New Lucky Claypot Rice

Finally found where the famous Clementi's New Lucky Claypot Rice moved to.  Should have googled months ago.  It is now at the hawker centre (Blk 44) over at Holland Drive.





The three of us ordered claypot rice for three.  Plus a salted vegetable soup and oyster sauce cabbage.  Should have ordered the big one for five.  The claypot rice was so good and definitely not enough for the three of us. They use the real stuff - charcoal - to cook the rice.  Gas is usually used at other places.  We can smell the burnt rice from where we were seated. The rice were just slightly salty.  The sliced chinese sausages and chicken went well with it.  Black sauce was provided and it is up to one to decide how much black sauce to mix with the rice.  Scrap the bottom of the claypot, the burnt rice is the best part;-).

Wine - Margaux 2000

Gong opened this massive wine for lunch a couple of months ago.  We had t-bone steak to go with it. Superb palate and nose and soft at the same time.  Think this will be magnificent in another 10 years or so.  Of course no complaints of drinking this early.

Great Mocha at Jones the Grocer

Jones the grocer @Mandarin Gallery serves the best mocha in town in my opinion.  It is awesomely good.  Love the tasty cocoa.  Never fail to order this whenever I am there.

Apple store @ IFC, Pudong Shanghai

Night shot of Apple store over at IFC in Pudong, Shanghai.  Shot using iPhone 4S of course.  The entrance is through the circular stairs as shown in the photo.  In the store, there are rows and rows of iPads and iMacs for one to browse and meddle with.  Reminds me of the glass pyramid in front of The Louvre over in Paris.

Wine - Chateau Pape Clement 1998

Had this for lunch.  Was initially flat.  Needed decanting.  After an hour or so, nose began to come out nicely.  The tannin began to drop off and the wine became lovely and closer to full body.  Good time to drink.

Chinese Book - Duan Zi

Duan Zi is a current best seller in China.  Happened to pick up this book at the bookstore over at the Pudong airport.  The author writes short passages on his outlook of life, childhood days, academic days, friends, encounters with prominent and famous personalities; basically life passages.  Every topic is only about 2-3 pages and he writes in a humourous style and yet critical at the same time.  While the things he writes about were mainly of China, one tends to associate with some of his encounters.  Bring back memories of younger days and also characters that we have come across.  Good read.  Second book is out and have bought it as well.  By the way, it is in Chinese hor.

Chinese Green Tea in Changshu

On my Changshu trips, my Chinese colleagues like to bring us to this farmer style restaurant situated on the foot of a row of hills.  We would always have several home-grown vegetable dishes.  Frankly, the dishes were so-so and had very earthy taste (real organic growth??? kekeke).  But what I like most is the Chinese green tea that they served.  They have a tea plantation surrounding the restaurant and the tea leaves are from there.  It has a nice fragrant smell and "dan dan" taste.  I gave a tin to my father-in-law and he told me the green tea is excellent.

 this is the restaurant along the foothills

 the tea plantation

 excellent chinese green tea

 look at the colour of the leaves....

the final packaging

Hinoki - my favourite Japanese sushi haunt

Hinoki is my favourite Japanese food haunt.  While the quality is just slightly lower than places like Tatsuya; the ambiance, the huge portion and the chatty-ness of the two chefs more than make up for it. And of course it does not hurt so much on the pocket as well.
Was there last week on  a special occasion.

 started off with mini home-made tofu covered with burst-in-your mouth salmon roe...

 followed by mini-sashimi with generous slices of flounder

 I asked Lawrence if he had any special stuff and he threw me this Japanese sea urchin.  Full of the taste of the ocean.

And of course followed by generous portions of sushi ;-)

and ending with a special chiraishi from Lawrence ...aji chiraishi.  First time I had this with aji and it was real good.

Tatsuya - after a long time

Went with the boss to Tatsuya.  The folks there were wondering why I have not been there for such a long time.  Of course cannot tell them that I have been visiting the brother's restaurant - Hinoki.  The two brothers somehow don't seem to be on speaking terms.  But that does not bother me.  It's the food that counts ;-)
It seems that the folks have new set of uniforms and definitely looked smarter than before.  Looks like they have a new junior chef - junior cos he was doing bento sets!
The quality of food is still as good as ever.  It's better than Hinoki but the bill also hurts a lot more.

 we started with snail .....

 and mini tofu

 followed closely by some excellent sashimi...

 and then grilled toro

steamed mochi with ginko nut and lotus root inside

 japanese trout - it was small but full of flavour

 aburi-style toro

 yummy Hokkaido prawn - look at the texture!

 among the cooked stuff, I love this the best - toro soup.  They don't do soup refill ;-(

 Japanese scallop

 uni sushi

 this aburi-style kobe beef was a tad too smooth for me

 and still had some space for cold noodles

Mutton Soup @ Adam Road Food Centre

My dad loves to eat mutton soup. But due to his age and health, we will only buy for him on special occasions or once in a long while. This mutton soup stall, Bahrakath Mutton Soup, is my dad's favourite. Ever drink smooth mutton soup with finesse? Try this stall. Reasonably priced as well. I understand the stall is open from noon to 3am everyday and closes on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month.




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Nadaman Shangri-la, Singapore

I don't frequent Nadaman though it has been around for a long time. While the quality of food is good, I feel the presentation rather dry and tiring. It's always the same style. But they have royal customers and with the strategic location of Shangri-la, it will continue to survive. The few times that I was there, it was never fully occupied. Same for today when we were there.
There were four of us. We decided to have mixed sashimi, grilled Japanese fish (can't quite catch the name), grilled beef and chiraishi. The mixed sashimi was quite good and very fresh. I was impressed with the grilled fish (which unfortunately I did not remember the name). It was crispy on the skin and juicy at the fresh. But the best was the chiraishi with generous amount of burst-in-your mouth roe, toro and uni. I think it's worth a visit if not just for the chiraishi.

mixed sashimi

japanese bonito? the captain said tis the season

wonderful grilled fish

grilled beef

fried beef and garlic ... love the fried garlic

the best of the lot - chiraishi with salmon roe, toro and uni

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Breakfast on board SQ

Took an early SQ flight to Shanghai recently. Had a pretty decent breakfast on board and at the same time managed to catch up on some financial news.

Appetizer was croissant and some fresh fruits......

Followed by cornflakes with fresh milk........

Main course was omelette and sausages. The omelette was a bit dry but otherwise ok.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft has just introduced its very own range of tablets called Surface. And this is likely to turn the whole technology world upside down. By having it's own tablets, it is side stepping its hardware partners like Dell, HP, Lenova, Samsung, who have been churning out desktops and laptops using Microsoft operating system. The partners will not be happy. Same goes for the rest of the supply chain like hard disk drive players such as Seagate and Western Digital. They will be badly hurt if Surface becomes successful as this will replace the laptops. Microsoft may not have much choice but to choose this route for its own survival; having seen the enormous success of the iPads in the consumer market and now beginning to gain inroads into the corporate world. Microsoft itself is already late getting into tablets. The Surface is a big but necessary gamble. It would also have to incentivize app developers to come onboard. Although it is way too early to even predict the success of the Surface, Microsoft has to make this successful. For it not to, it will mean a one way deterioration of its relevance.

One thing for sure, even though I am a keen user of the iPad and trying to move towards paperless work style, I am looking forward to the Surface. I write and review lots of documents and these are mainly in Word and Excel format. Somehow, when I open these documents on the iPad, the formatting usually goes bonkers. These may be due to different versions being used. I do not have much confidence that I am looking at the same document that is sent to me. I have to ask the sender to convert to PDF format before sending the document. If this issue can be resolved by the Surface, I would gladly have one.



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Short Bangkok trip - June 2012

Was in Bangkok recently for a short work and shopping (with wife) trip.  Not been there for some time.  Since it was a very short trip and with a couple of business meetings, there were only so many places that we could visit.  We went to Platinium to get gifts for the children and we managed to find a little nice leather goods shop over at Zone 3.  I think this is the only shop that sells genuine leather stuff in that building.  I was surprised to find Red Mango there as well.  But Red Mango Singapore definitely taste better anytime.

We had a great dinner at Coca over at Siam Square.  This place is so much better than the similarly named restaurant back in Singapore.  The next day, we managed to squeeze some time to go down Chinatown.  We were kind of disappointed.  Chinatown was quite rundown.  There were many shops selling similar stuff - it was like every other shop is a watch shop selling seikos and orients and the rest were mainly seafood restaurants.  We did a small restaurant hopping from T&K to Scala Shark Fin's.  T&K was recommended but we didn't find anything special.  We went to Scala to get our shark fin and bird nest fix.  Personally, I will skip Chinatown and spend some time in downtown Bangkok in future visits.

Shark fin at Scala

Bird nest at Scala

Sushi Ichi - omakase lunch in pictures

Had lunch at Sushi Ichi last week.  This the second time there. First was couple of weeks ago for a wine cum lunch invitation.  Food was great especially the sushi. Chefs and serving staff are Japanese and they definitely tired hard to explain in English. A jolly branch and that's what I like. Much have been written about this place thus I will only show the pics taken using iPhone 4.  Definitely worth re-vsiting but have to watch the pockets.