Food: Hai Di Lao

Food: Hai Di Lao

So finally, after waiting for almost a whole year, I finally had a chance to eat at the famed Hai Di Lao. For those who don't know, Hai Di Lao is considered as a ala carte steamboat style of food whereby you will need to pay for the soup you choose, and every dish you order you will pay for the specific dish. This is in contrast to other steamboat buffets a lot which can be found in Chinatown and quite a fair few from all around such as Coca steamboat and Sukiya. These other buffets are free flow and you might need to go ahead and grab or order the food but you can eat and eat. However, Hai Di Lao is an ala carte but all in all, do you need to hesitate when deciding what to order? Would you end up paying more? Read on to find out more.

Food 4.5/5

You get to choose two soups, for this, Mala and Tomato

There are quite a variety of soups presented including the standard chicken stock soup. I think there should be four or five different soups in total. For us though, we got ourselves the Mala which is the spicy type of soup, and a tomato soup for those who did not want to eat spicy. Nonetheless, my mates with me tried the Mala and it was not TOO hot even for them. However, when we ordered the soup, there was the option presented to us to add or reduce the spiciness of the Mala soup. It's this type of variety that made the entire meal a bit more pleasant, and I believe this was the concept that the management of Hai Di Lao wanted to focus on and can be seen in many aspects of the management of the eating experience.

The soup overall, was tasty. Yep, I would dare say that amongst all the soup I have tasted, this Mala is one of the more unique, and even the best, so much that even Mala lovers could give it a try and it might ignite their passion for Mala.

One point to note however, is that when you ask for refill of the soup, I noticed that the soup was the normal chicken stock at least for my Mala. Hence after refilling twice, it started not being that spicy anymore. Not sure if this is the standard but it could have been expressed to us.

Here comes the first course of meat! Note, these were all HALF portions

 For a start, we were allowed to order half portions of almost all the dishes on the Ipad provided. What this means is that, you can go for variety and you do not have to force yourself to stuff down too much of the food, making you full and unable to try other dishes. You can also decide from the first round which meats you find most delicious and then order it subsequently. It's a very smart move and like i said, this is a variety in the ordering style which adds to the experience.

Taste wise, you can see that the meats are very thinly cut, and thus very easy to cook and consume. All the meats we chose were tasty, not too fat. For beef alone, they had like 4 different grades or types of beef for people with different tastes and budgets, and this makes good business sense.

Tofu, mushroom and a bunch of 4 different pastes, vermicelli

 As you can see from the photo above, you can ask for an assortment of mushrooms, nothing new many places have this. but look further above and see the red white and white green oval dishes. This was one of the paste dish ranging from prawn, to meat to spinach prawn and one more that i cannot remember cause the waitress said it in chinese. Nonetheless, they allow you to order small bits and really just try everything.

Sauces to tantalize your taste buds

 And look at the variety of sauces. They had a sauce rack with like over 10 different kind of sauces and that rack also had some small dishes like peanuts and pickles. But wait! What if you are not the sauce loving person? Well Hai Di Lao has gotten this covered. For HDL, their sauce and small dish bar is not included, but is free flow for a price of 4 dollars. What this means is that for those who don't need sauces, they actually don't charge you for it like what other companies do in their buffet prices. Hence overall you might not spend too much. You will see this further in the pricing section.

Taste wise, with so many different kind of sauces (in fact this is the biggest array I have seen so far), you SHOULD be able to find one to your liking. In korean BBQ buffet you always only have maybe chilli soy sauce and the korean chilli which honestly I don't really fancy, but here, you can get the spicy chilli paste, but if you like still must have korean chilli they also have that too. That's the variety they give. Other sauces include chilli oil, mushroom paste (chinese version), sesame and more.

Atmosphere 4.5/5

This is the style for 4 people hotpot, come prepared with charger, you might spend long here

If you haven't noticed, I have given the atmosphere 4.5 out of 5. Is that justifiable, well, let me tell you why.

Look at the size of the table. Its big and that means you don't have to try to squeeze all your stuff on the table. Of course our table was for 4 and maybe 6 people may be given this table too but it is quite large in general already. For 8 tables and above there are even bigger and more fun round tables. With a huge table like this, there was also no worries about the steam and smoke flying into your eyes. In fact, none of us left the place smelling like Mala. The whole place is well ventilated.

When the guy brings in the soup, he even asks you which way you want to orientate the soup. So if you are the only guy eating using one of the soup, you can arrange it so that its convenient for all. 

All tables are also looked after by a specific waitress. For us, our young waitress only had to look after 4 tables. There is no need to reach out and try to grab the attention of the waitress and spend quite a bit of time looking like a fool. Nope, our waitress was right there for us and she even offered to help us order when the chinese words and the navigation of the Ipad became a chore.

The waitress can even help you scoop the soup and filter it for you

The waitress can go all the way to the extent of helping you scoop your soup and she even helped us put in the mushrooms and tofu when we started.

Lazy to hold the soup? Make use of the ladle holder

Other good things that they did, they offered to give us plastic bags to cover our hand phones to protect from the splatter.

The overall structure and layout of the place was also very very good. No one was too close to anyone and there was much space to move around. They didn't squeeze all the sauce and small snack bar at a corner and make everyone go long distance for it. Instead they provided no less then 3 corners for all their customers at the sacrifice of their number of tables that they could lay out.

Price 3.5/5

As you can see from the picture above, the price for 4 people would total to about 130.65 which is about 30++ per pax. Granted not all of us took the sauce, we still ordered pretty much to our fill and it was filling. Note that I ate with 3 ladies so maybe their amount they ate was slightly lesser but in all honesty i doubt that.

On a side note however, I made another visit to the place and this time two of us actually ate a sum of 90++ dollars which is about 40+ per pax. So this would be the probable range that you spent but the 2nd time we ate, we slightly over ate.

Nonetheless, they actually allowed you to order HALF portions so that you can actually try and sample the food first before deciding on what u want to order more of which will help keep the cost reasonable.

It's not entirely cheap but you will feel that overall, you got your money's worth (unless you really wasted a lot of time waiting)

Accessibility 4/5

Hai Di Lao is actually famous for it's long queues if you ask people who have been there before. If you plan to go there for dinner, i would recommend you actually go down at about 4.30 or even 4 to get a number first so that by the time you reach your number, it would be about 6.

In fact, when we were done eating at about 10 plus, we still saw people queuing outside. Be prepared for 2 to 3 hours queue at the peak weekend hours. Also note that the staff will tell you that it is a 2 hours wait but in the end you wait for about 3 hours instead which was what happened to us.

However, if you are up to it and just want to try the food, you can come down early at about 11.30 and treat it as lunch instead. The 2nd time I went around that time, there was no queue and we could go there to eat.

On the other hand, the reality is, despite the long queue, HDL actually managed to score some points back in accessibility. This is because unlike other places where they want you to stand in queue, this place allows you to just take a number and come back a few hours later. Even if you came back too early, they actually served some drinks and fruits AT NO CHARGE. In fact you can even go get a manicure done over there, just walk in and get a time slot for it to be done and this is also free. All these facilities and actions make this restaurant well above the rest in service and making the wait less miserable.

The queues are long because this place also DOES NOT restrict your eating time unlike buffets. So you can go in and take as long as you want and it adds to the overall comfort of the place.

One more thing is that phone bookings are possible, but only if you book weeks in advance. Their booking seats are very limited such as half of their premise at a time and actually I would say that this is the better arrangement because you can go and eat when you feel like it and the waiting times for the waiting queue will not be atrociously long as there are more tables allocated to walk in.

It is also just above somerset MRT which means it is easy to get there and easy to get back from there which is a big plus.

All in all, besides the long long long wait, HDL has done a lot to make the wait less miserable and in all honesty and realism, it is difficult to improve further given what that they want to focus on a good eating experience and good service instead of just merely focusing on profit.

Overall

Food: 4.5 (Food and soup tastes good, has a huge variety and is highly customizable)
Atmosphere: 4.5 (Very customer service orientated right from the queuing stage all the way to the end)
Price: 3.5 (It's not cheap, but its not expensive. All in all, you feel that the price is deserved)
Accessibility: 4 (Easy to get to, and if you in a rush, go there very early first. Even if you queue, you are not stuck there and can do other things)

Overall: 4.125 (This is a kind of place that I can safely say, you should go and eat there at least once in your life. In fact, if you have friends coming from overseas, get them to visit cause they are not just selling the food, but also the entire experience. Tips to make the wait easier, bring card games to play. You can literally sit there for hours and if you have cards, the wait can be longer. Didn't see anyone doing this though so don't go gambling there. Just make proper planning and I think your visit to HDL won't be anything regrettable.)

If you want to check opening times and other details, click here

Food: Han Ka Ram Korean Restaurant

Food: Han Ka Ram Korean Restaurant

Occasionally, you will find yourself in a strange place, unfamiliar, hungry, and with no willpower to move on, the need to just find a place that doesn't have a long queue and can keep you alive for a while longer takes over the need to find famous places that you can discover on the internet or on other review sites.

This is one of those places. The original intent was to go to eat at Mad for Garlic at International plaza, but upon seeing the long wait time due to the small size of the shops, we decided to just explore nearby and found this quaint little place.

I would expect that this place is well known to those working in the Tiong Bahru area but to those who are like me who work miles away, here's a review to help you decide whether you should make this trip and would it be worth it!

This place is located in B1 of the AXA tower and is a pretty small place. So what food we have here?

Here is the menu

Has a pretty reasonable variety ranging from the Bibimbap to the noodles to the soups and the rice cooked with meat. Its pretty good with a fair choice of meat.

Their set meal

They even have a set dinner promotion and at $35 nett it is a pretty reasonable spread. We got the Beef Deopbap set and the following are the pictures

The 3 side dishes

There are alot of other more expensive Korean restaurants that sell unlimited servings of side dishes, but here you are entitled to 3 (or is it 6) side dishes. They probably just meant 3 types of side dishes. Overall tasted pretty fine for a side dish, but it is not hard to go wrong with this.

Haemoel Pajeon or seafood pan cake

Here was the appetizer that we got. It was between this and some fried meat with veg. It was a reasonably big portion and tasted pretty good. It's not the best pan cake that I have eaten but it was at least crispy and tasted pretty nice.

Beef Deopbap

WHY IS THERE THAT P  inside!! deo-p-bap!!! so hard to pronounce. But this was easily the best korean meat I have eaten. It was even served in the a hot bowl to keep it nice and hot while we ate. And it was not burnt and stuck to the bowl either. The beef was nicely marinated. Only qualm was that there was so much more beef then rice. There was also an egg inside. Because of the lack of rice though, I personally thought it was not going to be filling.

KalbiTang

This was the beef ribs soup that we ordered with such a cute name! KALBI TANG! see it even sounds like mandarin! Tang!! I always knew i could speak korean. Either way, i counted 4 chucks of meat in total which is ok.... but the plus point was the meat was perfectly soft. Not over cooked, not under. Just nice. And served on the hot bowl again meant that the soup stayed hot. The soup tasted fine also and wasn't like too salty or MSG soup or anything like that

Overall, the taste of the food is up there, add to it the variety because you can choose any other type of soup as well as different types of meat. Like I said earlier, the food overall was just almost filling thanks to the pancakes but there could have been a bit more rice given or meat put into the soup.

Food 4/5

Atmosphere 4/5

It was a really quaint place, small, but it was well spaced out with a TV showing korean singing or korean MTV.  Not really a fan of that because they all look the same to me but its there! There was only one single girl staff doing the waitress but she really really really looked like she was working very very hard. I would even say she managed to do the job of 2 waitresses with the same level of professionalism.

She also showed some extra care when she actually directed us to change our seats to a 4 persons seat even though we were only two people to our confusion. After being confused for a while, we finally found out that because we ordered the set meals, it would be more comfortable to eat given a bigger table space. Its this kind of additional touch that made this place stand out.

Still, for one single staff it is hard for her to keep this up so they would have gotten more points should there be a bit more hands on deck.

Price 3.5/5

37.00 SGD for 2!

My impression when I eat korean food is that it is usually pretty expensive. Usually above 40 dollars. For this place however, we had a full meal complete with appetizer and even drinks at 37 dollars. Its cheap. 

Still being the cheapskate that I am, I would say it was almost at the 4 mark if they had put in a bit more rice into the rice bowl! I felt that more of the fillingness came actually from the pancake as compared to the rice and meat itself which was slightly a waste. 

Accessibility 4/5

Note the opening and closing times

Note that this place is not open on weekends at all!! NOT OPEN ON WEEKENDS! They should though.. if they had a branch else where. However, like many shops in the raffles place/tanjong pagar area... its closed during weekends. Nonetheless when we were there it was about 7 pm and we finished at 8 pm. The place was filled, but there was no queue outside or at best a 1 to 2 group queue. I suppose this place might be crowded during the weekdays itself given its good price and location in the office area.

If going for dinner however, a weekday dinner that is, it is veryveryvery near the Tanjong Pagar MRT exit. Less then 50 meters so it is easy to go if needed and with no visible queue, this is a place to try out. Anyway the number is over there in the name card so just give them a call if you wanna check it out!

Overall

Food: 4 (The taste is definitely there. It tastes authentically korean we were wondering if the chef was korean. Its nice and has good variety for you and your eating group)
Atmosphere: 4 (Good staff, could be more, but space is well utilized and spaced out)
Price: 3.5 (Drinks are included into a NETT price. Definitely cheap for korean food standards)
Accessibility: 4 (Easy to get there and IN there. Only qualm is no where else to go after)

Overall: 3.875 (A worthy high score pushed up because of good food and good service. A place you should consider going if you want a korean food fix. Also won't burn a hole in your pocket so you will feel pretty comfortable and content after.)

This place has no website but I believe the picture of the menu should help you know what to expect. Any readers who are from that Raffles Place/Tanjong Pagar area that eaten there before? Let me know your views!!

Food: Buffet Town

Food: Buffet Town

Was looking for a review to do today and manged to find out that I have slated to review before but didn't have a chance. Thankfully I ate at this place not more then 2 months ago so I can still remember the associated points to review about! So this place is none other then buffet town!

Its a pretty crowded and popular place that has been around for a while under raffles city (NOT AT RAFFLES PLACE MRT). The nearest MRT station for this place is City Hall station and you always see a queue outside of it especially before it begins its buffet sessions which are afternoon lunch and dinner only. It's an international buffet and I have some pictures that I took below that you can refer to!

So all in all how did the whole experience feel for me? Read on to find out!


So these are the pictures of the food we ate

Has soup, rendeng meat, sushi, snippets from every cuisine

 So like any international buffet this place has the obligatory cream of mushroom soup and on the japanese side they have all the sashimi from salmon as well as the tuna flavors

Some potato some fish and carrot cake plus ham

 Really many various types of food here, all these are already pre cooked and you just have to collect them up from the warmers

Of course international buffet has the thin crust pizzas, 3 types here

 3 types of pizzas being the seafood, meat type and the margherita which is like some vegetarian pizza

Cooked chicken

 There was actually also a station whereby they will directly cook some of the food choices provided there, they provided seafood which i believe is squid, then chicken and some veggies, so you can get the guy to freshly cook some meat from you

Adding the asian flavor to the mix

 Has also the satay cooking area right beside the cooked chicken area but for this you had to wait awhile because it was always empty. The moment the satay is done its quickly wiped off by other hungry customers

Some of our own cuisine

 The laksa that they cook relatively fresh for you! obviously the soup is already pre made! Pretty milky taste but overall its not the spicy type

Finally some spaghetti

To top it off there is also spaghetti from the Italian side of the world although pizza should be from there too!

Besides this, there were some other items not pictured here which are cold seafood choices Chilled Prawns, Mussels, Big and Juicy Freshly Shucked Oysters, Scallops, White Clams and Slipper Lobsters which is also advertised on the website. It didn't seem supremely enticing to me but if seafood is your thing this might be what brings u here.

There is also desert and drinks provided from cute little cakes down to crepes and ice cream which is about 4 varieties and fruits all that. Drink choices included soya bean, coffee and tea as well as a lot of ice teas peach green lemon and the rest of the soft drinks

Overall, the taste of the food however to put it bluntly is pretty ordinary. Nothing particularly stood out from its outside counter parts. Satay tastes better outside, laksa better outside etc. Probably not a surprise for a place that tries to cover everything. Sadder part was the foods that were already cooked like the potatos and rendang meats were not particularly hot either which doesn't feel as tasty. 

Probably, the only thing that has going for it is its variety. Its variety is pretty vast with at least 15 choices for even the most picky of eaters such as myself and I think there are about 25 to 30 choices of food out there. Nonetheless, you won't be very impressed with the taste of the food no matter what you eat. Just to clarify again, I didn't eat the seafood so especially if you don't eat seafood like me, your rating would probably be similar.

Food 3/5

Atmosphere 3/5

Sitting place wise the whole area is pretty well spaced but being buffet style there will be people walking past your area especially if you sit in the center section. The other areas are all at the sides which means you will be pretty far away from at least one station of the food.

There is little interaction with the waiting staff and some of the cooks tend to be doing their own things sometimes which means its hard to ask them about what you are supposed to do with the food at this station such as the teppanyaki cooking station whereby they just leave the food there without telling you explicitly that you need to pick the food and pass it to the staff. The staff also don't tell you when the next batch of satay is ready neither is there a visible queue. So these will make it slightly more disorganized then usual.

There is a lot that can be done to improve the customer service and overall feeling but its still passable as it is not unpleasant.

Price 2/5

Prices range from $26.80++ on a weekday lunch to $41.80++ for a weekend dinner. 

This for the quality of food and service atmosphere, is pretty crazy especially for the weekend dinner section. Put simply, there is probably no way the food you eat will feel worth the $41.80 dollars excluding the plus plus. 

Only plus point is that drinks and dessert are all provided in house at no extra charge but worth it? I don't really feel so.

Accessibility 3/5

Perhaps the only obviously positive point of this place is that it is near. However, this place has strange popularity that means that you might need to try to reserve a seat during peak periods or you need to queue up or reach there earlier just to secure your seat.

It didn't fail in this category due to its ease of getting there but there is little ease to getting in. Also they follow the end time strictly which means once you cross the 3 pm mark for lunch and 10 pm mark for dinner, there is nothing left for you as they pack up. So if you don't get in at 1 pm for lunch or at 7 pm for dinner, you probably should just come back another day.

Overall

Food: 3 (Variety is "vast" but food taste is nothing impressive at all)

Atmosphere: 3 (No clear instructions on what to do, confusing, not too attentive staff)

Price: 2 (Extremely overpriced for the standard of food honestly)

Accessibility: 3 (Near MRT, doesn't mean you will get in though)

Overall: 2.75 (A barely passable score. I'll put it bluntly, I have no reason to go back there to eat ever again and even if my friends were to suggest it I probably would tell them that there are other places to eat compared to this place. Nonetheless it is still ok to eat on a weekday lunch if you really have no where else to go. I have absolutely zero reasons to eat a weekend dinner there though. Keep your expectations low if you are going there and maybe just try to convince yourself that you are there for variety)

Been there before and don't agree with the score? Post your comments below!

Here is its website if you want to check it out!

Disclaimer: Since this is a neutral or slightly negative review, I would like to say that all this is just words of opinion based on the dishes we had. Its not a professional review but the first impressions of a layman as per blog objective. So please don't be offended if you are a staff from there!

Food: Miam Miam

Food: Miam Miam

There has been quite a recent influx of eating places entering Singapore these days and there are a few that tries to infuse flavors together to give them the winning edge over their competitors.

Miam Miam is one such place that tries to infuse Japanese food with French cuisine! The usual offerings in its menus especially with regards to its main courses are the offerings of about 8 different types of spaghetti which incidentally is supposed to be a Japanese thing, and a few more selections of baked rice and baked Mac and cheese. Apparently Japanese spaghetti is supposed to be thinner than the usual Italian type of spaghetti according to the fun facts on its menu.

So how did the food from this unique place fare? how about its overall feel?

Food 3/5

We ordered two dishes for our dinner there, one of which was the Mac and cheese and the other was some long French word that we obviously cannot pronounce. You will see the name later.

In the case of the Mac and cheese, it's first winning point was that it was served directly from the plate it was baked in. This means that everything was sizzling hot and for cheese this is a great plus point. The pasta texture was just right as in cooked but still springy and the right type of pasta was selected for the cheese because the clam shaped pasta will just directly scoop up the cheese for your eating pleasure. There was also plenty of melted cheese to create the fun cheese strands when you lift the pasta up.

How it looks initially

How it looks after digging in

 The taste was good but being calculating you would find the grand sum of about 5 slices of meat here and maybe about 9 or 10 mushrooms in total! Yep thats the level of details we can go into!
Of course overall its the taste from the cheese and overall i guess you could say it was just filling enough but they really can put a bit more meat into it..

This was the 2nd dish we ordered with the name Souffle De Nuage

Look it looks like some bread

But its really not! its baked rice inside a top of egg that was beaten into some kinda fluff

So this dish, the top layer is actually egg and inside its some bubble or fluff thingy that probably is still the egg with rice right at the bottom. Its interesting that the staff actually came by to remind us to scoop up the rice from beneath and to eat together with the top because that is all there is to this dish. The fluff part was interestingly like eating bubbles which is nothing I have ever eaten before.

Overall, would say that these dishes are not those kind strong in taste with sauces and stuff and is rather mild in flavor. Its more of an experience kind of thing but I would say overall, not so much a tasty kind of thing. Not particularly great in variety also.

Atmosphere 3.5/5

The store floor area is pretty big and the seats are pretty comfortable with good spacing from one place to another. Some sad parts of the experience includes, slight waiting time. The Nuage came about 10 minutes after the mac and cheese. IT was good however that the staff did inform us of the waiting time and even recommended us to share it. You could use the button on the table to tell the staff you had some requests which is good instead of the usual wave hand like idiot method of getting the attention of the waiter.

I did ask the staff for some cheese and tabasco sauce when the mac and cheese came but unfortunately the items only came after i finished eating up the entire mac and cheese. Also another place that charges for water which I still feel is strange in this time and age in Singapore.

Overall, you can see the staff are trying to make the atmosphere here better for the customers but the effect is not significant. Kudos for effort though.

Price 3/5

Why do you charge for water??

So that was our expenditure for the meal which for 2 main courses is pretty ok. Its definitely not cheap, but the amount given is just alright bordering on a bit little. They are cooked and presented in a more unique way then usual so I wont say the price is exorbitant yet but it does not really taste that it is worth the premium overall.

Of course they do have the spaghetti choices for you that might be more worth the money but for the meal we had there this is the opinion.

Accessibility 4/5

There wasn't much of a queue when we got there and we got to our seats pretty quickly. It is also centrally located at Bugis which made it very convenient to get there by MRT and just find the escalator up there.

All in all its a good place to go if you are looking for some baked food or spaghetti and you can just get there, sit for a bit, eat your food and leave. 

Overall

Food: 3 (Definitely unique, but wont say that it was totally tasty, but is edible surely)

Atmosphere: 3.5 (Good attempts by staff to be helpful and attentive, but still lacking in areas)

Price: 3 (Paying for uniqueness, not for taste, nor for volume.)

Accessibility: 4 (Easy to get there and get in)

Overall: 3.4 (Fair enough score to indicate that its a place that you can go once in your life or a year or something to that effect. The food won't make you feel miserable and you probably will enjoy the experience. But like what i said to the waitress when she asked for my comment, the food was interesting, to which she replied "that means it wasn't nice?". You probably can get an answer about the overall experience there. Go ahead go and try it once, but after that it will be mostly up to the individual to consider if you will come back again.)

Try it out yourself and see if you agree with my comment!

Here is the website which is strangely short address name, if you wanna find out more about this place. 

Food: Empire State Restaurant

Food: Empire State Restaurant

Good day to all, heres the first of a few food reviews that I have backed logged up to this day. This food review is on this western/italian cuisine type of food called Empire State Restaurant.Ate this at the Woodlands Branch and I am sure there are a few branches over the country that you can check out at the website below. Here is their icon or logo or something.

So is this place worth the visit? Read on to find out!

Food 2.5/5

This place is supposed to be famous for their empire burger which is pictured here

Its a giant burger that obviously will be too much for our Asian appetites but nonetheless at 22++ SGD if you are really hungry you probably can eat it. I didn't order this unfortunately so my food review will be based on what else i managed to eat which is pictured below.

Looks huge eh! Well its not as big as the burger

For me I ordered the next best choice which according the name, should also be one of their signature dishes cause its the EMPIRE HD for Hotdog! not High Def...

Look at it and it really looks very nice and cheesy but look closely you will realise that its only one portion that was with the cheese. The bacon is fine, texture and all but all in all the whole dish wasn't very special. There was no extremely strong taste of the sauce or anything and the fries obviously was just plain. The hotdog itself at best, just felt like another hot dog. Its not like those from that hotdog fast food joint with its RIPPERS and stuff. Nope, its merely just a hotdog.

Cheesy Penne

The other dish that we chose was supposed to be like some very cheesy type of penne thingy. That was what the name of the dish was supposed to be.. like 3 cheese pasta or cheesy pasta or something. Unfortunately at best, I would say that the dish didnt live up to its name. Worse of all, the pasta sauce was actually considered watery. Like someone put in sauce and added a bit too much water to it. Wasn't satisfying and at best it is just barely passable.

Fries with 4 sauces?

This was where it was totally sad for us. We ordered a fries that was suppose to come with various sauces. In the end, there was one mayonaise like sauce, another holder with chopped up tomatoes, another with olives and one more with a grand sum of 2 and a half piece of a pickle. Yep.. How is this supposed to work? ITs not a sauce is it? or is there some method to eat that I dont really know? Its probably that.. but overall, its not tasty at all... it might have been slightly cheesy but I really didnt know how those other 3 holders are sauces. The Mayo i still understand though...

Atmosphere 3/5

Atmosphere was average. It was the type of open seating whereby the seats are inside the shopping centre themselves. That means that this shop doesn't have an entrance per say and shoppers can just walk through the two eating areas as there is a walking path right in the center. Of course it has air-con and all that and I guess its just some style but all in all, there are better ways to do it.

Also given the two distinct areas belonging to the shop, the staff may sometimes be pretty hard to call over. I guess you could still sit there and buy their desserts and sit and talk but there are other choices like The Coffee Bean etc. The staff as a whole, are alright but it is obvious that they are slightly understaffed during the time we were there.

Price 3/5

Here is the receipt and the amount we spent for two people. Oh look... water is chargeable... Not sure why there is a need to charge for water in Singapore.. you can count it under service charge seriously.

Its not expensive per say, but its not really worth it. The fries for $5.90 was quite a bit and we actually didn't manage to finish everything. But overall I would say that quality to food taste, does not really match.

Accessibility 4/5

Perhaps the only good point of this eatery, its totally near the woodlands MRT station and also didn't have too many customers which means you can probably get a seat with no problems. But its most likely because the food is not distinct enough and tasty enough to attract the crowd. Still, it works in their favour...

Overall

Food: 2.5 (Overall,  its just passable. You won't be put off, but you will really expect more)
Atmosphere: 3 (Average atmosphere, you will feel that it can be improved)
Price: 3 (Charging for water? Not entirely cheap either for the quality)
Accessibility: 4 (Good location, easy to get to, probably won't have a queue so you can start your dinner faster)

Overall: 3.125 (Surprisingly the score is above 3. I would say that you could choose this place if you really wanted western food or italian food and you don't want to queue and just want to get dinner over and done with. Yea that would be the best explanation for this place at this point of time. Eat there once and see for yourself and if its ok type of food, then you can come more often. For me though, not entirely impressed and probably won't revisit unless there is a strong impetus.)

Here is its website http://empirestate.com.sg/ in case you want to try it out. Maybe try out some other dishes and tell me if it is better...

Disclaimer: Since this is a neutral or slightly negative review, I would like to say that all this is just words of opinion based on the dishes we had. Its not a professional review but the first impressions of a layman as per blog objective. So please don't be offended if you are a staff from there!

Food: TomYum KungFu (Mookata)

Food: Mookata

Good evening all and a happy mother's day to all :) Finally finished some exams at school and realised that its time to get back to writing and stop being lazy. So I was looking back at all the stored pictures on my phone and found about 3 or 4 places that i was supposed to review. So I will review this one first being a nice interesting place that I been to!

When writing this review i finally understood what mookata means. Its basically the word they use to describe their unique BBQ steamboat style. So you will see many different mookata shops all around using the similar BBQ steamboat pot with different stall names! Now that we got that out of the way, lets get to the food.

Scroll down for details such as location and prices!

Food 4.5/5

Note that this place is not a Buffet style type of steamboat but rather ala carte orders. We ordered a bit too much for 2 people (unfortunately it was finishable) 

We started off with the appetizer which is this tasty little mango salad thingy! As with mango salads, its supposed to be slightly spicy and this tasted pretty good!

Appetizer to start off! Mango salad

 The next dish was some green curry chicken.. unfortunately, if you know me well you know that i am not a fan of chicken. However I am a person who is quite choosy about curry. Generally for this dish, the taste was there but was slightly watery and not strong enough. You can add it to your rice but its just ok la in terms of taste improvement.

Green curry

The next dish i ate was this one. Forgot what was inside it but it was really nice because it was crispy when freshly cooked. Unlike some other fried food like this, the portion was just nice and it didn't taste too boring or the chinese word is "NI". Not sure about the english equivalent for this.

Friend something.. suspect it was prawn i guess

 Finally, here is the main course or the main draw of the night which was the BBQ steamboat itself. Its charcoal based and you can see the soup is off at the side. This means that as you cook the food the juices from the cooked food will actually flow into the soup and make it even more tastier. I guess that's the style over here.

The highlight of the night, mookata BBQ steamboat

 You can actually choose the meats and the veggie from the menu and it is changable cause we actually didnt want to eat the prawns. So we got it changed to fish meat or something. They also gave some LARD which my friend taught me to put on the top of the BBQ first to oil the entire BBQ surface before starting to eat it. Very interesting methodology! You can see the menu choices in a picture further below.

Meat and assorted veggies!

 See the lard at the top? and see the meat get cooked! Don't worry the soup is entirely refillable at no charges. It was actually quite nice to slurp off towards the end of the meal! Note that for cooking the fish, it tends to be a bit more sticky so my friend told me to boil the fish meat slightly in the soup portion first!

Cooking in progress!!

 The meat was actually very nicely marinated till we actually ordered a second serving of meat. It was pork however if i wasn't mistaken.

Need more food and nourishment!

They had also two different choices of chilli to choose from and unlike some buffet settings both chilli choices did taste pretty nice and seems thai like. It was a good addition to the food.

Overall the taste of the food was actually pretty good and tasty and the soup also became a very nice addition to the meal.

 Atmosphere 3/5

Undoubtedly, as with many of the shops in this vicinity, space is a major constraint and you can feel this as the shop is relatively narrow although the tables are spaced to the most extreme positions already. You will be sitting either on the small chairs or on the seemingly stone benches along the walls of the place if you take a seat inside the restaurant itself. Hence once you sit inside, you are actually probably gonna be trapped by the seat and your friends so toilet breaks become a big deal!

This place tried to do something useful by actually putting a wooden board across two tables when the people are well seated to increase the eating space which is a nice move. The staff are pretty non-intrusive and they wont bother you but neither are they much of a positive or negative impact to the experience.

Overall, not the best place to sit and talk, but it is good enough for you to sit and eat and its not too tightly packed till the staff will bump into u and stuff. Hard chairs though but probably can survive for the eating time!

Price 3/5

Below is the menu for eating. Unfortunately I didn't photograph the entire menu but this shows the standard BBQ set that you can order.

Its strangely cute that for adding noodles and some different kinda prawn u need to add 5 dollars O.o.. thats why we didnt get that.. but in any cases this is the price range, not entirely cheap as these prices just add 10 more dollars and you can have buffet at some places.

Overall for 2 pax, we paid about 80++ dollars which is pretty pricey for 2 pax. Of course we did order quite a lot overall and probably overate but the food doesn't look as expensive as it looks and the portions are not entirely filling so you might order more then usual.

Accessibility 3/5

TomYum KungFu Mookata is pretty near the chinatown mrt if i am not mistaken but you probably have to walk about 5-10 minutes away. Sadly seems like the place is pretty popular so you might want to consider calling in reservation before going as you will take some time to eat and its not very big so waiting time could get significant. 

But all in all, for this end result below its pretty ok...

End result of the dinner

Overall

Food: 4.5 (The food taste is unique and pretty tasty that we had second helpings. It is an interesting experience to try and the tastes should be pretty favorable)

Atmosphere: 3 (Not entirely big shop and a bit cramp, but there are some things they did to try free up some space)

Price: 3 (Portions are not very big, and the food is not entirely cheap. Not very expensive either also for the occasional dinner especially)

Accessibility: 3 (It's near a MRT and walkable from there. Small shop leads to slight crowds though)

Overall: 3.4 (Definitely a place to try once in your life and you could go there for the rough special occasion. Not sure about other Mookata but thanks to my friend for opening my eyes to this type of food, I am sure I will visit another Mookata shop in the near future! Try it our yourself and I think you will appreciate the experience!)

For more details you could check this place for location and opening hours 

http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/tom_yum_kungfu/

Food: Menya Musashi Kodou

Food:

Had quite a few pretty good eating outings recently and decided that I should be a bit more regular in my reviews and share with people about interesting places to eat at.... or not! Since I have the opportunity to eat out while some people might want to make a more informed choice, I feel that its good to make full use of the information I have garnered and perhaps help you manage expectation or even save your trip and time. So here is another pretty unique place that I have eaten recently.

This shop is recognizable by their samurai drawings on the outside as well as inside of the store. I believe he is supposed to be Musashi who is famous for using two swords at the same time?

So lets get down into the review.

Food

We ordered a single side dish to share and a main dish for each of us and you can see the pictures below

Tempura mushroom! 

Besides this side dish, there were other sides like steamed or fried gyoza and tofu amongst other choices. It was pretty nicely fried and very crispy!

The standard Ramen with your choice of meat

Same Ramen, different choice of meat!

The unique point of this place is that they have 3 different type of soup bases namely the white, black and red soup base. The white is the usual Tonkatsu type which is pictured above. The black is apparently more garlic based but none of us purchased that choice. Mine was the red base that you shall see below which is supposed to be spicy and if you order it in this separate form it is apparently thicker then the normal soup.

This was my order, char siew separate from the soup base cause I am brave!

 The next interesting draw of this place is that the choice of noodle that I ordered whereby the ramen is separate from the soup/gravy, you can actually upside the noodles up to 5X the original. The original is about 120g which should be the usual for the soup ramen. Then you can get up to 600g of ramen. However, they do not add extra soup or gravy for free though which is probably the issue we have over here that i will discuss further. Make a guess of how much I ordered since it was free :)

Side view of my ramen

Top view so you can make a better guess

As you continue to guess here is what other issues we have. As you can see, basically all the meals are just about 2 or 3 slices of meat with bamboo and also half an egg. You basically can only choose between the soup version or this version where you can add more noodles. There are some other dishes they serve but i suppose this is what they are suppose to be special in.

So as you can see, it was pretty difficult to finish eating up everything and it was pretty clear i over estimated my abilities. Note that the amount of noodles can increase but there is additional charges if you wanted more sauce/gravy. The biggest problem is that the noodles are served slightly cold or at least towards room temperature. After dipping it into the sauce many many times, you will have a situation whereby the sauce is just cold.. This made the dish a bit harder to finish and I think it is safe to say that if you choose more then 2X the normal noodle amount you will experience this. They should really just consider putting the gravy on sort of a heater or like a steamboat style so that the gravy and hence the noodles will be eaten piping hot.

I personally love to eat my noodles hot.. So this made the experience and taste of the food a bit less tasty then I would have liked. That being said, the normal soupy ramen choices are all fine but they do not have the additional noodle options. The noodles are slightly more unique then what i have tasted before and they are quite QQ or chewy in a good sense.

All in all, the food  is different from your usual ramen shops, has a bit more expensive feel, but if you going for the soup separate from the noodle option, it will not be nice for anything more then 2X of noodles.

Food 3/5

Atmosphere 3.5/5

The staff is pretty attentive and the ordering is done via a tablet which gives you pictures and the like. However the traditional menu is still given to you. The little probably that i have is that all the dishes such as the meats are given in their traditional japanese styled english spelt names so you will see stuff like Tontoro and have no clue what meat it is.

Adds some authenticity to the food but not non-japanese friendly. The seats are big and they serve water freely so that is some plus points to the place. Overall, the atmosphere is pretty ok, slightly noisier as the place is slightly squeezy but thanks to the location of the seats, the waiters and staff will not be getting into your way very often.

Price 3/5

Its not expensive, but i would say it is neither cheap too. For someone like me who cannot really tell the difference between quality meat, I can't really tell why the usual choices are more expensive when the portion of meat is lower. You actually have one two ramen dishes with the same type of meat but you need to add extra 2 or 3 dollars for a additional slice of the meat and everything is the same.

Its good they dont really charge extra for the separate noodle and gravy choice if you want to add extra noodles. But note that it already costs 14.90 - 18.90 for that choice as opposed to 12 - 15 for the normal Ramen when in essence it is somewhat identical.in content to the normal Ramen.

Side dishes are also averagely priced from 4.90 to about 10.90 depending on what you get.

Our total for 3 persons for 3 mains and 1 side was about 60+ dollars just for your information

Accessibility 3/5

This place is located in Jurong and as far as it seems I think it is currently the only one of its kind. But its location near to the MRT is pretty good although all staying at the north and east would probably find it a chore to get there. There was actually a queue at about 7 plus so I suggest that you queue earlier to avoid. Its more due to the small size of the outlet and possibly cause it might be slightly novel.


Overall 

Food: 3 (It tries to be premium and feels premium in some sense, but taste wise it is just slightly lacking especially for my choice)
Atmosphere: 3.5 (Its a nice place to sit and chat, not too messy)
Price: 3 (Not entirely worth the price but if they do some improvements it might be more worth)
Accessibility: 3 (Has queues and is all the way on the west side, but least its near the mrt)

Overall:  3.125 (Overall, I would say this score is a good reflection of my feelings which is a place you can eat once, you wont regret it at least for the experience sake, you may come back but most likely wont feel any particular strong feeling to return. There is too little pulling factor to eat here more then once, but on your meal here, you won't feel cheated or anything either.)

I took slightly longer to post this up because its name was not in the westgate directory cause it was probably too new. Nonetheless, I should have some reviews coming out soon... in actual fact I actually currently have an excess of things to review so hope I can get it done soon :)

BTW for those who were wondering, I ordered the noodles X3 and I am proud to say, I should have managed to finish about 2.5X of the noodles before i gave up... of course one reason was due to the lack of hot gravy.. Hopefully they will take this into consideration and do something about it!

Its website is over here http://www.menyamusashi.com.sg/ for more details and stores