New Year's @ Donergy

So I'm finding this a little hard to believe, but in looking over my selection of pictures for 2024, these are the only pictures of Donergy that I have for the year. 

Goodness gracious me. 

I'm surprised. 

I had thought that we'd gone there more often. 

How is it that for the entire year I only had a meal there twice, and no more else? 

How is it that, despite me being in the Suntec City-Marina Square area a good amount of time, I haven't had a meal there as often as I wish I could? 

I guess one doesn't really feel it on the day to day. 

Life is such that you just go with the flow, and you don't think about it until one day when you suddenly feel like having Turkish food and you realize you haven't been to this place here at Millennia Walk for a very long time. 

There're a lot of places to be had for Turkish food. 

Whether you be at Kampong Glam, whether you be at Orchard, or whether you even be here in the Suntec area, there's Turkish food to be found.

But I like Donergy. 

Yes, it might not be the kind of place to entertain guests or have a business-type of meal, but it is the kind of place where you can have a casual meal between friends and family or by yourself without having to worry about elaborate cutlery and crockery and needing to look learned. 

This is the kind of place where you can wander in without knowing a single thing about Turkish cuisine and the down-to-earth staff will happily explain it to you. 

If you don't speak English, no worries, they speak Mandarin too. 

There's a lot to be had here at Donergy, by the way. 

Offhand I don't remember their menu very well but they've got all of what I call casual Turkish casual fare where some have become favorite dishes of mine, and I never have to think too hard what it is I want to have. 

There've been days where I've had the Chicken Kebab Wrap which is this huge piece of thin leavened flatbread stuffed to the brim with vegetables and chicken so much so that it's an art to eat the whole wrap without dropping any of the vegetables, or the meat. 

I've never quite succeeded. 

Besides the Wrap, there've also been days that I've had the Beef or Chicken Tombik where I find myself wondering whether I should eat the burger-like sandwich (actually a bun-shaped pita) in one bite or if I should separate the bun from the meat and eat them by themselves. 

But it's the Plate that I have most of the time.

I don't know what the name of this Plate actually is, but it's got a heap of buttered pilaf, a mountain of doner beef kebab, and a even larger heap of lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced onions and little cubes of fresh cucumber mixed all in between. 

Shall I say it's a favorite? 

Yes.

But I like to think of it more as a familiar go-to than a favorite. 

After all I think I like Spinach Pide (Turkish flatbread baked with spinach and cheese) as much as I like the Tombik and the Wrap and the Rice. 

One dish that I always try to order, however, is the Lentil Soup. 

I've had it before- at other places- but for some reason they don't charm me the same as this one here. 

Don't ask me what the difference is- maybe it's the salt, maybe it's the oil, maybe it's the spice- but I love the taste, I love the color, and I love how the little bits of beans (I think they're chickpeas) linger on the tongue, granting you a light feel of puree-like mush in each mouthful. 

I'm so glad we've managed to have the soup both times that we were here at Donergy in 2024. 

More than that, though I'm glad that for New Year's Eve we managed to have one of my new favorite desserts- the Kunefe. 

I hope I'll get to have more of it in 2025. 

Not merely for the fact that I do need some sugar in my life. 

But also for the fact that crispy, shredded, spun-together semolina dough layered with cheese, topped with a generous scattering of pistachios, quartered, and served in a sweet syrup of what looks like evaporated milk (or is it some sort of a light cream) is very difficult to resist. 

The Armoury Steak (Buffet)

One afternoon a friend of mine asked if I wanted to try this never-had-before steak place in Orchard Central. 

Admittedly I was a little surprised.

Surprised not by the suggestion that we have steak for dinner- my friend loves his beef- but by the fact that there was a steakhouse bar in this shopping mall on Orchard Road.

I had not known. 

But, yes, there was. 

Armoury Steaks & Craft Beer Bar sits on the 11th floor of Orchard Central, and although it may seem kind of quiet- the location not being on the main footfall area- the place is spacious, has a charming sort of ruddy country- wine cellar decor, and which makes it great for dinner and drinks with friends. 

It's the kind of place you go to when you have a dinner party or are celebrating a birthday. 

It's also the kind of place you go to when you want to organize networking sessions and can book half the place down. 

They've got a great view of Orchard Road, by the way, and if I'm not wrong, there was space for some sort of a live singing session. 

We were here for their Steak Buffet. 

Rated as the best steak buffet, and the longest running one in town, the menu offered diners interesting selections you otherwise might not expect. 

It was the kind of menu where you were recommended to have either an open mind, or to be clear what it was you wanted. 

I don't know what exactly it is that diners come expecting. 

Could it be that they were hoping for more variations of different cuts of meat?

Could it be that perhaps they hoped for selections of pork and chicken and venison and fish beyond the offerings of (mostly) beef? 

Maybe it is so that different palates and different dining habits have different expectations. 

To come for the steak buffet here at Armoury means you must be ready to have meat, meat, meat, and lots of it. 

Doesn't matter whether you're particular about the kind of meat there is, you just have to be mindful and in the here for it. 

Because, really, that's the main of what they offer.

There were Free Flow Steak Cuts.

There were Unlimited Meats. 

And there were Unlimited Buffet Bar Platter and Sides. 

For the Steak Cuts you could order as much Ribeye or Striploin as you liked. The weight of each serving was 150gms, and I think it had been anticipated that each diner would probably order one of each because whilst 150gms a ribeye or striploin might be considered too little, 300gms combined together would be more than enough. 

That didn't mean you couldn't have as much of Popcorn Chicken, Oven Baked Dory or BBQ Pork Belly either. 

I'm pretty sure there would have been tables who ordered a plate of each- just for the fun of it, or there might be tables (like us) who decided we'd skip the popcorn chicken and the dory and just go straight for the pork belly. 

It wasn't too bad. 

A tad on the oily side for some, maybe, but the portion was generous, the meat was well prepared, not very very salty, and had just the right amount of fat in each slice. One must have this hot when the plate arrives at your table though. It feels different on the palate after it turns cold. 

I guess that's the challenge when everything comes to you at the same time. 

You don't know in what order exactly you're supposed to have your food.

Should you have the steaks first or should you finish up this plate first or should you have both at the same time?

Etiquette demands that you finish one plate before going for the other, so that's what I did, alternating between my Steak Cut (mine was the Striploin) and this plate of pork belly where I ate each slice slowly. 

In between these two plates there were the Bar Platter and Sides. 

You've got quite a couple of choices here when it comes to the sides, by the way. 

Expect some variety of East-West fusion here, where, besides the Western usuals of Greens, Tater Tots, Buttered Corn and Fries, there's Mantou. 

We decided on Tater Tots and Buttered Corn. 

My friend likes Tater Tots. 

I like Buttered Corn. 

And even though we considered having a plate of fries, Tater Tots are nicer to eat and harder to find, so we got two of those instead. 

Come to think of it, a part of me thinks we should have gotten the Mantou.

Maybe it would feel a little out of place, like who eats Mantou with Steak, but there was the Pork Belly, and, who knows, I might have been able to make a fusion Kong Bak Bao out of it. 

Perhaps I will.

When I go back there next time. 

Canton Paradise's Dim Sum

Would you believe me if I told you this is my third attempt trying to write this post? 

Long has it been that I've not been able to get into the flow of things, and yet, here i am, trying to write this post for the third time. 

As if I haven't written about eating dim sum before. 

It's quite dumb, to be honest. 

But I guess there're moments in life where your thoughts just don't flow. 

Or maybe they do flow, but they're distracted here, there, everywhere, until you clap over your ears a pair of Bluetooth headphones, and... the words flow again. 

It would be less of an eye-roll if I were writing a paper or some sort of email or some sort of theoretical argument. 

But I'm writing about a dim sum meal that I had at Canton Paradise a while ago. 

How boggling can it be? 

Maybe it's because I don't know where exactly to start. 

Maybe it's because I don't know whether I should write about each new favorite one by one, or plonk the pictures all down and let the words flow. 

Perhaps I'll try the latter. 

Don't laugh. 

Sometimes it works. 

Sometimes a picture speaks more than words, and right now it's very much applicable. 

If you're wondering why all these dishes seem so varied, well, that's the charm of their weekday dim sum menu.

You have the favorites that everyone likes, but they also do have dishes which you possibly may or may not find elsewhere.

I've since learnt that there's always something new to discover, and life is such that you sometimes end up discovering dishes that previously you didn't think you'd eat, but you now do. 

Like the dish I call Dumplings in Spicy Mala Chili Oil. 

At another time you would not see me have something this oily and spicy.

But we probably needed a heavy nudge that afternoon, and so decided to give this a try. 

I don't know the name of this dish on the menu but really that's what it is- four dumplings sitting in a pool of Mala numbing chili oil.

My friend got a kick out of the Mala.

I, on the other hand, fell in love with the smooth silkiness of the dumpling skin, the slight tender chew of the meat, the way the dumpling slid so easily down my throat, and the perfect size of each dumpling that made eating it so comfortable and so easy. 

Amongst the orders that afternoon there were our favorites. 

Like the Steamed Char Siew Baos that were warm, fluffy and full of chunky char siew pieces smothered entirely in sweet, red-colored sauce. 

Like the Cheong Funs that we had both the char siew and the ones with some sort of a deep fried crisp youtiao inside. Cheong Funs might be considered regular dim sum fare to most of us- we can order them from the coffee shop steamers- but here the rice roll itself wrap was really thin. 

I liked the one with the crisp youtiao. 

Each piece gave off a satisfying crunch. 

Besides that, we also tried their Fried Spring Rolls. 

I'm not sure if there were meant to be anything special about it- if there were anything I might have missed it out. To me they were typical with the turnips and everything stuffed into it, but they were very well fried. Every bite was hot and crisp and crunchy and, best part, even after a while, the Spring Rolls didn't hold any aftertaste of soggy oversoaked oil. 

We also had the Charcoal Egg Tarts, the Char Siew Sous, the Crispy Tofu, and this one other dish that I call Truffle Mushroom Crystal Baos. 

Out of all these it were the Crispy Tofu and the Truffle Mushroom that we found ourselves liking. 

Not that we didn't appreciate the Char Siew Sous- these triangular shaped babies were chock full with little chunks of meat in the sweet char siew sauce and there was even that slight burnt taste on the pastry.

But the Crispy Tofu had all these super cute cubes of tofu lightly coated with (something) skillfully fried to such an extent that the outside was a distinct crisp whilst the inside was soft and mushy. There seemed to be a faint scattering of salt or some sort of seasoning over the tofu as well so it didn't taste as plain as you imagined a dish like this might be. 

As for the Truffle Mushroom Crystal Bao, well, the first thing that surprised me was just how well the mushroom had been finely chopped. I had honestly been expecting an entire piece of mushroom whole inside the crystal skin of the bao, so imagine how glad I was when at first bite all these little bits of mushroom flowed out from the bao and into my mouth. 

Easy to eat, full of taste, this at once became a new favorite of mine. 

I'll be sure to order these Crystal skin baos again the next time I'm at Canton Paradise. 

I'll also be sure to study the menu better and try some new dishes.

They are, after all, delicious, geriatric-friendly (a fact I appreciate), warm to the heart, and make for a great meal to enjoy when you're needing one. 

Xin Wang's Scrambled Egg Rice

It was a poster at the front of the cafe-restaurant in Suntec City that attracted my attention. 

Xing Wang hasn't had much of a good deal in recent years so I didn't want to miss this one out. 

Plus there was a drink. 

Xin Wang is probably one of the few places on this island that still wields a cha chaan teng vibe. There used to be more, but there're way fewer now. Also, I'm not really sure what defines a cha chaan teng- you'll only know after you step in- and Xin Wang, with her decor, her brightly colored furniture, her lights, her big picture menu and her layout, grants you a hint of that vibe. 

Her menu, by the way, is quite elaborate. 

I always find it very difficult to make up my mind when I'm there. 

Sometimes I want to have the baked rice.

Other times I want to have the curry chicken. 

Or the appetizers. 

They're a place that has dim sum, but then there's plenty of Rice dishes, including fried rice and the like, then there're also Noodles in the form of soup and fried, and bites that range from the big to the small. On one side of the menu you've got the Baked Rice and the Western offerings of Chicken Chop, and Steak, and Fish & Chips but on the other side you've got Century Egg Porridge, or Thick Toast served with butter and honey, and French Toast as well. 

Their desserts, if I'm not wrong, might not be so plentiful- probably a few selections of three or four- but they've got quite a huge offering of drinks. 

Most of the time I tend to go for the Papaya Soup Bee Hoon with Chicken Chop, but today I had been intrigued by the new introductory dish of Scrambled Egg Rice with Fish, so that's what I ordered. 

It might look like a simple dish, but the egg is smooth, almost silky, it's soft and tasty and clean-tasting, and because there's literally no sauce (I think you're supposed to ask for some) you can taste the full flavors of the egg, the rice, the little leaves of cabbage at the side, and the fish. 

I was actually rather glad that the Kopi-C got served first. 

After a long day, to have this cup of semi-sweet thick coffee calmed me down and I found myself being able to enjoy the meal better. 

Maybe next time I'll mush up the egg with the rice, eat it together, and see how it tastes like. 

But I know I'll stick with ordering the fish over the chicken and the beef. 

Their fish might not be very thick, chonky pieces, and they might not be as soft as other fish slices elsewhere might be, but, contrary to what I was afraid of, the fish was fresh enough, they've got enough taste to it, and even the slight saltiness of the fish works well with the rice and the egg and the whole combination of it. 

Yum Cha @ Yum Cha

We hadn't been to Yum Cha in what was I think the longest time ever, so, yes, glad I was when told that this afternoon we would be having high tea buffet there. 

Yum Cha has been, to me, one of three places that automatically come to mind whenever I think of having dim sum on the island. That doesn't mean that I don't like the others. It just means that I tend to be more selective than I used to be.

That being said, I'm quite happy with a char siew bao from the coffee shop. 

Or a lor mai kai. 

Perhaps that's why a buffet like this makes a special occasion for me. 

Amongst some of our regular favorites there were a couple of new dishes on the menu this time, so we decided we'd give them a try. 

One of the new dishes was this little basket of spinach skin-wrapped siew mais. To be honest it was really like the regular siew mais that we always order, except that instead of the yellow skin surrounding the meat, you get green colored skin instead. I'm not sure if I could taste the spinach (maybe someone with more sensitive taste buds would be able to) but the color definitely zhnged up the regular siew mais a little bit. 

The other dish that we thought was unusual were these tangerine shaped balls. 

At first I'd thought they were sweet potato balls- I mean, from the looks of it they seemed to be like those deep-fried snack balls that are popular in Taiwan and Thailand and on the island you can go to Maxwell Market to buy. 

But as it turned out (if I'm not wrong) they were cuttlefish balls. 

Now, how they managed to coat, and make these balls such a cheerful shade of orange, I don't know, but they were pretty to look at, and nice to eat. 

There was, too, this basket of little pieces that were what I used to call 'Money Bag' when a child. A 'Money Bag' is called simply because it looks like one, and basically is a piece of pastry wrapped around a ball of meat, tied with a tiny little bit of pandan leaf strip, then deep fried. 

There were also a couple of other unusual dishes that we ordered this afternoon.

There was a basket of charcoal black truffle har gow that looked like had been sprinkled with gold dust. I'm not sure what the charcoal black does, but there was a slight hint of truffle in the skin, and it went very well with the prawn inside.

There was a basket of siew mais that I thought had been fried with the same kind of batter that were on the yew kok yam puffs, and which were really nice tasting. 

And then there was the basket of deep fried puffs that had been wrapped in the sort of pastry that falls like snowflakes every time you take a bite, and which you have to afterwards scoop up with a spoon.

I don't think we ordered very much after that, save for this little plate of fried carrot radish cake that, done this way, turned out to be hot and crisp and crunchy both inside and out.

The 'hood of Steppyhouse

The light around the 'hood this afternoon was very, very beautiful. 

So beautiful was it that even though I'm usually the sort who hops into the shower straight after I've returned home, this afternoon I decided I was going to head out, go for a jaunt around the 'hood, and take a couple of pictures. 

I'm glad I did. 

It is, after all, not every day that the place gets blessed with such inspiring skies and inspiring light. 

It is, after all, also, not every day that I have the spirit and the energy to throw in the wallet, the water bottle, the card, sweets and Chonkycam before heading out the house again. 

I wasn't exactly sure which direction I wanted to go, so I simply let my feet take me. 

There're a couple of streets around Steppyhouse, all of which balance between the public and the private. What makes this place interesting is that both types of housing are separated by just a single road, and it is this road that I find myself most frequently walking on. 

Actually it wouldn't be right to say that they're separated by a single small road.

It's more like the public housing estate sits right in the heart of the entire area and I'm (mostly) on just one side of this very big one. 

The area around Steppyhouse stretches all the way from one end of Eunos Link (Jalan Eunos) all the way till Chai Chee.

From Jalan Ismail, one cuts through the houses, past Lengkong Tiga, up a hill, down into Jalan Senang, and up again onto a steep slope where you find yourself at the back of Chai Chee. 

Suffice it to say that this be the route experienced drivers take to avoid traffic and traffic lights, and suffice it to say that the roads around Steppyhouse become like a thoroughfare where cars and lorries and bicycles make their way to and fro at all hours of the day, all hours of the night. 

Not to mean that the 'hood's a noisy one though. 

On the contrary, she's as quiet as she can be. 

Over here, the road names are transliteration of a distinctive language. 

How, and when they came about I don't know, but there's gotta be something if the road names within the zone are either a Lorong or a Jalan, and have names like Marzuki, Marican, Melayu, Awang, Ishak, Daud, Ismail, and Sarina. 

There's also gotta be something if the nearest estate is a transliterated name called Lengkong Tiga. 

Much of the estate comprises of lovely little houses, mostly terraced, but there're a few condominiums planted here and there, all of which are of reasonable size where some have swimming pools and ample parking space and others are compact size with just enough occupants in them.

I've been charmed by the houses for quite a bit of time. 

There's no house that looks the same. 

There's also no garden that looks the same. 

And whether it be a house which carries the vibes of today or of yesteryear, it's charming all the same. 

I've not lived here very long, but if there's one thing I've noticed about this place, it is that there's an overwhelming presence of the kampong. 

It's not a feel easy to describe, as in, I'm not able to put it into words as well as I wish I could, but it's there when the rains come, it's there when the winds blow, it's there when I walk into some of the little spots that might have been something else once but have now become playgrounds. 

What's more, the kampong feel comes and goes.

Sometimes it's along the path that I take when walking to the shops.

Sometimes it's in the air when I'm on the balcony at home. 

And sometimes it's in the trees and the plants that line the road which I walk on. 

One thing I'm quite sure of, though, is that the kampong feel's quite dominant here in the flowers and the trees and the plants. 

So it might seem a little surprising, and I'm not really sure about it, but never has it been that I've seen such beautiful flowers grow so well in garden after garden. It's not just there in a single house or two houses, It's there in nearly every garden that lines Marzuki and Melayu and Daud and even Marican. 

They don't even have to be pruned or in excellent green hand care.

If there's a huge grove of trees like at the corner of Daud, they're growing magnificently well. 

If there's a mango tree somewhere, the mangoes are growing very well.

And if there're flowers of various breeds, even a hibiscus and a bougainvillea and some other flowers whose names I know not of, they're all always in glorious bloom.

There's a house which has, if I'm not wrong, some sort of sugarcane.

There's a house with a small papaya tree. 

But it's the shrubs and bushes out on the little patches along the roads that surprise me most of all. 

I'll try to have more pictures when I go out for a walk another time but since it's not every garden and every house that I get to snap pictures without permission, there won't be many. 

What I do have is this, though. 

An electric pole.

An (old) electric pole. 

Again, it might not seem like much- like, what's the big deal, this is not the only estate on the island that's got such an electric pole, but this pole- often seen in areas where electricity first started running all through the 60s to 80s (at least) is a symbol of its heritage, it is a representation of its history, and grants new visitors and residents a tiny little clue to what this estate might have once been. 

Holland V's Tai Cheong

A friend, immensely surprised by the fact that till date I had not had a meal at Tai Cheong Bakery before, decided on the prompt that it was time I gave this place a shot, and go there for a proper meal. 

If my friend was surprised by the fact that I hadn't yet tried, I was even more surprised by the level of enthusiasm about me having not yet tried. 

After all it wasn't that I hadn't had their tarts and pastries before... 

But, of course, as I soon found out, having a full meal there is another matter altogether. 

It's not just the decor, or the ambience, or the menu. 

It's everything. 

You don't realize it at first even though, honestly, the char chaan tang vibe of the place should give you a clue. There're traces of Hong Kong's presence on the walls, the floor and even the tables itself, where underneath the glass-topped table you find little postcards, mahjong tiles and tourist-type of paraphernalia. 

The decor's a little reminiscent of 60s and 70s Hong Kong though. 

At least that's what I feel anyway. 

Can't say for sure if the menu's just as reminiscent- it would take a local to tell me just that- but the menu today at Tai Cheong here in Holland Village included dishes like Macaroni Soup, Noodle Soup, Scrambled Egg with a host of additions to choose from, Curry Rice where you could have Chicken or Beef, and Cheese Baked Rice. Something else they had was Silky Egg Rice. 

What made the foods here interesting were that you had lots of choices, and had lots of add-ons to choose from. 

Like with the Scrambled Eggs, where you could have a choice of Chicken Chop, Spam Fries, Cheese, Ham, Corned Beef, and Cheese & Chicken Chop together. 

With the Curry Rice, you could choose the Beef Brisket or the Chicken. 

With the Macaroni Soup, you could have it with Shredded Chicken or Three Eggs/ Luncheon Meat or Three Eggs/Ham.

I had thought we'd go only for the curry chicken as I'd heard that the chicken pieces were no tiny bird, that the curry was solid with the perfect blend of sweetness and creamy, tasty curry powder spice, and that there were generous pieces of potatoes in the curry. 

But my friend thought we should also try the Baked Rice, so Cheese Baked rice with Beef, Truffle & Mushroom Cream it was. 

No kidding you, it was SO good. 

You'd think this be just an ordinary dish of rice and beef slices mixed with cheese of various kinds and thrown into the oven. 

But here at Tai Cheong (maybe what with them being a bakery), they got the texture, temperature, and heat distribution pat perfect. 

Inside the very, very hot dish the rice was fluffy and warm with the truffle & mushroom cream evenly distributed all over, so much so that every mouthful included not just the warm grains of soft rice, but also the thick, warm cream oozing between the grains. 

For bite there were the beef slices, which, whilst I had feared they might be overcooked hard, turned out to be incredibly soft, full of beef flavor, and surprisingly easy to chew.

What I liked most about this dish was the cheese on top of the rice. 

You know how it's like if you've ever had cheese baked rice where the cheese doesn't blend with the rice, where the cheese literally can be peeled off the bed of rice below, and where both the cheese and the rice don't taste good whether together or even separate. 

Tai Cheong here gave you zilch of that (slipshot) (cookie cutter) experience. 

What's more, the cheese- crusty on some sides, melty on others, went so well with both the rice (and cream) and the slices of smooth, tasty beef. 

Had I not been starting to feel a little full, I would have gone for spoonful after spoonful after. 

Especially since the curry chicken was remarkably rich in flavors and taste, tummy-warming, even cozy. it wasn't as thick as I thought it might be, and I had a lovely time savoring the curry as if I were sipping on a soup. 

I'm definitely going back for either one of these dishes whenever I'm back at Tai Cheong. 

Maybe I'll try the Silky Egg Rice or the Cheese Baked Rice with Pork Chop and Tomato Gravy- the Pork Chop sounds interesting.

And I'm not going to miss out on their savories nor their bakes either. 

I'd be silly to. 

If I'm not going for the Buttered Toasted Bun with Condensed Milk or the Coconut Cream Bun- both of which I have not yet tried- I'm going back for the egg tart- which I usually do because the crust is crisp and buttery and the filling isn't very sweet- the Hong Kong Egg Milk Tart, and the savory Chicken Pie as well.