SUSHI, SMOOSHIE

I never used to like rice but with sushi, I temporarily convert my dislikes into do-able. The Japanese can do that to you. It's pretty funny how I used to be so picky about what went into my mouth and now, I've become adventurous all in the name of "passione"...the tireless pursuit for ultimate happiness in the simple things in life - medium rare beef steak (wagyu, no wagyu, what's the diff?), reverse California maki (best done in Akashi), and steamed custard bun nuked by sunset-orange salted egg (of course, only at Imperial Treasure).

I totally dig when Madonna alerts me with "Get ready to jump now, baby. Get ready to jump."

Sitting in a restaurant, not knowing what you ordered and having no idea why, is like jumping into a seemingly calm lake with your clothes on. You don't know what's in the water, you don't care. You only know one thing, there's no turning back. Like when I was in Amici @ Holland Village the other day, I was in my usual "just because I feel like it" mood. But I really wished I could have turned back and headed for the nearest roti prata mama shop. I actually stayed on with my friend where we were adequately tortured with aglio olio which tasted like soggy salted pretzels, and a pizza with limp yellow slices of Asian tomatoes on Asian cheese - all these at a self-professed AUTHENTIC ITALIAN restaurant. Seriously. Seriously.

I don't know why I'm ranting. I guess I felt conned. Aiyoh.

SCANDALOUS

I LOVE EATING. I LOVE EATING IN HONG KONG. It's sooooo fabulous-o. I don't see why people here aren't as fat as they should be. They are constantly chomping on some carb-central snack in a local joint for breakfast or slurping smoky noodles at a popular cha tien. Expect to get shoved walking from one cramped street to another even more crowded one. Personal space is ignored by the middle-aged auntie rushing on foot to her yum cha lunch with her mahjong friends. Or by the busy city taxi driver who is grabbing his first meal of the day when the sun's blasting in all her fury, and the maddening tourist crowd thickens.

Of course, I joined in the thick of the masticating action the second I stepped onto this very yummylicious city. Wanna see? Amazing eats at plebeian prices. Check it out, folks. Must-see, must-try, must-cry mum-mum for the change in your pocket. Really cheap lah. Cheep cheep.

Sweetened pear tea is hot stuff in a mug, with a must-bite into french-like toast with a squarish slab of oily butter and drenched in home-made maple syrup. Very rich, very me :) Personally, the girlie version of carb-infested snack-ness is the butter toast interlaced with well-behaved condensed milk (i.e. not dripping at the sides).

Hawt.

Fashion On Your Plate

Have you been to Brown Sugar? It was my first time last week. It's in Stardus Clubhouse. A frosted door claims its name to makan fame, which I easily walked pass unknowingly, ending up at the end of the corridor. I found myself in the communal bathroom. Where was the bistro anyway?

I backed up a number of steps and ah ha! Found the frosted door and the not-so-conspicuous Brown Sugar logo smiling at me. It's not a very big space but I quickly nestled myself against

the soft couch and comfy cushions. If not for my friends' arrival to the table, I would have taken a well-sought-after snooze. Very tired that evening, man.

We ordered a sea of stuff, much to my delight! And everything looked gorgeous! (best said with a posh British accent)

Each plate had an equally gorgeous title attached to them too...hmmmmmmm...

Deconstructed apple salad with walnuts, Wagyu beef burger with tossed salad, fresh cod with slim-wedge fries, aglio olio made friendly with pine nuts, molten lava with Varlhona chocolate meshed with vanilla ice-cream, pear tartin paired with honey & fig ice-cream....the list goes on.

I'm gonna check out the lamb the next time I sashay my way to this Mohamed Sultan 'do. If they do good lamb, they must be good. I couldn't help but compare them to Wild Rocket though. Similar genre of food and emphasis on presentation and tastes. Which one I prefer? Ssssssssh...Let me lamb it before I reveal this succulent secret.

They were all yummy-doodles and oh-so puh-ree-tee. A must-do for a cosy third date or a fun reunion with close friends or even a casual business lunch to feed the hungry client.

Fantasize with these pictures. Very gorgeous, very me ;D

The More I See You, The More I Love You

Soooooo death-defyingly Jill-o-licious is the sticky toffee pudding I just had at Highlanders @ Clarke Quay. Just had, as in a few hours ago! A girlfriend of ours is in town for a few weeks from Sydney. It's so fun to catch up after a long while. And you know girls, we talk and talk and talk about every nitty gritty thing. Hah :)

Anyhoo, the sweet-o-rama dessert engaged with chocolate chip cookie ice-cream and bordered with a mini sliver of almond biscotti was ab fab, y'all! It's sweet enough to make you drool for more, and yet not overly sweet to cause you a sugar crash the next day.

I dislike toffee on its own. The candy looks, tastes and smells synthetic, very manufactured. Ugh. But this toffee was so NOT! This glossy remake from butter, milk and molasses or plain sugar was rockin' with the malt whiskey that was generously seeped into the toffee cake mixture.

Complimented with chewy chocolate ice-cream that was D to the E to the L to the I to the C-I-O-U-S, it was mighty fine. This was one plate you couldn't pull away from me, at least not for long. When the pudding arrived, everyone around the table wanted a taste. So the white china did do its tour and was voted "very good" by four gregarious, cuteness central ladies. "Very Good" really means wah lau, why I didn't order this? Now I have to watch her finish it but I can only have one bite. Pai seh mah, not my dessert.

Not bad for a debut appearance.

Loosen Up My Buttons, Babe

Sweet Surrender. That’s my theme song, you know the one from Sarah McLachlan. Thought I’d share with you some of the mighty fine-looking candies I’ve laid my eyes upon, and was moved to stab a fork into.

Starbucks’ strawberry tart is something, isn’t it? It’s so worth the money and the calories. The strawberry chunks are pretty big, so it does offset the sugar loaded in the rockin’ pastry...I think...I hope. Can share one. Looks teeny but really packed with grub-a-licious, so delicious, yum-in-my-tum from the L-I-C-I-O-U-S.

Carrot cake from Toast. I just can’t rave enough about it. It’s the best in the country! Crammed with chockfuls of pineapple, walnuts and raisins smooshed into real carrots and moist cake, this is the best treat to a long day or to celebrate the end of a crazy diet. Slathered with true-blue cream cheese, you’d be tempted to inhale the whole cake.

A really simple yummy-doodle treat is almond beancurd with longans, which I LOVE at The Ship. They don’t serve it all the time, but when they do, you wish they could serve it in a bigger sundae cup! It’s so smooth-tasting, very refined really. It doesn’t taste synthetic at all which most jello tend to be. And it gives off an aromatic almond smell.

Ooooh….the curd just glides into your mouth and skis into your tummy through your throat. So light, you’ll have space for more desserts…happy days are here again :)

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These...

I love CANDY. I LOVE CANDY.
Anything that’s saccharine-sweet and smells extravagantly lovely, I naturally gravitate towards. Naturally.

One of my favorite yummy-doo-dum-dums, out of a gazillion million desserts which have toured my almost-30-year-old, well-used and weather-resistant intestines, is the most princessy cupcakes which seriously melts in your mouth and instantly makes you very happy. VERY HAPPY.

Sugar never looked so good. These cupcakes from Carnival & Co are so awesome, I kept ordering the regular and mini ones. A lot of them for myself, and some for family and friends. Alamak, eat until whole box finish lah (5 Big Pieces). I’m so happy my friends really enjoyed them, that almost all of them ordered more boxes for the Christmas season. The cupcake designs are so puh-ree-tee. Great as alternatives to birthday cakes! No more messy knifes and weirdly-sized slices of crumbling cake. Cupcakes are so now, you gotta have them for at least ONE birthday this year. Then you’ll get it!

And the other woo-hoo chomping favorite is the carrot walnut cake from Toast @ Ngee Ann City. Truly one of the best in the country. With Cedele Depot @ Wheelock Place running in tandem for the top spot. The cream cheese is wonderfully smooth, and unbelievably gorgeous with the main cake made of shredded carrots and embedded walnut chunks. The type of cream cheese makes all of the difference, as the temperature used to store these cakes. Very important lah. One of the grossest cakes I’ve ever tasted are at Coffee Bean’s. They taste old and the cheese on the carrot cake is eewness central. You can tell immediately by the stale-looking color. Maybe it was a one-off incident which I experienced with a friend who really didn’t mind forking her way through the eeky carb-mess.

But I just love chocolate. CHOCOLATE is the Champion of all desserts, folks! So I crown this the week of chocolaty pleasures. This means intense chocolate-blogging for a limited time only.

Come back every day before you get hit with sugar crash = chocolate feeding time.

Until then, feel the tiara, says Love Princess.

Chinatown Blues

Mediocre. Is what I would use on Chinatown, our Chinatown. It was a little drizzly and wet the night I was there with LG. I even bumped into a friend of mine who announced my name pretty loudly, but you know, no one really turned around or cared to find out which human-ling of the so-so-crowd belonged to the name. Whatever. *pair of interlocked V ‘s on forehead*

To the left already, a la Beyonce.

Aside from lacklustre atmosphere, wet furniture and a one-off appearance of cheesy trishaws transporting clueless tourist couples to wherever at rip-off prices in disco renditions of nineties’ pop hits, the food fare was BOR(E)-RING. Really, people. Ugh, ugh, ugh. *stomping silver Gucci python pump heels*

I went all the way there, in my favorite gold Roberto Cavalli drawstring tote, and cute Topshop Unique dress which I vacuumed-packed from Oxford Circus, to ingest fumes from the long line of standalone food stalls. AND. Swiftly chopstick my way from the plasticky plate of char kway teow (fried broad noodles in dark sauce), into my hungarian mouth. (I’m not really Hungarian, but what else could you call someone who’s hungry? Hun or Hungry-let? Duh.)

The color looked right and the taste was sufficiently balanced between the sweetness of the dark sauce and saltiness of the MSG. But the absence of lab cheong (Chinese sausage) was deeply felt and sadly missed. The school-canteen-like dish was drab-looking and depressing. Sad-o-rama.

The seafood selection looked happier and cheery but I wasn’t craving for crustaceans and friends. But I did check out the ah balling with LG.

Read her blog on : http://ladyglam.blogs.friendster.com/ladyglam/

Ah Balling refers to stuffed rice glutinous balls in hot soup. The store here was (wo)man-ned by two little old ladies who were struggling to get the orders right. It can be quite a challenge, folks! There were a bunch of stuffings and soup flavors which you, as a willing makan-ster, could choose from which promotes consumer empowerment. And extreme work stress for our senior-citizen aunties :( The price though is almost free! Two bucks for 6 balls…S-I-X…Cheap-o-rama. Yasui ne! Murah Lah. We shared a bowl of green tea, peanut and black sesame balls in ginger soup. The ginger concoction was heavily hinted with white sugar and some ginger oomph. Not very happening.

The green tea ah balling was mochi-like. The paste was clumpy even in hot soup and tasted blasé. As for the black sesame, LG, you comment since you ate ALL of them! And for the peanut ones, mmmmmmmmm, they punctuated the end of my dinner with a sweet and happy ending. Melt-in-your-mouth fluidity and crunchy texture cradled in gooey rice sold me to these things for life.

Come on now, get ballsy in the new year. *wink*