If there's one good thing about having a birthday, it is that you get to eat everything and anything you want without needing a reason of any sort to.
Doesn't matter what you've eaten the previous day, what you plan to have the day after, or even what you have had this morning etc etc.
If you want to go have something, just go.
This afternoon my friend thought of having dim sum.
And because we hadn't been back to Swatow Seafood at Toa Payoh for the longest time, decided that we would go.
People who know Swatow Seafood will know where exactly the restaurant is.
Me, I don't.
So, I estimate.
Near the Toa Payoh Library, close to the standalone McDonalds, and above what used to be the Giant supermarket, now Sheng Siong.
The first thing that greets you as you approach the restaurant is the staircase.
What makes this staircase unusual isn't just the long flight of stairs itself, but that they're carpeted. Slightly incongruous with the surroundings, yes, but that's the first sign you're reaching the restaurant.
Honestly I wish I had taken a picture of the staircase.
But my mind was focused only on eating, and taking pictures, of the food, so here we are.
If you're surprised that there's chili crab at a dim sum buffet, well, don't be.
Swatow has in recent times begun placing some of their menu offerings in the middle of the restaurant self-service catering style.
It's interesting what they put out.
Most of the time there's chili crab, mantou, the fried stuff, braised vegetables, soup, two kinds of porridge, dessert, and little pastries like egg tarts and char siew sous.
But sometimes there're other things like prawn paste chicken har cheong kai too.
This afternoon my friend helped himself to the chili crab.
Me, I piled up my plate with fried radish cake, little puffs, and sweet potato wrapped in spring roll skin deep fried.
By this time we brought everything back to our table, our special plates of abalone, and shiitake mushroom had arrived.
So had our pot of hot Pu Erh tea.
As if that wasn't enough, the serving staff- with her trolley and her expert knowledge of dim sum- was waiting by the side for us to pick out what we liked.
They were all favorites- one basket of siew mais, one basket of char siew paus, one basket of lotus leaf rice, and one basket of crystal paus, which I had specially wanted because there's something about those meat, turnip, and chive stuffed dumplings of glutinous flour that speaks to me.
I love the chew of these dumplings.
I also love the fluffy warmth of the paus with their not-so-sweet char siew filling too.
This afternoon my friend decided he wasn't going to take the crystal paus, so I had all three of them all to myself.
But he finished up both portions of the lotus leaf rice- meat, glutinous rice, all- leaving out only the slice of lap cheong which he said the taste he didn't like.
A few more dishes appeared at our table afterwards.
There was, of course, a plate of smooth, silky cheong fun- two kinds- we ordered one of prawn, one of char siew.
There was a plate of bean curd skin rolls stuffed with meat and prawn deep fried with what felt like gravy.
Then from the special platter we had one piece of abalone each (I gave him my mushroom), after which, I went to take a second portion of the sweet potato spring rolls, two bowls of century egg and pork porridge, plus two char siew sous that I knew he liked.
He gave me the century egg in his porridge.
I gave him more of the pork from my bowl.
Finally we ordered the special dim sum, which, pretty as they are, I'm afraid to say, I now cannot remember what they are.
One, I believe, was some sort of a handmade fish cake roll, very clean tasting, very savory, similar to that which we see at yong tau foo stalls.
The other (whose aesthetic made me think of a seashell) held a single scallop, and a piece of seafood that I can't remember what, tucked within the skin of mermaid blue.
There's no good way to finish off a meal other than with dessert, so off it was after this to the ice cream chiller, where he got a bowl of chocolate, I got a bowl of yam, and we drank down more cups of warm Pu Erh tea.