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La Fondue @ Dempsey Hill Green

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http://www.lafondue.com.sg/

So I had a date with Joyce tonight. We had a reservation at 7:30pm for 2 persons at La Fondue @ Dempsey Hill Green.

We arrived about 15 minutes early but the restaurant was empty so they seated us right away. We decided against ordering cheese fondue, I think Joyce’s stomach probably couldn’t handle it after suffering from food poisoning all week. But of course we had to get some sort of chocolate fondue for dessert.

For main courses, Joyce had something called “Sea of Life”, I think it was a sea bass roasted and covered with a buttery cream sauce and served with a small side salad.

I had the Cajun Crusted Fish (not sure what type of fish but a white one) and also served with a side salad. I really enjoyed the greens, had some spicy arugula and some bitter greens. I miss salads.

The main courses did come out a bit slow though. The guy said he just caught the fish so he apologized for taking so long… ha ha right? Thought he was a bit of a joker.

Then guess what happened? Around 7:45pm, I get a call on my phone and I see it’s the La Fondue restaurant calling me. I’m like “huh?” Why would they be calling me if we’re already sitting down? So I answered the phone and I was afraid maybe I’d made the reservation at the wrong La Fondue location… but nope, the waiter was literally behind the bar calling me confirming my reservation and wondering where we were… I said we’re sitting inside the restaurant. He’s like “oh…” and politely hangs up and comes out to apologize. It was hilarious!! Joyce and I were cracking up laughing… the waiter said there were 2 reservations for Jennifer, both party of 2, and I guess he didn’t know which one was our party…

But the only reason I can’t fully believe it is that there aren’t that many people in Singapore named “Jennifer”…

Oh well, at least we got free entertainment with our dinner… the rest of the night he kept on doing silly things like when I waved him down for the check, he turned around to look outside the window like I was waving at someone outside, before coming over… so funny…

Anyways, now for the fondue… Joyce and I had a bit of a hard time decided since they have about 12 different types of chocolate fondues: orange, mint, caramel, cookies & cream, white, dark, milk, etc

In the end we chose the cookies & cream dark chocolate fondue because we found out the cookies were Oreos!! Boy, we made the right choice…

It is also served with a platter of fruits and ice cream… but it wasn’t really enough for how much chocolate there was so we ordered an additional plate of fruits (without ice cream).

The fondue pot is a bit different at this restaurant, they use a double boiler instead of a candle… basically a stainless steel pot with water inside and the ceramic bowl with the chocolate is placed in the steel pot. This is all put on a electric hot plate built into the table. This is probably easier to take care of even though more expensive.

Our dinner for 2 cost SGD$100, after a 15% discount from using American Express.

Next time I want to try the cheese fondues… they have many different types of cheeses in their fondue pots. This will have to be after Joyce recovers though… she actually tried oral charcoal for her food poisoning and found that it works well. It’s so strange to me that charcoal comes as tablets in Singapore whereas in the US, I think it only comes in a gel in a tube or powder to mix and it’s hard to find. Charcoal in Singapore can be bought at any pharmacy by consulting with a pharmacist.


Joyce with her charcoal tablets

Still learning the tricks of the trade here…

I’m leaving for US in the morning! Yay!

Chinese class

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Today I had the Chinese teacher all to myself since my other two classmates didn’t show up. I think I like her more now after having some one-on-one time with her. She used to irritate me a bit because I think she was a bit too boastful about her accomplishments and didn’t know how to be humble. I don’t like people who preen their own feathers. But I learned a bit more her today and she actually took the time to try to understand my questions and answer them. She used to just assume to know what I was going to ask and answer before I finished asking.

She taught me something interesting though so thought I’d share… it’s a Chinese phrase to call certain ladies:

San(4) pei(2) xiao(3) jie(3)

Hope that Hanyu Pinyin is right…

Literally means something like “three young girls for company”. The “three” doesn’t mean there are actually three girls but that they are willing to do three “things” for you. Namely: Eat, Drink, & Sleep.

Chinese phrases sometimes are so appropriate and it’s quite creative on how they make up words that they don’t already have.

I’ll be missing 3 classes though since I’m leaving for US! Will try to be good and study… hmm…

Farewell Dinners

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Ron has been attending lots of “farewell” dinners this week. It’s the end of the period so some of the students are returning to Fontainbleu so have been getting together to enjoy Singapore’s restaurants and chat before leaving.

Tonight we went to Thai Express at Holland Village. It’s so strange that we’ve been there quite a few times this year after not even having step foot in their all of last year. On this visit, the had newly printed menus, no more dog eared, food stained menus. Quite snazzy.

I tried the Thai Seafood Laksa. It was very nice. It sort of tasted like green curry noodles but with extra coconut milk.

Afterwards, some of us headed to one of the bars down the street. We ended up at Wala Wala which has a one-for-one house pours and beer until 9:30pm. I got to try a different Hoegaarden beer called “Forbidden Fruits”. It’s basically a darker version of the Hoegaarden White with a slightly stronger flavor.

We stayed a bit to chat until I got too tired and had to go home. I think Ron will be going to these farewell dinners all week long.

Surprise Party and End of P4 BBQ

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Today I had an early start at the Ghim Moh wet market buying fresh fruits for today’s party. Okay, not that early but I got there around 8:30am and bough some delicious apples, pears, pineapple, longans, papaya, bananas, grapes, dragonfruit, jambu, blueberries, strawberries, and corn (for tonight’s BBQ).

Joyce, Alex, and I schemed a bit in order to throw a surprise party for my boss and our friend Siew Woon. Her birthday is actually next weekend but since I’m leaving for the US and she’ll be at a conference, we figured that today was the only day that we could celebrate with her. We thought we’d make it a surprise as well. Joyce made up a good story to have Siew Woon come over to her place to have a late lunch so we set up a wine, cheese, fruits, and chocolate fondue lunch for us.

I went over to Joyce’s around 11am to start cleaning and cutting up the fruits and setting out the cheeses. Joyce was in charge of setting up the crackers.

Siew Woon was hapily surprised and very clueless about the surprise. The look on her face when she walked in the room was priceless.

We enjoyed only 2 out of 4 of the wines we got but thoroughly stuffed ourselves with the cheese, crackers, fruits, and chocolate fondue. It was yummy and fun. Afterwards, we still had some cakes from Canele: green tea, lychee, rose, and chocolate.

I had a little nap afterwards with Joyce’s bunny:

And yes, Alex was there too hanging out with us girls:

I got home around 7pm and Ron had already started to the BBQ. He put together this BBQ to celebrate the end of P4. He got some great meats from the Swiss Butcher and BBQ’ed up a storm. Some people brought some food and I contributed the rest of our cheese & crackers, fruits, and wine. We had our BBQ near the front entrance of our condo where there is a set of swings… I love swings and it’s been years since I’ve swung so I spent most of the night relaxing over there… it was too smoky near the grill area and there were too many hungry people…

But Ron really enjoys his BBQs… beer and steak is all you need…

We smell like BBQ now though… and have lot of ant bites! Those ants there are violent, we’re never having a BBQ at that area again, it’s like being eaten alive.

Ah, good day…

Sketches at Robertson’s Walk

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This evening for Friday Foody, we went to Sketches at Robertson’s Walk. They have make-your-own-pasta and make-your-own-pizza. There are two sizes you can choose from, something like hungry size and starving size. Ron and I thought the larger size would have been enough to fill both of us. We also ordered the fried squid, garlic bread, and panna cotta.

We sat outside at a fairly large table of maybe 15 of us and there were a few diners around us but the service was excruciatingly slow… ordering 2 jugs of beer for the table (at $19 a piece) took more than 15 minutes. The food started coming out sporadically as well, the appetizers came after the pastas and one end of the table got served completely before the pizzas came out. Then at the end, the waiter told us there was no panna cotta without offering an alternative.

It’s an interesting idea for a restaurant allowing you to choose up to 3 types of pasta, the sauce, and the extras (peas, chicken, olives, etc). But the portions are quite small in that the large one can feed one person. The pizza took forever to come out. The service was quite poor and this was a Saturday night. I don’t think we’ll be going back there again, I can make this type of pasta more easily at home myself. It was quite a humid and muggy night too, I wish they had fans outside.