AromaCookery

First Thai Food

At one end of Purvis Street (next to North Bridge Road), there's Yhingthai Palace, serving exquisite Thai food with elegant furnishings and impeccable service to match. That's where you go if you've got a big, fat wallet. For those with shallow pockets (yup, that's me), walk down to the other end of the street, where you can satisfy your craving for Thai food at friendlier prices.

Tom yum soup with seafood, individual portion (S$7.00)

I've heard lots of good things about First Thai Food. Wanting to beat the queue, Rick and I came early at 6.45 pm for dinner.

Vintage India

Fine cuisine in opulent settings

I was invited by the Palate Vine Group to review their latest fine-dining Indian restaurant, Vintage India at Dempsey Road. The Palate Vine are also the people behind Ras The Essence of India and the Tent Mongolian Fresh Grill & Bar at Clarke Quay.

HK Kim Gary Restaurant

Supreme beef curry baked with Swiss cheese ($10.50)

The Dining Room @ Sheraton Towers

Fish and chips, S$21.00

Ricky and I took my mom to The Dining Room for a relaxing Sunday dinner. We've always enjoyed the elegance here, especially the view of the waterfall through the tall ceiling-to-floor glass windows. Surprisingly, only a handful of tables were occupied.

The ala carte menu seems to be more limited than I remember. Mom had the fish and chips. We thought it was a dish that shouldn't be that hard for a 5-star hotel to execute. While it looked great, the inside of the battered fish was soggy. Yes, soggy, not juicy. Not that it wasn't fresh or uncooked, but it just wasn't quite right.

The portions were huge, though. Mom couldn't finish the piles of fries and fresh salad that came along with it. The fries were pretty good, too bad we were seated right under the air-conditioning so they turned cold and hard too quickly.

Aangan Restaurant - Lunch buffet

Hungry for authentic North Indian food? There's no need to order butter chicken from Mumbai. For a satisfying, bang-for-the-buck meal, check out the lunch buffet at Aangan Restaurant.

    
    Papri chaat

A must-try is the papri chaat. Aangan does a killer version, and so many customers request for it that it's a daily fixture on the buffet (other dishes are rotated). Made of wheat flour, semolina, and rice flour (for crispness), the papri (fried dough disks) are eaten with mint chutney, tamarind chutney, yogurt, boiled potato dices, and/or boiled chickpeas. Make your own combo, or opt for everything, like I did!

The crispy papri, the cool mint and yogurt, the sweet and tangy tamarind jam, the soft chickpeas - pop the whole thing in your mouth and feel the combination of flavors and textures explode. Fabulously more-ish!

Ayam Penyet Ria

       
        Ayam penyet aka smashed chicken (S$5.50).

And so, for my debut radio interview last Thursday on 938LIVE's F-Cube's Foodie Lunch Pick, I plugged the smashed chicken at Ayam Penyet Ria.

The first thing that came to my mind when I heard of this dish was, "Oh gosh! How could they subject the poor bird to such torture? Clobbering it to death? What a fowl foul deed indeed!"

The RiceTable (Cuppage Terrace)

             
              All-you-can-eat rijsttafel.

Years ago, The RiceTable started out promisingly. The first to offer rijsttafel at affordable prices, word quickly got around and business boomed. At S$19.80++ for dinner, one gets an all-you-can-eat spread of 20 dishes, placed on warmers at your table. You have to admit, it's a tempting deal. Plus, the food wasn't half bad.

Roti Prata

There's a newcomer at the Food Junction food court in Great World City. Occupying the stall which used to sell teppanyaki, the newcomer is Roti Prata, selling (you guessed it) roti prata, and other Singaporean Indian favs like mee goreng, murtabak, and rice sets.

       
        Sausage and cheese prata (S$3.00)

In addition to the traditional plain or egg pratas are Westernized versions like the mushroom and cheese. I tried the sausage and cheese prata (above pic), and was less than impressed. Instead of being fluffy and crisp like a good prata should be, it was flat and heavy. 

Parkway Thai Restaurant (Centrepoint)

I was at Centrepoint last Thursday, wondering where to go for an early dinner, when I saw Parkway Thai's "Light Bites" banner. From 3pm to 5.30pm, they offer a limited variety of rice and noodles at discounted prices. I forgot to check if this is also available on weekends.

       
        Rice Spaghetti with Chicken Green Curry (S$4.80).

This was what I had. Rice noodles, or laksa noodles, were accompanied with a bowl of meaty chicken (on the bone) in thick green curry. Usually, green curry would be served with rice, or in a more soupy form with noodles in the curry. For a moment, I blanked out. Ermm, how to eat this?

Cafe Banh Mi

       
        Yummy banh mi, but probably not the ideal chow for a first date.

Mention Vietnamese cuisine to Singaporeans, and beef pho will most likely come to mind. Suggest going for a banh mi, and they'll probably respond with a blank stare. You can hardly blame them, because until Cafe Banh Mi came along, there hasn't been a Vietnamese cafe specializing in Vietnamese-style sandwiches.

So, what exactly is a banh mi? A reminder of Vietnam's colonial French history, the banh mi is a sandwich of soft, crusty French-inspired baguette stuffed with grilled [insert choice of meat here], creamy pate, tangy pickled carrot and daikon, crunchy cucumber, and aromatic coriander (cilantro for American readers). Wow! Doesn't that sound mind-blowing scumptious?