Viva on Mosque St. The cost for steamboat was $18.80 per person and it was for individual steamboat pots and all you can eat. You order the dishes and they bring it to your table rather than having buffet style.

This is the type of fuel they use for heating our steamboats:

This is the spicy steamboat… it was very very spicy and I don’t recommend it unless you like the tingling type of spice that doesn’t go away easily 😛 I thought I could handle it but ended up scooping a lot of the spicy oil out.

To help with neutralizing the spice, we tried some Beijing beer:

Chinatown was very festively decorated for the Chinese New Year:

Year of the Rat:

The week will be short because of the 2 days we have off on Thurs and Fri for CNY and Weds is a half-day so we get off at 1:30pm. It’ll be interesting since this is the first time that I’ll spend the CNY in an Asian country.