Poh Zi Char

If you know of Ah Wing's Wanton Mee, Poh Zi Char Stall is just located directly behind their stall. Having specialty in their Hor Fun, we find no reason not to whack right at their Hor Fun among the other standards food like Shrimp Fried Rice, Pork Ribs Rice, Sweet & Sour Pork Rice. In fact, talking about Hor Fun, Poh has a few variations of them, Yue Guang He Hor Fun, Preserved Raddish Hor Fun, Fried Hor Fun and Sliced Fish Hor Fun.

Interestingly, Yue Guang He (Fried Hor Fun with Raw Egg) was being served in a reverse manner. Instead of having egg topped the plate of fried Hor Fun, it was placed as their base. Nevertheless, the plate of Hor Fun did whet my appetite for more, not just simply because I'm hungry. Wok Hei was present from their Hor Fun with common ingredients placed in like beansprouts, vegetables and lean meat.

Meat was tender and filled with braised gravy fragrance from the black Hor fun. I was lucky that I got the chance to observe the guy cooking my order. The skillful him took less than 3 min to complete my order.

Yue Guang He - $4.50

If you were to ask what are the food to try in Empress Road Hawker, having Poh Zi Char Hor Fun is definitely worth the calories.

Rating: 4 / 5

Poh Zi Char
Location: 7 Empress Road

Ah Wing's Wanton Mee

Talking about Empress Road Market & Food Centre, we have absolutely no clues to what food is nice there but after viewing several comments left few years ago, we came to a conclusion to look out for Ah Wing's Wanton Mee.

Ah Wing's Wanton Mee

It was an easy task spotting them as there were a snaky long queue in front of the stall and beside being so, they are at the right at the corner of the Food Centre, facing the main road.

A good wait of about 20 minutes and we had finally got our plates of Wanton Noodles as well as Shrimp Dumplings Noodles.

 Noodles were springy enough, cooked to the ideal texture. For Wanton Noodles, thickness of Char Siew were good enough for biting and with not too strong red coloring on it. Wantons were plump and ordinary.

Wanton Mee - $3

On the other hand, Shrimp Dumplings stand out a little more with black fungus included among the sweet marinated minced meat. I would say they are better in texture and bite compared to the versions from the usual stalls.

Shrimp Dumplings Noodle - $3

Frankly, we left with disappointment as we had better Wanton Mee and Shrimp Dumplings Noodle elsewhere. Why are there so long queues still, could it be the best in the area? Beats Me.

 Rating: 3 / 5

Ah Wing's Wanton Mee
Location: Empress Road Market & Food Centre, Blk 7 Empress Road #01-106 Singapore 260007

Ann Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle

Finally, we have visited Par Shi Restaurant! For all these while, their crowd and availability of carpark lots were naturally a turn off to our thought of having lunch there but I guess team work had turned thing around. When I term it as teamwork, it literally means, we split the tasks among ourselves, with one of us do the wait for vehicle parking, one of us went reserve / chope a place in the coffee shop while the rest go ahead and make their orders.Such way, we have efficient use of our limited lunch hours.

Ann Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle

Generally, every stall is packed with long queues and I have decided to go for the Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle. Watching the preparation was a simple enjoyment. Chef has skillfully performed his professionalism and was indeed very focus on every process. 

Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle - $3

Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle was done with generous mixture of stewed mushrooms, minced meat, beancurd skin and meatballs. A different style from the ususal BCM (Bah Chor Mee) I have. Taste was decent and good but not the best I ever had.

Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle

Shrimp dumplings was a let down, mediocre. Though every dumplings was nicely wrapped in the dumpling skins forming a presentable shape, its skin thickness was beyond our expectation. Ratio of the fillings was outdone by its skin, thus the bite focus was more on the skin than the minced meat.

Shrimp Dumpling Soup - $3

Comparing the soup dishes, my vote will go to the fishball soup of course, for the fishballs were fresh and bouncy. The bite on the smooth surfaces were definitely a winning point compared to the Shrimp dumpling.

Fishball Soup - $3

Rating: 3 / 5

Ann Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle
Location: Par Shi Restaurant, 83 Pasir Panjang Rd Singapore 118515

Little Saigon

Walking by the Riverside, we caught sight of this Vietnamese Place and decided to have some light bites over our catchup. With the existence of our sweltering hot weather, it's especially hard to dine outdoors, thus we chose the indoor seats instead.

Interior was well adorned with classic Vietnamese lanterns and blue as the main color with warm dark wooden setting. Hanging posters of typical Vietnamese woman with the pointed straw hats were hung on the walls, adding more of such culture into Little Saigon.

Environment

Turning my heads to the sides, we spotted the beautifully arrange wines in the glass cabinets and from the look at the musical instruments and the stage, we knew Little Saigon has a completely different ambiance at night with live bands musics embracing the drinkers.

What's at the night

Spring Rolls are good appetizers as well as snacks while waiting for the main courses. Unlike the smooth and traditionally fried Spring Rolls Skin, Vietnamese Spring Rolls use rice paper to encase the ingredients like minced pork, vermicelli and black mushrooms. Texture was totally different from the Chinese style and goes exceptionally well with fish sauce as the dipping sauce.

Fried Spring Rolls -$14 

Portion of the Traditional Beef Noodle Soup Rice Noodles was big and served with Slices Of Tender  Beef & Beef Brisket in the rich flavorful broth. Garnishing like, lime, chilli, chilli padi and black sauce were all separated out, giving us a choice to adjust the taste to our likings. 

Pho Bo - $22

Since it's Happy Hour Time with 50% off beverages, having alcoholic drinks like this is definitely a steal.

Drink - $15

Rating: 3 / 5

Little Saigon
Location: Clarke Quay, 3E River Valley Road #01-02 Singapore 179024
Website

Traditional Hakka Lui Cha

Having residing in the West side of Singapore for so many years, it hard to find a stalls that sell Traditional Hakka Lui Cha. In fact, the all time listed in my favourite list is none other than this Traditional "He Po Ke Jia Lei Cha" which already has 2 outlets for more than 10 years in the West. Perhaps if you ask the West Side Foodies, they will also name these 2 few apart from those situated in the modern food court.

Traditional Hakka Lui Cha

The dish Lui Cha or rather Thunder Rice deemed to be a healthy bowl of food that helps to dispel "wind" & moisture from the body system, improving blood circulation and aids in abdominal bloat, pain as well as nausea, a nutritional dish among healthy conscious diners.

Lui Cha with brown rice - $4

Ingredients that topped the rice is mostly vegetables, consisting of cabbages, kale, long beans, dried raddish, leek, string beans, shu zai cai and azuki beans each providing its health benefits.

Close up

The bowl of pounded tea was not too rough to the throat and gave a faint special fragrant of the basil leaves. Some may prefer to have the entire bowl of soup poured into rice and its ingredients to enjoy while some wish to consume them separately.

Pounded Tea

Once again, being quite rare among the hawkers, they are the few few better choices in the West.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Traditional Hakka Lui Cha
Location: Boon Lay Place Food Village, 221A/B Boon Lay Place #01-96 Singapore 642221

St-Marc Cafe

Heard about St-Marc Cafe and seen it in Vivo City but never had the urged to try it. Following our dinner meal, we suggested to have a chit chat session to satiate our sweet tooth cravings. Of all places suggested, St-Marc Cafe scored the most with its eye catching colorful display units on their chiller.

Can you resist such temptations? Japanese desserts just never failed to lure us further especially in such yummy presentation.

Interior

Enjoy every single mouthful cold cold and hot sensation with their signature Fuji series. With the elegant twirls from the vanilla ice cream stacking on the crispy hot butter danish and sprinkled with matcha power as well as red bean topping by its side, it almost made me go bonkers! Luckily, we had our dinner settled earlier on.

Classic Fuji - $7.30

If two is a company and three is a crowd or would you say the more the merrier? Matcha Latte was smooth and creamy with taste dominated by the milk . In terms of Matcha flavour, it seems that the ratio and proportion went out. For stronger matcha scent, I would rather go for those in Starbucks.

Small Matcha Latte - $5 / cup

It seems like we had a little Matcha Toxication here. Matcha was just part of everything which we had ordered. Kyoto Delight was simply another variation of Classic Fuji served in a dessert glass with cool vanilla ice cream among a scoop of Matcha Ice Cream, mochi dressed in peanuts dust and mini rice balls.

Kyoto Delight - $8.80

With such assortment and pretty desserts before our eyes, we left the place with a satisfied stomach.

Rating: 3 / 5

St-Marc Cafe
Location: Raffles City Shopping Centre, 252 North Bridge Road #B1-44M Singapore 179103

Paddington House of Pancakes

Upon looking at the business name of Paddington House of Pancakes (PHOP), it reminds me of the cute Paddington bear and even remind me of a tube station name Paddington in London. Good guess and they name after Paddington as they deemed to have found one of the best pancakes recipes in Paddington, London.

Paddington House of Pancakes

Besides having McDonalds Pancakes locally and having visited Pancakes on the Rock in Sydney, I would say I haven't heard of other places famous for their pancakes.

Interior

Commited to serve quality, hearty, rich and wholesome pancakes meal, we decided to try their pancakes for teatime and every order takes about 20 min as it was cooked based by order. Thus a little patience is needed as time is required for the pancakes to be flipped. So Pancakes lovers, in PHOP you get to enjoy a good variety and authentic pancakes around the world too.

Menu

Healthy yogurt smoothies with Lychee, honeydew melon & kiwi Fusion was ordered. Even though there were a number of mix fruits, the taste was somehow covered up by the yogurt. However, it was soothing to the throat on such a hot day.

Healthy Yogurt Smoothies - $7

The short stack consists of 3 pancakes and we opted for the peaches and Hawaiian coconut with cinnamon and ice creams. Presentation was quite captivating with the stack of pancakes surrounded by coconut flakes, nuts and cinnamon powder, resembling a stranded island in the middle of no where. Maple syrup was separated and you can add them on the pancakes to suit your taste bud.

Peaches and Hawaiian coconut pancakes, cinnamon & ice cream - $12 (short stack)

While I'm expecting some fluffy pancakes on the plate, PHOP was far off from what I wanted. Pancakes were about palm size but quite heavy dough like, not like the even texture we got from our friendly fast food restaurant, McDonald's. In fact, the texture was similar to the Chinese kind of "Mi Jiak Kueh" (Chinese Snacks), doughy and chewy, not my kind of style. Vanilla ice cream that topped the pancakes were creamy and melted quickly soon it felt the heat from the pancakes.

Close up

With all their sundaes uniquely served with dollar pancakes, its hard to to give them a try. If you are wondering what are dollar pancakes, they are actually pancakes with a size of your dollar coin. Taste reminded me of raspberry vanilla ice cream added with biscuit crumbs, one of my childhood ice cream flavours.

Strawberry New York Cheesecake - $8

 Overall it was a good experience in PHOP with its availablity of Pancakes.


Rating: 3 / 5

Paddington House of Pancakes
Location: City Square Mall, 180 Kitchener Road #02-35/36 Singapore 208539
Website