Downtown's Night

So seldom is it that I get to take a slow stroll in the Downtown Core at night that any opportunity which comes by is a very treasured one. 

I don't know how long it has been since I last wandered along the waterfront of the Esplanade at night. Likely it has been a couple of years. But the place is as scenic as it was before- even without the tourists and the crowds. The waters still quietly lap against the concrete wall below the open-air stage, and the winds blowing through the Helix Bridge still muss up your hair. 

Our little route that evening took us from the MBS Waterfront across Helix Bridge down to the floating platform (where the parades are) and along the Esplanade waterfront. There we hung about the Empress Walk a little bit- me thinking about a time where I wandered there in late afternoon sunshine- and then decided to cross the empty Padang towards the National Gallery to take the bus home. 

And whilst I don't usually take pictures of the city after night falls, (Gear does matter) this evening her lights shimmered so beautifully over the still waters of Marina Bay that I threw away whatever past perceptions I had- and snapped the picture. 

Gordon Ramsay's Bread Kitchen

One bite- that's all it took for me- and Gordon Ramsay became more than just the chef with the potty mouth on some reality TV cooking show. 

I don't have a problem with cooking shows.

Neither do I have a problem with celebrity chefs. 

But until that evening at Bread Kitchen restaurant in Marina Bay Sands, I didn't know whether Chef Ramsay was a chef who was a chef who was a celebrity, or if he was a chef who was a celebrity who was a chef. 

If you've ever felt like you've paid too handsome a price at overtouted restaurants simply because the front chef was a celebrity on some entertainment franchise, you'll understand what I mean. 

Simply put, I didn't know if the strict standards on Masterchef and Kitchen Nightmares translated to the kitchens of his own restaurants. 

That is, until I had my first bite of the pork chop that came served to my table in no too long an amount of time. 

I want to be descriptive about the pork chop; I want to say that the portion was fantastic, that the meat was tender, that it was moist, and that had all the juices of the pork wrapped up within. 

But those words don't seem sufficient to describe a chop that, I must say, made a deep impression on me. 

I don't know if Chef Ramsay's background has anything to do with it- he's made no bones about his 'humbler' history- but unlike many a restaurant that tends to place the dish of pork chops as a mere sideline, Bread Kitchen didn't. 

That slab of meat had to be the heartiest piece of pork I'd ever eaten in a British/European/American restaurant. 

It wasn't just because they served a cute little whipped potato on the side or that they had a most fantastic sauce of blue cheese to go along with it. 

It wasn't even because we had been so hungry we'd consumed nearly two baskets of bread. :P

But it was that this dish had been prepared with so much heart, and so much care. 

How exactly- I don't know- I'm no chef, no aficionado, no connoisseur- I just eat- but the chop really was like a piece of good steak (that's of pork instead of beef) where my knife could easily cut (down) into the meat, where each piece was comfortable to chew, where every bite held firm the juices of the pork inside out, and where the warmth from the roast wrapped snugly around your throat and your tongue,

I exaggerate not. 

Especially not about the warmth. 

There're so very few places I know of that grant the same sort of comforting, cozy warmth (in the mouth) over a plate of chops when they decide to put it on the menu. 

Bread Kitchen did just that. 

That indescribable, hearty warmth marked the greatest- and most memorable- surprise of the evening. 

It became one which I couldn't forget, one which I still haven't forgotten, and one which had me back to the restaurant a couple of weeks later for their Beef Wellington. 

I haven't yet had their fish and chips. 

That's something I want to try. 

Not just because fish and chips are a quintessential British food (he does brunch and pasta as well) but because if a restaurant can do an ordinary, oft-neglected dish like pork chops the same way they do the more coveted steaks and Beef Wellingtons, if a kitchen can decide that every dish regardless of its social status should grant a warm, assuring hug to a hungry soul, then I'm pretty sure that their fish and chips will be worth the dining experience as well. 

cheezy Mookata (in the rain)!

It's been my weather since the start of the year. 

There're many reasons why I have a special love for this kind of weather. It could be that I have pleasant memories associated with chilly winds and cold rains. It could be that I dress like a beatnik and like wrapping myself up burrito-style in sweatshirts, hoodies and jumpers. It could also be that as a pluviophile (a lover of rain), the music of raindrops and the chill in the air calm me and make me more restful. 

Anyone familiar with cold climates will tell you that the first and foremost goal of a warm-blooded creature is to find a way to keep cozy- and warm using whatever means within their reach. 

Clothes, food, fire, dwellings etc. etc. etc. 

Whether this is how the Thai version of hotpot came about I don't know, but it is again raining today- it has not stopped raining since yesterday afternoon- and right now seems as good a time to have the hotpot they call mookata. 

There're many places around our 'hoods that offer mookata, but whenever the mood strikes and whenever I can, it is to Singapore's Little Thailand that I go.  

Either that- or- as I recently discovered- Parklane Shopping Mall at Selegie- where on the first floor looking out towards Selegie Road is Cheese Story Mookta. 

A bright, cozy nook this place is, and very family friendly. There is no thumping Thai disco here, but you do get a myriad of T-pop, T-ballads, and the occasional Mandopop, Cantopop billboard hit. 

What's important, of course, is the food.

Which Cheese Story Mookata does not shortchange. 

For $30/pax, you get a selection of seafood, meats, vegetables, the usual hotpot stuff, rice and noodles- all of interesting variety, plus a choice of drinks and ice cream.

Truth be told, I don't do a lot of seafood. 

I mean I do eat it- fish, prawns, crabs, the like- but for some reason when we come here there're just a couple of items we order off the seafood menu- prawns (for the soup), scallops and crayfish (for the grill). One time we ordered some sort of clams but they turned out to be the bamboo sort which we didn't seem to be able to grill so we chucked the lot into the soup and made seafood soup instead. 

Crayfish, however, is a favorite of ours when we come here- because it does taste lovely when grilled, and because they have it already peeled for our convenience. No wrestling with the shell of the crustacean here. It comes, you put it on top of the grill, and leave it there. 

We too have our usual order of meats when we come here- most of the time we have two kinds of beef, two kinds of pork and one kind of chicken. It's a little awkward, but because we tend to go straight for what we want, I don't know what the varieties are on the menu. 

There's black pepper beef- something we normally have- and then there's another kind of beef- but for the life of me, I can't recall what variety it is. (I just eat, that's why) 

We have had pork- cleanly marinated- I don't remember our raw meats there having lots of sauce- and which we could only grill as we ate otherwise the little pork pieces would have turned hard and dry. 

And we have had chicken- garlic chicken- which is probably one of my best likes at this place- and which, like the pork we have to grill and eat at the same time lest it gets all hard and dry. 

When it comes to the vegetables there's also plenty to choose from. Lettuce (a favorite of mine for soup), sweet corn, mushrooms, carrots and xiao bai cai are what I tend to select. Sometimes I eat the sweet corn, sometimes I don't. Mostly I have the lettuce (in soup), the mushrooms, the seaweed, and the xiao bai cai. 

Vegetables, by the way, are a must for me when it comes to hotpot and mookata. I can skip the noodles and the rice, no problem, but i want my lettuce, and I want my green leafy vegetables, whatever kind they are. 

Of course, one cannot come for a mookata meal and not have the soup. 

The soup- to me- is the whole purpose of this meal. 

For to date there is no other hotpot I know of that combines the flavors of whatever I put in the moat with the flavors of the lard oil with the flavors of whatever I put on the grill earlier. 

And so my soup for the day had the flavors of (grilled) chicken, (grilled) beef, (grilled) pork, seaweed, cheese tofu, prawns, (grilled) crayfish, sweet corn, and bamboo clams. 

It was so good, I tell you. 

A little on the salty side, yes, but it wasn't that kind of salty that made you very thirsty afterward. Rather, it was the kind of salty that had a roundedness about it, and a richness that your tongue appreciated but (unless you really tried), your mind could not place. It's like I tasted a bit of the sweet from the sweet corn, a bit of the salt from the meat, and a lot of sea-sea-salt from the seaweed and prawns and clam.

It's distinctive, I do say, the flavors of the soups from mookata, and no two soups are exactly the same. Even if you order the same dishes for the grill, even if you place in the same ingredients for the soup, the quantity, and the cooking time will vary- and you'll have a soup that will taste different from the last which you had the previous time. 

What's lovely about Cheese Story Mookata is that even though they do have fish sauce and the lime dip, they have a cheese dip by the side of the grill that you can dip your food in, and if you're keen, you can dip literally everything in. Chicken, prawns and beef taste good with the cheese. Crayfish and xiao bai cai, not so much. :) 

I hope they hang around at Parklane Shopping Mall for a good long time. 

And I hope they'll continue to have the deal that they're having now. 

After all, few are the diners who don't wish to have the choice of drinks (Thai milk tea included) during the meal, and ice cream (chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, lychee and lime) for dessert right after. :)

hans im gluck

Life has become such these days that if I'm going to have a burger, that burger had better be a good one.

More so because there've been a surge of burger joints popping up here, there, everywhere, all over these days- and because everyone goes onto social media and says they're absolutely the best- it gets very hard for a semi-sensitive palate like mine to choose. 

One thing about me: I like to go for the familiar. 

Or rather, I like to go for what feels familiar (and solid) to me. 

Hans Im Gluck, having been on our shores for some time now, is one of those places that grant me the feels to want go give them a try, so, yes, I was really delighted when the opportunity (finally) came. 

There're two outlets on the island that I know of- one's at Orchard on the Lido Shaw side, the other's at Vivocity somewhere along the stretch that looks out to the water. 

We went to the one at Vivo. 

Service was swift- we managed to get a table by the glass looking out towards the water and Sentosa- and it wasn't long before we had our meal on the table. 

Either it was because we already knew what we wanted, or because we'd pre-bought some sort of voucher that included two burgers, a platter of fried chicken wings, a platter of finger food- you know, the usual snacky stuff- and two drinks. 

We got down to choosing our mains. 

With all the offerings on the menu, it wasn't an easy decision to make. 

Everything sounded so good. 

And not only did they have beef, chicken, vegetarian or vegan, they had a drop-down list of variations of the beef, the chicken, the vegetarian and the vegan, meaning that you could have your beef patty Elsasser with brie and lingonberries, you could have your beef patty Lenz which had German-pickled gherkins, sour cream scallion sauce and fried onions, or you could also have your beef burger Geissbock where there'd be feta cheese, bacon, and fig jam. 

I'm only talking about the beef. 

The chicken offered you the choice of Henne, where you could have your chicken breast patty served with avocado cream, orange and mustard sauce and sprouts, or you could have it Landgockel where there'd be mushrooms and a sunny-side up egg on top of your chicken. 

I had to make a choice between the vegetarian or the vegan. The vegan offered a wheat patty with a variation of other ingredients. The vegetarian offered a variety of patties that I could choose. 

Am the sort who likes my variety so with the vegetarian I went. They had the olive patty, the walnut patty and the spinach and cheese patty. Walnut seemed very interesting, but after some deliberation I decided on the spinach cheese patty, taking it Kasebor where there was parmesan cheese, and pesto. (I like pesto)

My companion chose the beef. 

Which one he took, I don't particularly recall (it's been a while since we had this meal) but if my memory serves me well, it might have been the Hans Im Gluck- because there was parmesan cheese, there was parma ham, and I know the dude likes his parma ham.

The burgers were wonderful. 

Seriously wonderful. 

You know how it is when you take the first bite of your food and it is either "awww" or "hmmm" or "mehhhh"? 

My spinach and cheese burger made me go "awww"... 

See, any place that puts heart in making a good vegetarian burger will do a good beef burger. 

It is not difficult to do a beef burger. 

It is also not difficult to do a portobello mushroom burger. 

But when you have spinach- very finely minced- mixed with very good cheese- in a thick, almost chewy patty, the quality of the burger goes up a notch higher. 

Add that with tomatoes, lettuce plus creamy pesto sauce, and it becomes a burger filled with textures, layers and flavors. 

What's more, I had mine in a sourdough bun! 

If the burgers weren't hearty and solid and filling enough, the fun foods- the chicken wings, the sweet potato fries, the fries (yes we had two kinds of fries) and the onion rings- actually made the whole meal feel even better. 

Tasty, thoroughly battered, and well fried to a crunchy, delicious crisp, especially the onion rings, they didn't feel like mere sides to the mains. 

Instead they felt like conversation starters- great first date material- if you ask me- because it felt like one could just reach out to the platter, pick up an onion ring, a sweet potato fry, or the chicken wing- and start munching whilst continuing the casual chat and conversation. 

And even if the conversation got stilted and one ran out of things to say, there'd be the food. 

With the menu this extensive, and the food this good, fried chicken wings, wheat patties, multigrain buns, onion rings, lingonberries, grilled pear and cinnamon sugar pancakes would supply more than enough topics one could comfortably chat about.