All Entries Tagged With: "Singapore"

Prima Taste in Vancouver Downtown

We met up with Angie and her kids for lunch over a weekend … oh … more than a month ago. You can see how behind I am in my dining out blog posts.

Angie is to us a really good cook. You should check out her food blog which mainly focuses on recipes with a bit of dining outs. Her site is called Sea Salt With Food.

We decided to meet in a Malaysian restaurant. We hem’d and haw’d between Chili Padi and Prima Taste and finally forced to decide on Prima Taste because Chili Padi was closed for the Muslim holiday. Prima Taste is located in downtown Vancouver (specifically 570 Robson Street). Locating this place is easy but, whew, parking is expensive in downtown isn’t it? We managed to get a spot on the street parking which is much cheaper.

Prima Taste is very much more a Singaporean restaurant than a Malaysian one. For all intents and purposes, Singaporean and Malaysian cuisines are not only similar, they are one and the same. Did you know that Singapore was a state in Malaysia in the 1960’s? Anyway, Prima Taste refects every bit of Singapore … from huge posters of the Singapore city to the modern and clean decor and lines. It is definitely a very comfortable restaurant for sure and certainly one of the best looking Malaysian/Singaporean restaurant in Metro Vancouver by far.

Prima Taste’s origin started off as manufacturer of Ready-to-cook mixes and is based in Singapore. The Prima Taste brand is popular around the world when it comes to these mixes. Suanne tried using their Singapore Chilli Crab mixes before and had blogged about it here. We like Prima Taste’s mixes.

But before I continue, can I ask permission from you readers that I be honest here? I get lambasted sometimes for expressing my personal opinions especially in areas which is deemed as negative. It is just my opinion and yours may differ … and I accept that. So here goes …

We ordered mainly from their single servings section of the menu — you know, noodles and rice dishes. All their dishes looked OK to good. On the taste department, I know I am measuring this to authentic Malaysian and Singapore food, I am sorry to say that they are pretty bland to just OK.

I think they might have tried too hard to tone down the flavor to cater for the downtown crowd. If so, I understand why.

The Laksa Fried Rice above looked yummy.

The Char Koay Teow is simply too wet. It was so wet that it was almost like a KL Hokkien Mee already. Maybe Singaporeans makes Char Koay Teow like this but Malaysian ones are certainly not like this. What is really missing is the fried pork lard bits and cockles … LOL! Tough luck finding these here in Vancouver. I am sorry to say it is just disappointing to me.

The above is the Seafood Mee Goreng (mee goreng means fried noodles in Malay). It looked pretty amd colorful especially with the reddish tomato and green peas. But … tomatoes and green peas in a Malaysian dish? If they had called this something else, like Seafood fried noodles with peas and tomatoes, it would have been OK. My puny brain just does not connect “Seafood Mee Goreng” with peas and tomatoes.

The Fried Hokkien Prawn Noodle (which we assumed is Hokkien Mee) was ordered by Suanne. When it came all of us looked at each other and collectively said … “What? Is this Hokkien Mee?” Where we came from Hokkien Mee is supposed to be black or brown but never white. LOL! And the noodles too, they where the thin types and all cut up.

I think they cut it up because it makes it easier for the people to eat this with a spoon. Sorry (again) to say this but I think cutting up noodles is a bad idea … just like cutting up a burger to spoon sizes to make it easier to eat with a spoon is a bad idea.

Angie and us debated this whole issue about the WHITE Fried Hokkien Mee for days. LOL! We just can’t understand this. We finally settled on “maybe Singaporean’s Fried Hokkien Mee are white”. Any Singaporeans out there who can give us guidance?

I say that the Prawn Noodle Soup looked bland because I expected it to be like a Penang Prawn Noodle Soup which is reddish and spicy. Technically, this is correctly termed as prawn noodle soup because it has prawns.

The Laksa Prawns looked creamy enough with a good amount of coconut milk. Again, this was not a dish I tried and does not know how it was. It sure looked respectable … raw cockles would have made it better, right?

The (Fried) Chicken Rice looked very good and tasted real good too. They could do with giving a few more pieces of chicken meat though.

The Fried Chicken Rice came with Yow Fan (translated as Oily Rice?). Again, this one is good and full of flavour … and good enough even eaten on its own.

Angie’s kids ordered Cendol as dessert. We miss cendol here.

So … we all were quite disappointed with the meal. It is because we might have unfairly measured this meal with the type of Malaysian food we are accustomed to. They are not bad food, far from it but we are just commenting from the standpoint of authenticity. We also fully understand that because of the location of Prima Taste right smack in the middle of downtown, perhaps they thought it wise to cater more to the tastes of their main customer.

Despite the comments above by me, I must say that we had a great time meeting up for lunch. Prima Taste is a good place and has the right kind of setting for chatting (they don’t rush you off even when you had finished your meal).

The bill came up to $95 in all. We find it on the high side and again understandable because Prima Taste is in downtown.

One thing for sure, we love Prima Taste mixes … as for the restaurant … well … YOU should go and try and let me know your thoughts.

Blackberry Bistro in Richmond’s London Landing

George and Ease recently invited us for dinner. It had been a very long while since we had met up. It must have been something like over three years. We had utmost respect for them and remembered so well how they had supported us in times of need.

A few years ago Arkensen was in hospital. Suanne and I took turns to stay with him in the hospital every night. There was that one day Arkensen had a rough patch and I stayed with him right through lunch and dinner time. Just then when it was late and I don’t expect anyone anymore, George showed up despite his busy schedule. Seeing that I had no eaten yet, George went out scouring for dinner for me. I will never forget that act of selflessness from him.

Ease told us she had been reading our blog all these while. So when Ease contacted Suanne suggested we meet up for dinner, we immediately agreed. We went to this new place call the Blackberry Bistro.

The Blackberry Bistro is described as a Pan Asian restaurant but to us it is more than that. It is located at the so called “new Shaunessy of Richmond” which I think is more aptly called London Landing. I had been through this place many times before when I was training for the Half Marathon and had always noticed the name Blackberry … this place used to be overrun with blackberries but of late a lot of the industrial buildings had been torn down to make this a new waterfront residential area.
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For those who are are familiar with this southern Richmond nighborhood, I want you to know that it’s on 6011 Dyke Road. It is very near where the London Farm and the starting point of the London Landing dykes.

We had expected a very Asian setting but were quite impressed with the setup. The restaurant had a decidedly modern setting with high ceilings which is lends to it a sense of spaciousness and grandness. This restaurant sure put in a lot of planning and thought into it.

There is even sofa and fireplace in the eating area upstairs with plasma TV and all (and not playing HK variety shows!). We actually did not expect that there were so many customers but were quite surprised that they had a healthy mix of customers. This is perhaps the only place we had seen so far which serves decidedly authentic Asian food and had more than 50% of the customers who are white. I like that.

The table setting was well thought out although I think they put in too much effort to making this good. Case in point … the manually wrap and bind the chopsticks and cutleries. The menu too is really cute … which for a moment I thought was a placemat!

Their menu is very much South East Asian. We had the nice juicy Chicken satay for starters. Having grown up in Malaysia, I know what real good satay are and this is it. He he he … what this lack is the fatty chicken skin which will make it even more juicier. The peanut sauce was quite OK except I had wished it had more chuncks of peanuts and a bit of chilli sauce like the way it’s supposed to be.

The best satay in the world is the one in Kajang, Malaysia called Haji Samuri. Compare the above against this blog entry I made here … looks pretty close, huh?

Suanne had the Laksa. It is creamy, thick, flavorful but otherwise not overwhelmingly spicy. It is pretty good and we agree that this is just not one of the run of the mill laksa. The mere looks of the laksa broth itself tells us that they did not just use any off the shelf paste to make this.

The laksa came with spring rolls. Taste wise, It was alright but in the looks department it was quite unique in that they gave us a dip which I could not quite figure out what it was. Looks like some orangey jam but not quite.

I had been on a mission to search for the best Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup of late after some of you reader had been commenting on this topic. Since, they had this on the menu, I ordered this. The broth is intense to say to least but lacking in spiciness which I personally like.

The bowl is huge. As a matter of fact, their servings are very large and are served in unique triangular bowls and plates.

Arkensen had the Hainanese Chicken Rice. Presentation was good. It came with FIVE sides … nice! The all important rice was flavorful. Hainanese rice is not the normal plain steamed rice but is cooked with chicken broth producing an “oily” chicken flavour rice.

Arkensen did not quite like the chicken because it was made of chicken breast. Chicken breast meat is generally tougher. I remember growing up in Malaysia people specifically did not want chicken breast but here in Canada, Canadians pay more for chicken breasts!

Nanzaro ordered some dish where he gets to pick two types of meat. He likes these kind of food where he gets to choose. I can’t remember what this is called. He had the char siu and honey spareribs which came with rice and sides.

I tried Nanzaro’s spareribs, it was great … crunchy and sweet.

Almost all dishes came with at least two sides — some salty-sweet triangular chips and grilled zucchini. And you know what that means? We had too many dishes on the table … it was jammed pack with dishes of all shapes and sizes.

George and Ease ordered the Singapore style fried vermicelli. Unlike ones we see elsewhere this one is chockful of ingredients. It looked pretty good.

George and Ease also had the curry chicken. It looked nice and good but I did not taste it.

It was when we finished our meal when the owner came by our table and chatted with us. I always enjoyed talking to the owner. In some places we went to, the owners look at us with suspicioun when we whip out our cameras.

The owner, Phillip, told us that almost all of the ingredients are made on their own. He even said that the wonton wrappers are made inhouse. It is because they actually own Soo Jerky too and had a R&D kitchen from which these dishes came from. He told us he would travel to far flung towns in Malaysia to get the original recipe of Kuching Laksa which he claims is the best there is.

Since he talked about Kuching, I asked him about this noodles called Kolo Mee which I had always heard of but never tasted. You know what happened next? He asked us to hang on and disappeared to the kitchen and made us his version of Kolo Mee (this is not on the menu).

I am so impressed and knew then and there, this is not just any restaurant.

The Blackberry Bistro has a good selection of gelato and guess what … they made these gelato on their own too. After all the food we declined the gelato but on their insistence, we tried their blackberry and blueberry ones. It is certainly one of the best we had tried … not too sweet and tastes like what it is supposed to be … fruity blackberry and blueberry. We’ll come back again some day just specifically for this.

You MUST try their gelato.

Singapore-Malaysia Trip: Katong Laksa

On the last night in Singapore, I was alone with no one to join me for dinner. I remember seeing some brightly lit shophouses behind the hotel I was staying everytime I drove past. So, I thought I take a short walk and check out the shops.

Little did I realize that I had stumbled on the row of restaurants famous for the Katong Laksa. There are several shops serving the Katong Laksa and each claiming to be either the original or the best. They have signs and photos plastered all over the open-air restaurant supporting the claims.

I counted four restaurants along the stretch — each of them numbered. After surveying the stalls, I decided to try out the “49″ shop. It’s on 49 East Coast Rd.

Unlike the other type of Laksas, Katong Laksa uses noodles that are cut up into smaller pieces so that the entire dish can be eaten with a spoon alone (without chopsticks).

The cononut-based broth is much thicker than the other variants of Laksa. It is certainly more richer. Also, instead of yellow egg-noodle, they use white lai-fun noodles.

This is what makes a great Laksa — Cockles! I had not come across laksa with cockles all the years I am in Vancouver. I enjoyed the Laksa a lot. It was really good even though I was sweating profusely on a hot and humid day in a restaurant with bad ventilation.

It appears that next to each of the Laksa stall were Fruit Rojak (fruit salad). Since I did not want to stay on in the restaurant, I bought some to-go so that I can eat in the comfort of my hotel room. The rojak is really good too. What I like best is that they toast the tau-pok and yutiao before they mix it up. This makes them really hard and crunchy — not mushy at all.

I’ll blog about Malaysia from tomorrow.

Singapore-Malaysia Trip: East Coast Lagoon Food Centre

I met up with Keng Choong, Chee Ming and Eng Keong one of the nights I was in Singapore. In my secondary school days, we always hangout together after school and were serving in the Boys Brigade for many years. We were close — we sat next to each other in class too. After secondary school, we each went our way — one went to the US to study, another went to Singapore. We had only met once in the past twenty years.

We have remarked how little each of us had changed. I was really glad to catch up with them and learning how successful they had become. Needless to say, we talked about the good old times in school, and the Boys Brigade.

We met at the East Coast Lagoon Food Centre. It’s a hawker centre where there are stalls serving a host of variety of cheap food. It was really hot and humid that night. I was so thirsty. I ordered a cup of iced cendol.

The shaved ice was refreshing and cooling. The ingredients consist of white coconut milk. thin worm-like pea flour noodles and palm sugar. In addition, they added red beans and jelly.

We ordered some traditional Malay satay to share.

Keng Choong ordered the petai. The seeds have a very peculiar taste and are an acquired taste. I tried just a few but decided I did not like it. I think only Keng Choong ate this.

This dish below is the BBQ stingray in chilli sauce.

The flesh were white and stringy. It went well with the sourish chilli sauce.

It was so hot, I ordered a second drink. The freshly extracted sugar cane was delicious.

I know it’ll be sometime before I will meet up with them again. I just hope that it’s not gonna be another 10 years before we meet the next time. Although the hawker food was good, what I enjoyed most is catching up with them.

Singapore-Malaysia Trip: East Coast Seafood Centre

I returned to Singapore on work for three days. The days at work is somewhat OK … not gruelling as I originally anticipated. At the end of the second day of work, Patrick invited the project team out for dinner.

We went to the East Coast Seafood Centre where there were a lot of major seafood restaurants concentrated in the block.

Crabs, in particular chilli crab, is very popular in Singapore. Many people consider the chilli crab the defacto national dish of Singapore. So, the East Coast Seafood Centre is undoubtedly the place to bring guests and visitors to.

Even on a weekday night, the parking lot was quite busy. I was told that the traffic and parking is worse on weekends.

We went to this restaurant which had an unique name: “No Signboard Seafood”.

We started off with a plate of Fried Crispy Baby Squid. I had never tried this before. They were very good — very crispy. A great starter dish.

I told Patrick I wanted to try their chilli crab and left all the ordering to him. However, when the crab came it was not chilli crab! Grrr … instead what he had ordered was the White Pepper Crab (or I think that’s what Patrick said it’s called).

It wasn’t bad at all, in fact, it was quite good. It’s just that it’s disappointing that we did not have the chilli crab. The chilli crab gravy would have been great with hard-crusted bread or rice. This one does not have gravy.

The crab was fresh and very fleshy. It was good but wished it was chilli crab … just can’t get over missing chilli crab!!

This is something new too to me — Crayfish (or crawfish). I think they were fried with butter, I am not sure.

The crayfish looked like a cross between a lobster and a very, very large prawn. The flesh tasted a lot like lobster. What I liked best was the flakes from the fried butter. Great on rice.

The below is a squid dish wrapped by yutiao. This is unique but does not have much of a taste.

Singapore-Malaysia Trip: Aeroline Bus Trip

After staying for two days in Kuala Lumpur, I had to get to Singapore for the next four days on work. I decided to take the bus from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore and booked for a seat in the Aeroline website (https://www.aeroline.com.my/index.html). The trip costs RM80 (about USD $22) for the 5hr journey from downtown KL to downtown Singapore.

I took the bus just half a block from the KLCC, or better known to the world as the Petronas Twin Towers. The Twin Towers was the tallest buildings in the world.

Aeroline buses are double deckers. The seats are located at the upper deck while on the lower deck was a lounge that seats about five people. The seats were comfortable and does recline. They even have power points for those who wants to hook up their laptop to do work on board.

They serve one meal on the trip. For the trip, they gave everyone fried rice, piece of fried chicken and an egg. The fried rice was STALE!! It smells so bad that I can’t believe they did not detect it at all. They came around and collected the stale rice and did not so much as to offer an apology.

Three days later, I received the email above apologizing for the bad food and offered a discount voucher for about 10% of the price of the ticket. I am not going to take their food on future trips again!

Singapore-Malaysia Trip: My Comfort Food

I just realize something about myself.

While waiting for my connection from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, I had a few hours to kill at the Changi Airport. I am impressed with the Changi Airport and do think that this is really the best airport in the world. They have won countless awards over the years. Just this year they were awarded the Best Airport by Skytrax. Why, they have almost anything a traveller would need — they have internet stations everywhere — for free. The internet stations are even equiped with video cam.

After checking out the airport and the shops, I headed to the 24-hour food center. It was late and not many stalls were opened. I thought I grab something to eat, sit down and do some reading. I ordered the BBQ pork noodle soup which costs $7.

Man, I suddenly realize how much I missed a simple bowl of noodle soup. Despite the gourmet meals I had on Business Class hours ago, this simply beats them hands down. I felt so good and it suddenly hit me how close I am to “home”. This is truly my definition of comfort food.