Nian Nian You Yu

An auspicious name when translated means abundance in the year that captured my attention as I screened through the rows of hawkers on a sunday evening. Given the healthier logo and the bright signage at the top and right hand side had added to my curiosity. Moreover, I saw a man ordered a bowl of special rice in light brown filled with vegetables.

A closer look on the menu had given me the exact answer that the bowl of rice is of healthier choice as it is brown rice with vegetables.

Nian Nian You Yu

The word "Red Wine" on their menu drew my attention further. Other than red wine chicken, I had never come across Red Wine Fried Fish. I proceed with my order of such rare meal in Mee Sua soup for a light combination.

Red Wine Fried Fish in Mee Sua - $4.50

 Waiting time was quite long and I was told to take a seat first even though it was Self Service. While waiting, I had took the sauce from their stall. This kind of bean sauce was mixed with a little spiciness goes very well with the fish meat especially on those non-fried version.

Sauce

 I couldnt wait any longer but to have this Red Wine Fish as my first bite. It was battered and deep fried to this golden red brown color and it turned soggy after putting them right into the bowl of mee sua soup.

A piece of red wine fried fish meat

There was a faint taste of the red wine aka "Hong Chao" flavour and not overpowering taste. However, the smell of flour was definitely stronger and texture with the sogginess was a let down.

Fish Meat with Mee Sua

Though we seldom get to see Red Wine's fish in the market and such combination usually entice me, but at a bottom line, I still feel that quality of fish can be of better much improvement. The soup base was not too bland but did not have the wow factor.

Rating: 3/5

Nian Nian You Yu
Location: Blk 347 Jurong East Ave 1 Yuhua Market & Hawker Centre Singapore 600347

Formosa Delights

Formosa Delights is located at the Basement 1 of West Coast Plaza Tuck at one corner near to the entrance of the mall, serving Taiwanese delights and known for its fresh and affordable home made noodles in the area. The furnishing and theme of the restaurant are more towards white color based with interesting orange lights shone down by the beautiful caged lamps, creating a cosy environment for diners.

Cosy Environment

Tables for groups

Known for their hand made noodles, there is no reason why we should skip the recommended dishes.
To make the meal more attractive for weight watchers, Formosa Delights had introduced the wholemeal noodle goodness where they were high in fiber, with low fat and GI. Therefore, one do not have to worry about the additional intake of carbs especially when formosa is quite generous on their portion.

Wholemeal goodness

A usual bowl of hot Ban Mian will come with golden fried ikan bills as well as onions with a few pieces of leafy greens.

Ban Mian

Their noodles came in flavourful soup with notable big chunks of minced meat and egg. These hand-pulled noodles are delicate and tastes as good as those freshly hand-pulled noodles.A closer look into the noodles and you will notice the "spots" on the strands of noodles which differentiate the wholemeal from the non-wholemeals noodles.

Wholemeal Noodle - $6

 The Guo Tie (fried dumplings) was cripsy at the exterior and looked different from the ones we had usually as the fillings was not fully wrapped up. Instead, it was simply made with a half fold of the dumpling skin. Overall it is juicy and had gained great popularity among the diners.

Fried Dumpling

 Another side dish that you may want to try will be its red bean pancake.Flat cripsy exterior with semi sweetened red bean paste overflowed at its side looked yummy.

Redbean Pancake

They are one of the better ones in Clementi and West Coast area who serves a delightful bowl of handmade noodle complimented with their special home made broth. Well, if you know of better ones around this area, why not share it here?

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Formosa Delights
Location: West Coast Plaza, 154 West Coast Road #B1-53 Singapore 127371
Website

Hays Dairies

It will be nice to visit Singapore's Goat Farm which is opened to the public. There is no admission fee required.

Families and individuals of a group less than 20 people can visit the farm anytime between 9am to 4pm. However for big group tours, please do a  prior bookings in advanced.

The milking session are performed daily from 9am - 11am and visitors can view the "live performance" on the elevated platform in Hays Dairies. 

Helpers on the job

Milking session is done in batches about 10 goats at a time in an enclosed area. Firstly, the skilled helpers will clean the area around the tip and then squeeze some milk out with their bare hands into a bucket.

Fixing the tools for Milking

When ready, they will have the equipment fit into the tips in preparation to vaccum out their milk.

Milking

While milking, the goats will be feeding on their food which was laid in front of them.

Input and Output

Unfortunately, due to AVA regulation, visitors are not allowed to touch or feed the goats.

Milking Time

Goat Milk is available for purchase at the farm. There are only 2 flavours, Original and Chocolate and they come in 2 sizes, 200ml and 800ml at $2 and $7 respectively. However the latter is not available for the chocolate flavour.

Not to worry about it turning bad under the sun, you can get a cooler box FREE when you have purchased a minimum of five 200-ml bottles (small box) or four 800ml bottles (big box).

For returning customers, get a 200-ml bottle of milk FREE when you re-use your cooler box together with a minimum purchase of 2400-ml of milk.

Hays Dairy
Location: 3 Lim Chu Kang Lane 4, 718859

Website

Restoran Teck Sing

Restoran Teck Sing is one of the favourite spots where Singaporean will gather for meals in a group. Occupying 2 shop spaces, the front parking lots were not able to cater for their customers. Thus Teck Sing has ushers standing in front of the shops to keep a look out on the available parking spaces and diners can dine in peace.

Restoran Teck Sing

The place is simple mostly filled with round tables in a clean and air-conditioned environment. If you take a look closer on the walls, half was made up of tiles while the upper half was bare concrete with white finish. One would not know such simple and humble shop had a bit of histories until we saw the frames hanged on the wall. They were actually interviewed by the medias and that includes one of the Food Television Programme Host in Singapore.

Environment

Who says eating fruit only comes at the end of the meal? In fact Teck Sing is right to serve fruit before our dishes get placed onto the table.

Fruits

Besides having Liang Teh, Barley water from the shop, they have Ginko with longon water to quest our thirst. These were all prepacked and sealed.

Ginko with Longan Drink

A look at the packaging of the wet tissue simply give a big hint on Teck Sing's specialities.

Wet Tissue

Without further guessing, most of us would have know what is being wrapped inside the baking sheets. As we pull opened the sheet, the gush of aroma of the herbal infusion filled our senses.

Baked Chicken In Paper

Well its none other than their well known Herbal Baked Chicken which many Singaporeans would have come here for!

Baked under the heat for several hours with various types of chinese herbs to produce such mouth watering dish. The meat was tender and moist. In Singapore, such dish is commonly seen wrapped up in aluminium foil instead of paper.

What I like most was its thick herbal chicken soup that tasted so rich with our bowls of plain rice. Yummy!

Paper Baked Chicken - RM 20

This is the dish that not many will choose because of its unique smell. For me, I love petai. This dish was so nicely whipped up from the kitchen with fragrance from the shrimp paste through the balachan chilli.

Sambal Petai - RM 18

We had half a curry fish head. Meat was fresh with no complains. Ingredients like long beans, tau pok, tomato, brinjas and cabbages were added. It was good but without any wow factor.

Curry Fish Head - Rm 28

The last dish that shared among four of us will be the Fu Yong Egg with chopped sausages and onions. I thought it is seldom we get to find sausages in egg from a Tze Char Stall and this was really special for me.

Fu Yong Egg - RM 10 (Small)

After so much of good food, with the exchange rates as the main attractive cause, I will still say the strongly infused herbal chicken is definitely worth one while to cross the border to enjoy such scrumptious meal.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Restoran Teck Sing
Location: 1 Jalan Sutera Satu, Taman Sentosa

80150 Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Tel: 07 334 7025

Opening Hours: Daily 11am to 10pm

Website

Restoran Kiang

A friend of mine had actually introduced us to Restoran Kiang of Permas Jaya. It was on a Sunday morning and we drove all the way into Malaysia despite of the bad weather we had in Singapore. He mentioned that this was one of his favourite stall many years back.

Upon looking at the chinese characters which mentioned 15 levels, it somehow remind me of the Seafood restaurant that we often Patron called San Lou.

Restoran Kiang

Opted for dry version of Kway Teow Kia laded with soy sauce and chilli as it base with slices of orange red char siew meat on the top. Fried onion and spring onions were both added for fragrance, not forgetting the cubes of lards included. Yums! Such combination of thin and slim rice noodle was one of the common found in Malaysia.

Kway Teow Kia Dry

Not only did I fall for the noodle, the soup too! The "murky" traces of the boiling meat remains floating in the water accompanied by fishballs, slices of fish cakes, minced meat as well as seaweeds.

Soup

Upon ordering, the helper will ask if we want to add additional items on top of the sliced abalones and scallops given.

Scallops and Abalone Slices

With a number of stalls selling similar food, competitions are no doubt tougher each day. Such variations of noodles with seafood soup are longer uncommon and standards were pretty the same. Nevertheless, I'm still in love with such food and missing it as I cannot find it in Singapore.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Restoran Kiang 亚坚
Location: Jalan Permas Sepuluh, Bandar Baru, Permas Jaya, Masai, Johor Bahru

Max Brenner Chocolate Bar

For those who likes chocolate will have probably know of Max Brenner Chocolate Bar in Vivocity. Max Brenner offers a variety of chocolate related food drinks such as waffles, milk shakes and cakes.

Max Brenner Chocolate Bar

Orders are to make over the counters. Number card was provided once payment and order is successful.

Indulging with such chocolate milk shake makes me happy especially with a layer of coated chocolate covered partially of the ice cream.

The milk shake cup design was very creative with those words "DRINK ME" printed and comes with a metal straw in the middle. Pretty cool isnt it?

We had the belgium waffle with sliced bananas and vanilla bourbon ice cream. Dessert was welcoming with caramelized krispies adding crunch to the aromatic thick Waffle and chocolate fudge.

Banana Split Waffles - $18.90

 Drizzle a bit of caramel for additional sweetness. What a wonderful sweet treat and every mouthful was just as addictive!

Closer look at the Waffles and Banana Split

 It was really an enjoyment or a good place to chill after dinner times.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Max Brenner Chocolate Bar
Location: 1 HarbourFront Walk #01-116, VivoCity Singapore 098585
Tel: +65 6278 4218

Hock Lam Beef

One of the best known beef noodle since 1911 which carries the old traditional way of serving Teochew Beef Kway Teow in Singapore. Hock Lam have the most awarded beef Kway Teow in Singapore. Their recipe had been passed down from generations and despite the changes, standards in business and quality of food is all well maintained.

Hock Lam Beef

I first came to know about them was during years back when I chanced upon their shop in Far East Square, China Street and it gave me a total different view point from a normal bowl of beef noodle.

Drinks - Barley & Lime

What make Hock Lam Beef so popular is perhaps its 13 kinds of ingredients that used to brew their gourmet soup and their homemade chilli sauce without seeking any mass factory production. Other added advantage will be that the soup was boiled for 24hrs and beef were all sliced manually. The beef were tender and no tenderizers were being used.


Initially I was abit hesitant to visit  them in Alexandra Retail Centre as I'm afraid that the taste might be different from what I had. There were also no queues during our visit, perhaps it was a common scene during weekends in the Retail Centre.

We ordered both dry and soup version together with the drinks for the meal.

Dinner

 The dry version comes with a bowl of soup separately and kway teow was all covered by the luscious sticky brown sauce topped with bean sprouts, vegetables, spring onions, preserved vegetables and chopped peanuts.

Beef Kway Teow Dry

While the soup version tasted as good as before with yummy beef and herbs flavored soup.When comparing the soup of the version, I find that the soup for the Kway Teow Soup is sweeter than the dry version but both were real tasty.

Kway Teow Soup

I will highly recommend Hock Lam Beef for its quality and taste. For those who want to avoid crowd, Alexandra Retail Center will be a better choice for dining on the weekends.

Rating: 4 / 5

Hock Lam Beef

Location: Alexandar Retail Centre, 460 Alexandra Road, #02-24  

Operating Hours: Mondays to Fridays: 10.00am – 9.00pm

Saturday, Sunday & PH: 11.00am – 9.00pm

Tel: 6272 9945