The Hungry Bunny

We'd popped by Jones The Grocer for a late lunch after a bout of homeware shopping. Quick sidenote: furnishing the home is quickly becoming a real pain. All the little things like dinnerware and flatware and serveware and drinkware may cost little on their own but sure add up to a lot! I'm trying my best to rein in the spending but I always inadvertently overspend. The stuff at Crate & Barrel are just too pretty! *end of sidenote* Food at Jones The Grocer is distinctively Australian, with a clear focus on really good and fresh ingredients with minimal cooking. Unpretentious, straightforward food that's wholesome and refreshingly uncomplicated. I liked it. However, service was woefully inefficient. The many waitresses were pleasant and cheery enough, but our water cups were left unfilled until the end of our meal. After we had to ask. The Hubs didn't get a paper napkin but I did. We walked into the restaurant and had to sit ourselves. It was alread...

In my line of work, turnovers are pretty high so it's sometimes heartbreaking when the colleagues that you have come to call friends go elsewhere. You suddenly find yourself having to find new lunch buddies, or bitch friends (aka friends that you trust to bitch about work with). Jase is one of the few people that I've come to call a friend that I care to mix with outside of the work environment. Because he works at the Tanjong Pagar area, we met halfway at the CPF Building for lunch at Secret Recipe . Secret Recipe is one of those affordably-priced Halal eateries with better sweets than they do savouries. Cakes here are cheap, ginormous and more-than-decent but the savouries are a mixed bag of hits and misses. Just remember to dial down your expectations when dining here. To my surprise, inspite of my tampered expectations, I liked the Minestrone Soup ($5.20). It was choc-a-bloc with vegetables, and the tomato-based broth was sweet and t...

In the purportedly upscale Bukit Timah suburbs, where cheap restaurants are few and far between, the restaurants along Coronation Arcade are a godsend if you're cash-strapped. Or trying to be financially prudent. Curry Wok 's apparently been around for ages, but somehow, I never quite got around to patronizing it until we moved to the area. This no-frills eatery has a welcoming homey ambience, and much of it has to do with the likeable affable owner. He's so jolly and sincerely smiley he could moonlight as a mall Santa.  The best way to describe Curry Wok's fare is "local" because, like our melting pot culture, the food served here is a veritable mix of Peranakan, Hainanese, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew and Malay cuisines. I suppose the majority of the dishes here are all based on its moniker, i.e. curries, although I do spy a fair number of non-spicy dishes. You'll do well to order the Sayur Lodeh ($8), a medley of wilted cabbage, long beans and ...

This marks my first ever invited tasting, courtesy of Insing and HungryGoWhere. It was incredibly fun to get to know the faces behind some of the blogs I'd been following for some time. I don't have many friends who blog about food, so it was great to hear about the different motivations for blogging. There were quite a number of revelations too, food-wise, as Samantha of Crystal Jade took the trouble to explain how each dish is made. We dine at the Holland Village outlet of the Crystal Jade La Mian XLB chain of restaurants fairly frequently, so you could say I'm pretty familiar with the stuff here. By and large, what was served at the tasting was in line with the stuff I'd come to expect of the ever-dependable Crystal Jade Group. Still, I went back a couple of days later, incognito, to try the same dishes with the Hubs, as a quality control of sorts. Save for the marinated chicken, everything else, including the servi...

Much of my office culture revolves around food. We have our L.A. Lunches/Dinners/Drinks, and although "L.A.", strictly speaking, refers to Legal Associates, the trainees and partners are all included in such lunches/dinners/drinks as well. And somehow, there's always food, junk or otherwise, in the office. In fact, one of my colleagues, Mr J, actually has a personal mini fridge in his office with a stash of artisanal chocolates that never seem to run out. You know about the "freshmen 15"? Here, it's the "trainee 20"! A colleague had delivered cupcakes to the office to celebrate her baby girl's one-month, and I couldn't resist them because they were just too cute! These were quite good too, moist and dense. The Hubs particularly liked the chocolate chip ones, while I took to the plain vanilla ones. Cute as a button Got milk? How adorable are these booties? All together now, aww! Shh... Pretty as a bib Cake Aven...

It's been a while since we last dined at Cherry Garden . Ever since we signed on the dotted line for our home, we've tried to be more financially prudent. Operative word being "tried". Since Ernie's birthday was coming up, we chanced upon the opportunity to have ourselves an indulgent brunch. It's all Ernie's fault, of course. He wanted dim sum and also, he wanted brunch, and really, no one else does dim sum brunch buffet like Cherry Garden. In my view, Cherry Garden offers the best weekend dim sum brunch buffet around. I usually stay away from buffets because they typically place quantity and variety over quality, and seriously, if I can stuff myself silly with dim sum at Lei Garden for less than Cherry Garden's pricey tag of $68++, then to hell with quantity and variety right? But, Cherry Garden's dim sum brunch is awesome in that most of their dishes are pretty much on par with Lei Garden's dim sum. Every dish i...