Sunny Viet Vietnamese Cuisine

Apart from the South American and Filipino Cuisine mentioned earlier on, to emphasize, Lau Pa Sat is really a good spot to sample the local cuisines as well as the internationals dishes. Not to mentioned that they had undergone 9 months long of renovation before getting such airy, spacious and better than ever Food Centre currently, maintaining its central clock and facade.

The only Vietnamese cuisine available from stall of Sunny Viet serving the staples and authentic Vietnamese food.

Storefront of Sunny Viet Vietnamese Cuisine

Having too much of mains on the table, we decided to go for the healthy and light vietnamese summer rolls wrapped in translucent rice paper, filled with shrimps, rice noodles, vegetables and herbs.

Dipped into their spicy peanuts sauce and these rolls are just great!

In conclusion, they are good but not the best, Im expecting more taste from the peanuts sauce as well as a more moisten rice paper.

Summer Roll - $5

Rating: 3 / 5

Sunny Viet Vietnamese Cuisine
Location: Lau Pa Sat Festival Market, 18 Raffles Quay Singapore 048582

Thunder Rice Tea

One of the famous stalls during the busy lunch hours, Thunder Tea Rice, originated from the Hakka Cuisine and also a healthy option for the health conscious diners.

Thunder Tea Rice

The green bowl of soup is a mixture of tea leaves and herbs grounded, adding liquid with various roasted nuts, seeds as well as grains. It is then poured into the bowl of rice to achieve a complete dish.

Lei Cha aka Thunder Tea Rice - $5.50

Deliciously healthy and you can bid goodbye to constipation as they are rich in fibre. The usual ingredients would make up of anchovies, peanuts, lettuce, cut french beans as shown below. One can opt for either brown or the normal white rice.

Thunder Tea Rice

So are you game enough to try such cuisine out? It has a strong scent of herbs, basil leaves in the tea mixture. Portion is generous and such combinations has given the dish a mixture of textures with its variety of flavours.

Thunder Rice Tea

Every spoonful is addictive given that the tea mixture was not salty and most importantly a healthier meal. It is also hard to come by a stall selling such rare cuisine nowadays.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Thunder Rice Tea
Location: Lau Pa Sat Festival Market, 18 Raffles Quay #01-26 Singapore 048582

Seng Kee Local Delights

Moving into our local delights in Lau Pa Sat, we have Char Kway Teow, Fried Oysters, fried carrot cake, Hokkien noodles from Seng kee. The wide variety of selection may be a hit for tourists who wants to give a try on Singapore's Food.

Seng Kee Local Delight

An average fare of Char Kway Teow but with a good consistency of moisture among the Kway Teow. It lacks the omph which a authentic plate of char kway Teow had. Perhaps the absence of fried pork lards and fresh cockles blood in the plate. Well then, the ingredients used are healthier that what I had expected.

Fried Kway Teow - $4

Fish cakes and chinese sausages ("lap cheong") were added too.

Ingredients

Fried Oyster from Seng Kee wasn't doing bad either. The starchy portion are of good consistency with the crispy eggs, as well as wetness were well achieved.

Fried Oyster -$5

I felt that those oysters added were generally bigger in size.

Oyster at a close up

Though they are not the best or award wining dishes from the hawkers in Singapore, the taste is more or less there and does vary much from those popular ones.

On a side note, Seng Kee's variety is a very good one-stop-station for tourists and us who want to try local delights from this Singapore's Iconic Spot - Lau Pa Sat.

Rating: 3 / 5

Seng Kee Local Delights
Location: Lau Pa Sat Festival Market, 18 Raffles Quay Singapore 048582

Ang Hapag Kainan Authentic Filipino Cuisine

With the newly renovated Lau Pa Sat, there are 3 Filipino stalls now which sells a variety of authentic Filipino Cuisine and one of them is Ang Happag Kainan.

Ang Hapag Kainan Authentic Filipino Cuisine

Crispy pata (when translated from Tagalog is pork leg) is one of the all time favourite among the Filipino Cuisine, and can be served during the daily meals or even on special festive occasions. It reminds me of German Pork knuckles just that they were served differently, in a Filipino Style with soy vinegar and garlic dip.

Crispy Pata - $18

The dip compliments the dish well giving every bite a yummy and unforgettable feeling. You have a best of both worlds with the first touch whereby the skin was crispy and down further as you sink your teeth, the meat is tender.

Close Up

Sinfully addictive! With its blistering looked over the crackling layer of deep fried skin, it makes the dish so irresistible. However the dish is rather unhealthy as it is high in fat content, nevertheless, enjoying such dishes once in a blue moon is worth it.

Rating: 3 / 5


Ang Hapag Kainan Authentic Filipino Cuisine
Location: Lau Pa Sat Festival Market, 18 Raffles Quay Singapore 048582

Mamacitas Costa Rican Cuisine

You will never run short of eating options in Singapore, besides the usual cuisines we had in what a normal food court can find, Chinese, Western, Thai, Viet etc. And right now we get to enjoy cuisine from North America, Costa Rican in Telok Ayer Food Centre aka Lau Pa Sat and commuters now are more spoilt for choices!

Besides seeing the long queues lined up,the curiosity in me would want to have a try of what does South American cuisine taste like.

Mamacitas Costa Rican Cuisine

Having ordered the Krunchy chalupas, it was a deep fried tortilla wrap shaped into a bowl like containing salad in mixture of lettuce, capsicum, and a choice of beef or chicken topped with salsa.And finally drizzle with savoury sweet sauce and tomato ketchup. Kind of unique!

Krunchy Chalupas - $7.90 (excluding toppings)

It was kind of creamy I thought but was delicious and I can never think of such cuisine being the main course. To make it more interesting, it was upgraded with cheese and avocado.

Can you spot the avocado Piece?

Look at the close up of the fried tortilla, it was crispy and well fried.

Closed Up of Krunchy Chalupas

It was paired with white rice and fragrant whipped potato. Still, looking amazing and interesting meal for me.

Rice & Whipped Potato

If you want a change on the daily meals, this is a good experience to try out!

Rating: 4 / 5

Mamacitas Costa Rican Cuisine
Location: Lau Pa Sat Festival Market, 18 Raffles Quay Singapore 048582

Legendary Hong Kong 九如烧腊

The latest excitement we had in Jurong Point, the launch of Hong Kong Streets that brought some hype in early August 2014! Signboards were hanged above, overlapping one another with neon lights shining, resembling the streets in Hong Kong.

Legendary Hong Kong

With a modern 4-in-1 themed restaurant situated along the "street", it is definitely a scene stealer to anyone especially when it is drawing crowds with their authentic Hong Kong Cuisine.

Facade of the Main

Side

As expected, the queues were snaky long, from its reception booth all the way across to opposite shops. For those who dining in groups, they only allow entrance when all members in the group are present. No taking away are available currently.

Add caption

Just right in front of the entrance, one get to enjoy a sight of their chef's culinary skills in chopping up those authentic roasted delights.

Chef at work

A step deeper into the restaurant: The setup was no difference from a typical "Cha Chang Ting" in Hong Kong, whereby every staff was so actively occupied with their tasks, running about the dining area. Interior was big with lots of seatings area and atmosphere was as noisy as a marketplace.

Interior

Settings was as good as a replica of the happenings in a Hong Kong Cha Chang Ting with signages indicating the streets in Hong Kong.

Dining Area

A walk down into the middle of the restaurant, you will get to see numerous picture frames with Hong Kong photographs.

Pictures

This is the place where orders were taken and sent to.

Serving Counter

Right towards the ending area, it's kind of restrict zone whereby bigger groups get to enjoy a spacious corner in round tables.

Family and Groups Area

Being curious about its Legendary taste, we had ordered a platter with 4 combinations of its roasted meat which includes roasted duck, BBQ Pork, crispy pork belly and chicken. Unlike the Singapore Style of Roasted meat, portion of fats was thicker in every of them. The BBQ Pork was of different style with charred edges and came in lighter brown color, somehow too oily for my liking. The platter came with 3 types of sauce, Wasabi, Ginger with spring onion and prune sauce. The platter was rather disappointing as it lacked the smokey and savoury punch.

BBQ Platter - $18.80

Having ordered the meaty platter above, we decided to go plain with the porridge. Though it may seem watery but the water content was well proportioned to those soften rice grains, a soothing and smooth pairing with the BBQ stuff!

Plain Porridge - $1.50

One of the specialty in Hong Kong that I cannot go without, their style of ice milk tea.

 HK Style Milk Tea (Iced) - $2.80

Custard Crust Bun - $1.30

One of the staples in the dim sum affair, Steamed Pork Dumplings aka Siew Mai. Looked and tasted dry. Though the meat was rather bouncy, the texture has given away. Still, I find that it lacked moisture and could have been better.

Steamed Pork Dumplings (Siew Mai) - $5

As recommended on its menu, an interesting combination wrapping the fried dough fritters with thin later of transulcent rice roll. It's a little bit challenging here as these fritters were rather hard and big, so be prepared to keep your mouth wide open if you order this.

Perhaps they could add more light soy sauce to enhance the fragrance, at the same time, soften the fritters a little, perhaps.

Rice Roll with Dough Fritters -$4.50

Finally! 3 Pretty Char Siew Bao came to us in the wooden Dim Sum Tray. A presentation that is simply beautiful and irresistible!

Steamed BBQ Pork Bun - $4

Emphasizing on its Char Siew Fillings, they were the not-so-sweet kind with gluey sauce over thinly chopped lean meat. Good but not to die for.

Char Siew Fillings

Verdict from my first experience in Legendary Hong Kong is that the food did not entice me much. For such pricing and less the wait, there are better Cantonese fares out there.

Rating: 3 / 5

Legendary Hong Kong 九如烧腊
Location: Jurong Point, 1 Jurong West Central 2 #03-80 Singapore 648886

Spruce at Fire Station [Shifted]

Spruce at Bukit Timah has taken over the old Fire Station, converting the space into a 3000 sqft dining area which is able to accommodate up to 150 people in indoors. The old building has been built way back in 1956 and each time as I pass by, my attention will all be drawn on those big giant red doors which were retained.

Concept of Spruce was laid-back, serving unpretentious modern American Cuisine.

Spruce

Beside serving signature dishes and  the occasional wine dinners, they also feature a bakery with freshly baked pastries and breads which was made inhouse daily.

Paper mat for the Table

Location is perfect with just a stone throw away from Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. However due to its location, it might be a tad inaccessible if you are taking public transport. For those who are driving, do make sure that if you do not miss the turn into the carpark or you have to make a long way through before making a U-Turn.

Interior

To keep the atmosphere lively, there are live bands available at some of the nights adding joys to chill outs sessions for the diners.

Bar Counter

Chef Signature, surprisingly comes with tender braised beef cheek stacked under a bed of Polenta accompanied by french beans and carrots.

Chef's Special

One of its chef recommended mains to be ordered, Spruce Burger. Buns was slightly toasted and with some crisp at the circumferences topped iwth both white and black sesame, interesting!

Signature burger

Beef patty was juicy and comes with homemade pickles, cheddar cheese with herbed flavoured thick cut fries by the side.

Spruce Burger - $18

Cross Section of the Burger

Ambience is good for relaxing and unwind ourselves after a day of work, not to mention that the hospitality of the servers were great too. On top of that, this restaurant is kids friendly thus suitable for family gathering and meals.

Rating: 4 / 5

Spruce At Fire Station
Location: 260 Upper Bukit Timah Road, #01-01, Singapore 588213
Operating Hours: Mon – Thurs: 11.30am – 12.30am
                                Friday: 11.30am – 1.30am
                                Saturday: 9am – 1.30am
                                Sunday & PH: 9am – 12.30am
                                Bar open till late
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