Dinner at Ootoya

I first passed by this restaurant when Orchard Central was still 3/4 opened. That time this restaurant was still new and not many people were patronizing it. Today, to eat at Ootoya, you'll have to get a queue number to get a sit in there. Just look at the number of people waiting outside! Heard many food bloggers were raving about this restaurant of its delicious food, so I decided to bring a friend to try out this Japanese restaurant. I reached the place about 7.30 pm, took a number - 11. Not so bad as the crowd was still reasonable. My friend came and we waited for about 1 hr before getting a seat.

I'm a fish lover, so I went straight for a meal that has something to do with fish. I chose the "Charbroiled sea bream with grated radish and plum sauce set". Looks good on photo. And interestingly, they had a tag which tells you how many calories you are consuming for each dish. Interesting feature for the diet conscious who always counted their calories.

Can choose either hot or cold green tea. The cold green tea was really good! And wasn't charged for it.

My meal came and frankly at first I was taken aback by the small slice of the sea bream.

Quality made up for the quantity. The sea bream had a sweet taste to its meat. The skin was crispy that gives you the kick of a slightly burnt to perfection taste. The grated radish had a little tinge of wasabi and it can be eaten alone or with the sea bream. Either way, it tasted really good. The accompanying vegetable dishes didn't disappoint as well as they taste really good as side dishes. For the guys, if you are not full from the meal, you can order extra bowls of white rice FOC. I ate two bowls of rice, the fish was just too good to eat with one bowl of rice.

After dinner, we visited the sky garden to have a look. The place was filled with restaurants but there is a small narrow walkway around the small building for you to take a small stroll. Quite romantic. The environment reminded me of the "Peak" in Hongkong.


The restaurants at the higher levels seem to be devoid of people, even the newly opened Kuriya, it's totally empty. Nice ambience but will these restaurants survive? Will need another wave of food blogger reviews to push it up.

Hanoi Part 4

Next stop was Bat Trang, the ceramic village. I'll never forget the road to Bat Trang. The road was dusty and sandy, and we were riding behind a huge truck which was kicking up huge amount of sand in the air. At the end of the journey, our faces had a layer of sand and dust!
In Bat Trang, you could see ceramics selling everywhere. There were many ceramic products such as vases, paintings, pen holders, decorations etc. Really lots of them. Kinda nice. We walked around and then sat down for some painting fun where we painted some plast.
I chose this. It's been a long time I painted since secondary school.

Hieu painted black circles around his lion's eye. So funny!

These were our finished products! Nice!

After we finished our paintings, the sky was darkening and night had come. We rode back to Hanoi for dinner.
Vietnamese love vegetables alot. They always had this 5 types of vegetables which had distinct taste to them. They had this rice paper which you can use it to wrap the vegetables and ingredients like a popiah and then dip it in the sweet sauce. Taste sooo good! There was this fried pancake which they put either prawns or beef in it and you were supposed to put it with the vegetables and wrapped it with the rice paper. Extremely delicious as the fried pancake adds a crunchy bite to the roll. Yummy!

The League's pre-christmas dinner

It was near the end of the year soon and so we had our League's pre-christmas dinner at Leroy's (The hungry cow) home with him as the Chef. Arrived there early with Ewan to see if any help was needed for the preparation. Ryan and his girlfriend arrived later and we started our preparation for a 3-course dinner. With the chief cook giving out orders, we cut, sliced and diced any ingredient which was on the cooking table.

Here's Ryan cutting up the cabbage.

The Chef:"Why so many vegetables?"
Peishan:"Cause we are having Zeh, Zeh, Zeh!" (Sung to Blackeyepeas's Boom boom boom)

Dinner was ready and we were served with our first soup of the day: Onion soup
Rich tasting with the cheese bread in it to prevent the soup from being too over flavoured.

Next was Bagedel(potato cutlet) and salad. This was our vegetarian dish. It's a yummy carbo food!

Finally, we have the roast chicken pasta, topped with sausage, assorted beans and sweet potato. It's really filling as the chicken leg was quite huge.

As we chat along the night, some of us were busy in the kitchen cutting up fruits to prepare for our dessert.........
And a birthday surprise for Jenny! We had our floor manager to send the birthday cake(dessert).

Happy Birthday Jenny!


We had much fun and laughter that night. Merry Christmas!

People who were also present for that night:
Cherie and Ben
Ivy
Ewan's Sis

Special thanks to Ewan and Ryan for their photos!

Xmas Eve

Yesterday was Christmas eve. Went out with a friend of mine for a dinner and chillout. Had a Kurobuta (black pig) Xmas meal set at Tonkichi. I think Tonkichi has it's reputation of serving good pork cutlets dishes. The pork cutlet was crispy on the outside yet it doesn't have the hard texture of the normal pork meat on the inside. Served with a huge serving of salad to cool down your mouth after biting the hot pork cutlet, it is well complimented. There were additional dishes of miso soup, chawanmushi and a small bowl of soba. It's a really filling dinner.

Time for some chilling out. I wanted to try out this bar/restaurant called KPO which was the old post office at killiney that was converted to a bar. It's two stories high so you can choose to sit on the first or second floor.

The place has a nice ambience especially if you sit in the outside. Inside of the bar was nice as well with comfortable big single sofa sits.



The table top

The happy hours end at 8pm while they currently have tiger beers promotion at $7 per bottle and a bucket of 6 for $40. Happy hours price of other beers are about $7, after that it's double price. The main grouses was the music selections were boring and abit too loud for a chat in the inside. Also there was a lack of a live music band which I think will bring in a better atmosphere. Probably it's concept was more of a chill-and-chat through the night bar.

Added note, it does serve food as well and it has a all-day breakfast meal.

KPO Cafe Bar
1 Killiney Road
Killiney Post Office

Christmas

Few more days to Christmas. Just a few thoughts, do you have someone to miss? Will it be a lonely Christmas?

A verse from a song by Mariah Carey:

Miss you most (At Christmas time)

Because I miss you
Most at Christmas time
And I can't get you
Get you off my mind
Every other season comes along
And I'm all right
But then I miss you, most at Christmas time.....

Hanoi Part 3

After meeting up with another friend Hanh, we all went for lunch. This girl knows all the good and cheapest food in Hanoi! Had some dry vermicelli topped with toufu, peanuts and pork ear sausages! OH SO YUMMY! I'm starting to salivate when I think of the good food again. The pork ear sausage was very crunchy with bits of cartilage in it and the peanuts added a nutty flavor to the vermicelli.

In Vietnam, almost every food stall have very small and short tables and chairs as if they are for kindergarten kids. I felt like a kid whenever I sat on those chairs, so cute~

After a full meal, we travelled to the countryside of Hanoi in bikes. It was quite a long ride. Hanoi is really huge, bigger than Singapore and it has just extended it's region to become new Hanoi.

Kinda risky taking photos while riding a bike.

The air in Hanoi is extremely polluted. Wearing a mask is recommended when on the the road or near the main road cause you can really smell the bad exhaust from the overcrowding vehicles.

We reached part of the countryside where the air is so much fresher. You can really smell the difference and the area is beautiful and quiet. The serene place makes you feel happy. I got to see ducks, cows and horses! Many crops were grown in the countryside. Pity it's in the winter cause most crops were already harvested so we didn't get to see much flowers. We played around till some villagers started to chase us with pitchforks... (Just kidding!) We did have to run cause some villagers spotted us and thought we were destroying their crops. Lol.

Wild ducks!

Hanoi Part 2

Woke up in the early morning at about 6.30 am. You do not need an alarm clock to wake you up cause the streets will be honking away in the busy morning. Hanoi's time is 1 hr earlier than Singapore's for your information. My friend, Thuy and I had breakfast in the morning at some street stall nearby her mom's shophouse. In Hanoi, there are many street food scattered around. They are cheap and good. Although to some it might not be hygienic, I had no problems with the food as I did not get any diarrhoea(Thank god!).

I noticed many street stalls in Hanoi do not sell rice related dishes. Most, in fact, all of I have seen were those rice noodles. But they come in many different forms like Pho which is our normal "chu mi fen"; kway teow; bee hoon; instant noodles and others which I can't remember. Anyway they are all yummy!

Met up with another of her friend, Hieu who brought us around Hanoi for sightseeing. We went to the first university of Hanoi which was over 900 years old. It's the school where officials were chosen based on imperial exams. Actually it's like a Chinese school. Basically, most of the ancient stuffs are all Chinese origin. Vietnam probably was under China at some point of time or they were very influenced by Chinese teachings in the olden days.

Inside of the university you can see traditional Chinese courtyard and rooms where the students will stay and study. In fact the students there were taught teachings of Confucius, Mencius etc. Chinese right? Haha.

This was the uniforms of the officials serving the King.

After the visit, we wanted to go to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum but it was closed. We managed to visit it at a later date. We then ride back to my Hieu's medical university to get another friend for some more fun! Will continue in Part 3~

Hanoi

Been back to Singapore, had a good rest after a tiring trip to Hanoi. Hence decided to blog about it for those who are wondering about Vietnam.

My trip to vietnam was a short one as I planned the duration which is enough for my budget which is about $500(An extremely low one!). As it was my first time on a trip alone, so this was just a tryout as I wanted to visit Vietnam for a very long time. I bought the tickets during the busiest school schedule so I did not have enough time to research what are the places to go in Vietnam, just whacked about 5 days of trip from 13 to 17 December. Before that, I consulted my "Tong Shu planner" to check which dates were suitable or you could say "lucky" for flying and I chose 13 and 17 for flying as both were good days for fruitful trip. Indeed, I had a wonderful trip there. So therefore I guess choosing a good date to fly is quite important!


Reached the airport in the night, there is a money changer there so you can change your money into Vietnam Dong. I followed a friend home and did a homestay in Hanoi. She was picked up by her dad and we took a taxi home. Heard about cheating stories about taxis in Vietnam and my friend told me this is quite true. So therefore be careful when taking a taxi, make sure that there is a meter running. One of the people I met told me there are some taxis in Hanoi which are more reliable but I forgot which ones were they.


Had a welcome dinner by their family in the shophouse. Hanoi's streets are small and narrow and the traffic was just a killer. Many have motorbikes cause of the narrow streets and they can weave through the traffic during jams.


The weather there was still quite cool and normal during that time. Stayed at my friend's home for the night. More to come!

Hanoi

Just back from a trip to Hanoi. Really tired, but fun!

New Blog!

I have created a new blog called "Investing the wave". It will be a blog about investing and trading featuring news, insights and maybe tips. Enjoy!

http://investingthewave.blogspot.com/

Exams are finally over!

Finally finished my exams today!

Goodbye to my Ah Ma too.............

Somehow this semester has taken a great toll me. Exams are just tiring. I'm tired. Really. I need a good break.