The Hungry Bunny

Kiraku , located in the basement of Market Street, is a classy Japanese restaurant that offers reasonably priced set lunches. This place serves up one of the better Japanese food in the CBD. There are about 20 different set lunches for your choosing, ranging from grilled teriyaki meats to sashimi based chirashi bowls. A bunch of us brought Mr J out for a celebratory birthday meal here recently. It's ironic, because when I used to work in the area, I'd always walk past this restaurant but never go in. It's only when I no longer work in the area that I first stepped into the restaurant. Please note that reservations for lunch are a must, as it's always packed to the brim. The Beef Gyu-Niku Stew Set ($25) was made up of a rich stew with diced prime beef chunks served with salad, rice, the daily appetizer, miso soup and fruits. The beef was fork-tender and meltingly moist. The Beef Teriyaki Bento Box ($22) had a succulent prime beef sirloin brushed with teriyaki sa...

You know how it's been said that the prevalence of foreigners in a restaurant is a sure sign that the food there is watered down or unauthentic? This generalization certainly didn't hold true when we recently dined at The Blue Ginger , a popular Peranakan restaurant at the very-centrally-located-but-with-nightmarish-parking-woes Tanjong Pagar Road.While there were foreigners aplenty dining alongside us, we thought the cuisine was very authentic. The Blue Ginger is one of few names that come to mind whenever Peranakan food is mentioned in Singapore. They're consistently featured on most "Best Eats" lists, because they serve up food that even a finicky matriarch would have little to complain about. While they aren't as cheap as Ivins , or have portions as big as Ivins, their ambience is decidedly more upscale than Ivins' casual style . You do pay a little extra for the nicer ambience, but we still thought that our dinner was very reasonably priced. A sm...

Sauce is The Butter Factory's newest baby and first solo foray into the fickle F&B world (it previously collaborated with the Lo & Behold group to set up Overeasy at One Fullerton ). It's a fun, light-hearted take on the American backyard BBQ party, which probably explains the astro-turf, white-washed patio furniture at the alfresco area and general breezy, casual vibe. It's primarily a drinking hole, and second, a food venue. Now, you may wonder why it's named "Sauce", and it's really because you get at least 3 sauces paired with every ala carte dish. All proprietory blends and specifically tailored to that dish itself. Please bear in mind that it's just been soft-launched, so there are a number of kinks in service, food and consistency that are still being worked out by the management. I generally don't like to review an establishment that's just been opened due to the aforementioned reason, but we recently had our L.A. Drinks the...

I'm someone that's perfectly comfortable eating alone in a restaurant. Of course I'd prefer eating with someone because of the lively conversation, but every once a while, when the Fiance is busy, I'll eat by myself. It brings to mind this episode of Sex & The City, when Carrie was lamenting how she couldn't eat by herself, alone in a restaurant, because it made her feel like a freak. And the girls discussed about how some guys, if they see a girl alone in a restaurant, would automatically think she's a freak. I personally don't think there's anything wrong with people eating alone. What do you think? The Fiance was having a dinner meeting at Swissotel so I headed there after work to have dinner at Cedele while waiting for him. Not the one in the food basement, but the one at the 3rd floor. Cedele is nice and quiet, because it's situated at the convention centre, away from the hustle of the main shopping area of Raffles City, so it's great...

Mr J, The Professor, Mr Harvest-the-Crops and I got out of the CBD for lunch to Vivocity. It's always a treat to get out of the office area, there's a relaxed air to it that makes us all happy. Hong Kong Kim Gary is apparently The Professor's "Happy Place", and it's easy to see why. The food is in the style of Hongkong's "cha chan tengs", serving east-west "fast-food", with a bustling atmosphere and quick efficient service. While I personally don't fancy such "fast-food", to have it once a while is fine by me. The Mix Curry BK Rice ($11.90) was devilishly indulgent, with grilled chicken and pork cutlets, ham, hotdogs all slathered generously with cheese and baked till a golden brown. A few fried potatoes, one lonely broccoli floret and hard boiled egg completed the artery-clogging dish. The A-Mix Set Meal ($10.90) wasn't much different, with grilled chicken steak, pork chop, sunny-side egg, ham, hotdog, accompany...

The club's recently launched its new mega clubhouse, after almost 2 years of renovations. The Lookout is its open-air coffee-house overlooking the golf course, with all day dining serving both local and western fare. It's really lovely in the mornings, as the early morning mist covers the green fairways and the weather's nice and cool. We were in the area and decided to pop by for breakfast. It's been a while since we had American-styled breakfast and you know what a sucker I am for eggs and bacon.  I got the Two Fried Eggs ($7.50) scrambled and served with toast, an English cumberland sausage, grilled tomatoes, hashbrown and crisp bacon. While I'm a fan of most sausages, I've since discovered I don't particularly care for the cumberland variety. It's probably got something to do with the herb mixture. The Fiance got the Club Breakfast ($12.90), which is basically like my dish, but with additional Danish pastries, and he had his eggs sunny, ins...

We usually like hanging out at Arab Street in the afternoons, there's this languid, sleepy vibe that's such a refreshing change to the fast pace of our work-life. It's completely different at night though, it's crowded, lively, messy, almost rowdy, due to the number of pubs and late-night cafes in the area. We had a lazy Sunday brunch at Cafe Le Caire , and wow, was it lazy. It may be due to the heat of the afternoon sun, but service was super, duper, unbelievably slow. Slower than it usually is. In fact, it was so slow it took more than half an hour for the kitchen to get our orders out, and notwithstanding the delay, our orders were wrong anyway. And we were the only customers. We would have liked to be informed if they were going to take such a long time with my food. Mind you, I'm not very particular about service standards, but hey, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that I be informed, beforehand...

Like Brewerkz, Paulaner Brauhaus  and The Pump Room , Tawandang Microbrewery is one of those watering holes that you can have a full meal while indulging in in-house-brewed beers. While the food at Brewerkz, Paulaner and The Pump Room are All-American grub, German, and Aussie respectively, Tawandang's fare is mainly Thai. What could have worked in theory to pair Thai spicy food with refreshing German beers failed in execution. Simply because the prices at Tawandang are quite exorbitant. Having had dinner there recently, I think it's possibly the most " boh hwa " (i.e. not value-for-money)Thai establishments in Singapore. The pricetag of Tawandang would have been fine if this was a fine-dining upscale restaurant, but the ambience was really no different from a rowdy German-styled beerhouse. Why would I pay such prices for a place like this? While the food was generally alright, the hefty prices of both the food and beers are just such a deterrent to go back. Pr...

Sometimes, I wonder how some architects can even consider themselves educated, because some of them are so lacking in common sense and basic sensibilities. Just look at the "always-empty" Orchard Central. The architect(s) that designed this atrociously impractical and notoriously-difficult-to-navigate mall should be shot. Or sued. If you are parked at certain levels of the carpark and want to get to the top floor of the mall, where the restaurants and sky garden are, you'll have to take the lift to the 4th floor of the shopping mall, walk over to the central lobby area of the mall, and then carefully switch to some lifts (because half the lifts serve certain floors and the other half serve the remaining floors). How stupid is the design of this mall? Seriously, a large part of great, awe-inspiring design is the functionality of that design. It's just lousy shitty design if it doesn't serve its function. I mean, the shop lease turnover at this mall is so high b...