One on the Bund @ Fullerton Bay Hotel

We decided to try somewhere new for CNY. And headed to One on the Bund.

Wow this place has really changed from a dingy seedy harbour where people boarded dingy seedy cruise ships to a spanking shiny hotel.

The restaurant was right in the middle of the lobby, where the mama teh tarik shops used to be.

We ordered some dimsum and their signature grilled lamb.


It was crispy, and light, abit like the mock duck made of beancurd skin. But, it still smelled very strongly of lamb, and it didnt really appeal to me.


Scallop dumplings, were not bad.


The chicken feet were also not bad.


The prawn dumplings were juicy and tasty.


The killer was this plate of spring onion noodles with nothing else except 3 stalks of spring onion. Guess how much this cost? $25. Was it because of the presentation? or was there some abalone essence that dressed the noodles?

Overpriced. Very overpriced. Quality of food was average.

Happy Lunar New Year of the Metal Rabbit!!!

So the kids take photos with Rabbits, for the year of the Rabbit, geddit?


Sweetie with a Rabbit again.

Cutie with a Rabbit again.

I think they both enjoyed CNY!

Drinks China Square

I"m actually a happenin' mom, y'all!

You know how much I love being a mom to Cutie and Sweetie, and how every single little thing that they say or do makes me laugh. i look forward to evenings and weekends where it's our special bonding time, and where we get to do fun things together. Or like on Saturday, when Sweetie was still asleep and Cutie woke up earlier and we spent our time lying on the bed looking at the cracks in the ceiling and discussing the shapes (one really looked like spiderman having a poo). It's the little silly things like that which make me turn into a gooey mushy marshmallow.

Still, I sometimes do make an effort to meet up with my ex-colleagues in Raffles Place.. and have drinks!

So we headed to China Square because drinking places at Boat Quay (which is nearer) are not as nice (read: sleazier).


First up, an Italian beer. Peroni is refreshing and light, like an ale. I like.


Then a fruit beer, i think this was a pear. Also yummy.


Then, we shared some fried camembert. Always good with beer.

So all in all, a fun time. I think we were at Oosters the Belgian pub. Check out the pubs there, they all have decent happy hour prices.

Cheers!

Home Cooked CNY Goodies

Happy Lunar New Year to all of you!!!

Have you had lots of fun eating and feasting and feasting and eating?

Lots of Home Made goodies I am sure.

My DM (Dearest Momsie, for those of you who did not know) cooked up a multi course imperial feast when we went over. It came out course by course, and so she was labouring away in the kitchen for a good part of the meal.

Of course, DM's famous dishes are a family secret.. the special steamed fish disappeared as soon as it arrived on the table, as did the super delicious salt and pepper butter XL sized prawns.

Her buddha jumps over the wall soup, was slurpilicious. It had all the traditional delicacies - fish maw, japanese mushroom, sea cucumber - and was cooked for a really long time over the stove. The ingredients had to be cooked separately too. Really a labour of love that would have induced anyone to jump over the wall.


Her braised abalone with sea cucumber and dried conpoy would have also enticed mr buddha to jump over the wall again.


Her soup was such a hot favourite , she did it again for ren ri (7th day of the lunar new year), which is also everyone's birthday according to the lunar calendar.


Yums max.



She also made yu sheng for us. It's a traditional chinese new year salad, which we toss for prosperity and good luck. I love this. really do. It has so many auspicious connotations, and it's healthy.



I think I ate it about 8 times over this CNY period, which is really quite tame. Some people even eat it twice a day.


MIL made curry chicken for our reunion dinner, held on the eve.

and tumeric prawns.


And i ordered a pen cai (a braised claypot of goodies). $288 from Man Fu Yuan. it's pretty good. we liked it so much we ordered it again. IMHO, better than Tung Lok's. But as we've eaten it thrice over the past 2 years, maybe we should consider another place. Shang palace maybe. The Sichuan Palace at Westin actually served rabbit meat in their pen cai. Eeeks.

More Interesting Snacks

Apart from the locally inspired cookies from Cookie Museum I also tried a number of other interesting snacks, all in the interest of researching for this blog.

So, we have, in order of appearance and fear factor status:
1. milk candy tablets


So the milk candy is the most innocuous. It still tasted funny though. 2 tablets are the equivalent of 1 glass of milk. It tasted like compressed milk powder, and since i never liked formula milk in the first place, I couldnt like this. I prefer milo or horlicks candy, which applies the same principle of compressing a powder based drink into a tablet.


2. vacuum packed boiled chicken feet



This wasnt supposed to be a big deal since I do eat chicken feet at dim sum restaurants. But honestly these looked a little scary (a little too big). And sweetie insisted that these were "chicken hands" because of all the "fingers".


Taste-wise, they were chewier than the melt in your mouth dim sum type. Salty, but otherwise not very exciting flavour-wise.

3. preserved donkey meat


Surprisingly, everyone was game to give this a try. Donkey meat! Seriously?


It tasted a bit like canned tuna. Texture wise.


Taste-wise, it was very strongly flavoured with possibly 5 spice and MSG. Sort of like preserved ham.


All in all an interesting experiment. And I think Kong Kong took the most, and was also the most game to try.