Chir Chir

Chir Chir has been the talk of the town among my instagram posts sometimes back with all the delicious looking fried chicken originated from Seoul. Abit of their background: Besides its origin, they are the largest chain of restaurant known for its freshly-cooked Korean chicken dishes.

Chir Chir

Chir Chir Menu

Paper Placemat

Big Plush Toy

A half an hour wait for our dish to be served. Well, since it was our first try at Chir Chir, the first impression of it was not bad. This Crispy boneless fried chicken chunks were tender and crispy, totally a different style from the usual Korean Chicken we had from the other fast food chains. The set is good for 2, coupled with fried potato wedges and rice cakes which were tossed with honey butter sauce and seasoning.

Honey Butter Chicken - $28

Fried items arrived piping hot and surprisingly these fried chicken was still very succulent on the inside despite the dry look on the outside. Once you bite on it, you will feel that the meat was coated with sweet layer of honey but as your teeth sink deeper, you can taste the marinate of the chicken.

Fried Chicken

The combination of dried cranberries with almond flakes never fail to impress me.

Hot Wedges

Giving so many fried chicken outlets in Singapore, I still feel that Chir Chir will be able to stand out among the competition.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Chir Chir
Location: 50 Jurong Gateway Road,  #04-13/14 Singapore 608549

Penang Seafood Restaurant

Did a last minute check with the buddy who stays in the area as our "dictionary" for food is running out of ideas as we were quite limited to the usual Beef Kway Teow and Frog Porridge in Geylang for dinner. She recommended Penang Seafood Restaurant which is just a stone throw away from Ajunied Station.

Penang Seafood Restaurant

The Penang Restaurant which is also serving Cze Char is bustling with people. Not to worry about the seats as the turn over rate there is rather high. Servers are rather polite and quick to attend to our orders.

Menu

The environment gave a feel that we are in Malaysia and even the variety of drinks they served is so closed to what the usual coffeeshops in Malaysia offers, Ice Jelly, Herbal Tea and even Lime juice with sour plum.

Lime Juice - $2 Each

The safest choice to order if you are lost among the dishes in the extensive menu. If you have heard of Penang Cuisine, Assam Laksa is one of their staple dishes. This signature dish of theirs is sour by default with Tamarind (Asam). Look around the tables, I bet you will see majority ordering this. And if you like sour and sweet food, this is a perfect choice as the bowl is filled with ingredients like shredded cucumbers, onions, chillis, pineapple, lettuce and mackerel fish. The level of sourness is very well executed and appetizing. Better than average and its addictive.

Penang Assam Laksa - $4.80 (Small)

Ingredients and Noodles Revealed

Penang style of Char Kway Teow is usually not of my preference as I prefer the Singaporean style that is usually coated with the sweet black sauce. Surprisingly, these plate of flat rice noodles was remarkable with its "Wok Hei" taste coupled with ingredients like bean sprouts, cockles, chinese sausage, prawn, guchai and egg. Its aromatic but just too bad, the man insisted that he prefers our local style.

Penang Char Kway Teow - $5 (Small)

With Salted Egg Yolk trend still in the hype, they have kept their food menu up to date! With this being the chef recommended dish, I had expected more with something outstanding. No doubt the sauce is creamy and yummy, the dish still lacked the fragrant as well as the Wow factor.

Fried Sotong with Salted Egg - $13 (Small)

Beware of the steaming hot plate below the bloated aluminum pack. Loving the way how this dish is prepared in the aluminum pack and slit open in front of us when being served on our table. Herbal taste is evidently packed with an alcohol infused whiff from the Chinese wine. Steamy herbal soup is sweetened with the use of sweet dates and wolf berries. Beside that, ginger strips and mushrooms were also part of their ingredient. All was good except that I'm not too keen with chicken with bones bits in it.

Hot Plate Wine Chicken - $16 (Small)

Penang Seafood Restaurant offers a decent fare of Cze Char dishes and since there are many other signature dishes like LaLa and Hokkien Mee that we have yet to try out. I don't mind coming back again.

Rating: 3 / 5

Penang Seafood Restaurant
Location: 76 Geylang Lorong 25A Singapore 388258

Hup Choon Eating House

To decide on what to have for dinner is always a question for us and although it may be a simple thing, it often took us quite sometime to settle for a venue. As we were driving along Upper Bukit Timah Road, we had kind of decided to have pizza but ended up visiting the Cze Char Stall by the side of it.

Not every Cze Char Stall can prepare the standard items like "Yee Mee" well but I'm rather please that Hup Choon's is above average. Yee Mee had the "Wok Hei" smell, however they do have a strong lard smell which was not to my liking.

Yee Mee - $4.50

Xing Zhou Bee Hoon portion was generous with crab meat, bean sprouts, vegetables and eggs as the ingredients. The part we like about ordering standard items is simply because of the "Wok Hei" flavours.

Xing Zhou Bee Hoon - $4.50

Simply loves the home style "Cai Po" (Preserved Vegetables) Egg! It was fluffy and tasty. Best is that I can actually eat them alone without being worried that the "Cai Po" will be salty. This is something that I usually crave for as our household stove usually could not achieve such standard as we do not have strong flames in the kitchen.

Cai Po Egg - $5

Tasty and light on the appetite with ingredients like slice fishes, carrots, lettuce, sweet corns, tomatoes in it. If you like having soup in your meal, this would probably be good.

Fish Soup - $4

Overall, we concluded that the Cze Char Stall is another place that we will visit again for other Cze Char dishes.

Rating: 3.25 / 5

Hup Choon Eating House
Location: 1 Binjai Park Singapore 589818

Amari Hua Hin

Driving about 3 hours plus from Bangkok Airport, we finally reached our accommodation. Amari Hua Hin is located about 10 minutes drive from its City and is ideal for a resort holiday if you want to stay away from the bustling city lives.

Hotel Lobby

Pool View

Open Area

The Deluxe Double Room with pool facing is tastefully furnished with contemporary decorations. Room is well furnished with Air-conditioned environment and an en suite bathroom. Rooms is basically equipped with the basic necessities of what you will expect in resort. They have a flat screen satellite TV, a minibar and a safety box. Free toiletries, hairdryer and bathrobe are included too. Private balcony which is facing the pool makes up of the 38 square meter room.

Deluxe Double Room

Deluxe Double Room

En-Suite Toilet

Hospitably services is commendable as we were greeted with all smiles from entering to exiting the hotel throughout our stay in Hua Hin. I'm impressed by their service from the beginning as the Hotel Staff brought us around introducing corners of the hotel to us even into our rooms, they highlighted that items like basket and poncho are readily provided if we are heading to the beach which is about 400m away.

Safe and Beach Basket

Wifi is available throughout the Hotel Compound but is only limited to 3 devices per room. Breakfast at Mosaic has a wide spread of food and I guaranteed you that you won't go hungry leaving the hotel.

Since we are driving, I noticed that security there are pretty tight as the guard will cordon off the entrance of the carpark. Other than that, parking lots are ample despite having one of the days coincide with one of a major IT security event in the Hotel.

Entrance to Hotel Lobby

Amari Hua Hin
Location: 117/74 Takiab Road, Nongkae, Hua Hin

Encik Tan

Encik Tan which means "Uncle" Tan when translated from Malay language is another concept by Fei Siong Group. It's a place where you can find the usual Singaporean Food like Fried Carrot Cake, Wanton Noodle, Fish Soup, Laksa etc. Fred not, this food establishment has been prepared to serve our Muslim pals by having Halal Certification.

Turnover in Encik Tan at Westmall is pretty fast and the popular order among the diners will be none other than a plate of Hainanese Curry rice loaded with generous amount of black and curry sauce on top of the rice with braised vegetables and an egg.

Chicken Chop Hainanese Curry Rice Set

For Curry Rice, there are a few choices. You can enjoy the rice with fried chicken cutlet, drumstick or grilled sotong. You can also make your meal a set by adding another dollar, topping up with a drink like lime juice.

Chicken Chop Rice

The crispy deep fried Chicken Cutlet will be cut into smaller pieces.

Chicken Chop

Every serving comes in a heavy traditional flower plate, this makes us feel at home. The braised vegetables were very soft and sweet. If you are someone who enjoys Hainanese curry sauce covering up the entire plate of rice, I bet you will like this!

Hainanese Curry Rice Set with Grill Squid

Not to worry much about the spicy level as it is quite moderate. For those who prefer drumstick, this set is not as bad too. Overall the fried chicken was fragrant and recommendable. The skin of the drumstick is not only fried perfectly to an attractive color, the crispy texture will definitely makes you want more!

Fried Drum Stick Rice Set

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Encik Tan
Location: West Mall, 1 Bukit Batok Central Link #01-01/36 Singapore, Singapore 658713

Snack Jack Restaurant

Walking round the night market in Hua Hin, joining the atmosphere being a tourist enjoying the street food as much as our stomach can handle.  To the section where seafood stalls and restaurants are, you will get to see how competitive the business is over there. After walking and up down the streets, we finally decided to have a seafood feast and went into Snack Jack Restaurant. Restaurant was visibly full, packed with tourists.

Snack Jack

Holicks

Drink

We went up the 2nd level via the iron spiral stairs and after browsing through the menu, the server recommended the combo item. We all thought it was a steal to enjoy the seafood combo with a choice of steam or fried fish and decided on it. Seafood platter consists of crayfish, crabs, prawns, cockles , calms and mussels. It was quite disappointing that the crayfish was not entirely cook and most of the items were bland and tasteless unless you were to dip them into the sauce given. Perhaps the only thing that is worth eating on the plate were those prawns, at least they were cooked but on a dry side due to the style of preparation.

Seafood Combo - 650 Baht

The Snapper fish is much better and worth eating even though the taste was not really good. Herbs and Spices like lemon grass were added in the base of the fish with aluminium foil and wrapped up. I like the fish fresh but the taste again was too bland on the top side of the fish while on the other side, it was all soaked in its gravy.

Snapper Fish

The dish was awful. Felt that it was a disgrace to their national dish. Rice was not fluffy, in fact by just one look, you know the texture, color and consistency would have failed the entire dish on the spot. Taste was right below par.

Pineapple Fried Rice

Overall, it was a total disappointment. We felt that it was kind of tourist trap to have dined there. The Seafood Combo sounded a fuss free choice for tourist like me but with crowds and accommodating of the high turn over rates, the food quality was being compromised, needless to say, the service too.

Rating: 2.5 / 5

Snack Jack Restaurant
Location: Toh Rung, Hua Hin, Thailand

Baan Itsara Restaurant

Enjoying Seafood by the Sea is something we are looking forward to as it was part of the relaxation aim from the trip. Baan Itsara was recommended by my Thai Pal who had patronized the place before and said that I can enjoy some food by the beach.

Baan Itsara Restaurant, Hua Hin

The waves

Sculpture and the sea

Calm and Beautiful

Dining Area

Dining Environment

The therapathic view of enjoying a glass of lemonade over the edgeless sea, listening to the sound of nature while waiting for our main food to be served.

Lemonade - 60 Baht

Simply love the Thai Style of preparing steam fish over the burning flame with the fish shape metal plate. Spices of the fish used were what we see from the mainstream thai dishes, that includes limes, garlic, chilli , parsley as the visible garnishing.Even though gravy was good, we did not order any rice to pair along as we were afraid of having no room for other Thai Snacks after dinner.

Steamed Whole Seabass with Lemon Sauce - 520 Baht

Fish Meat

That was the first time ever seeing Prawns dressed in Pandan Leaves "suits". I was not so sure if the fragrant of pandan leaves is effective on the prawns but the plate of prawns that was served in 5 was firm and fresh. You can see the aftermath of grilling with the burnt patches from the prawns' antennae as well as its legs, the leaves too.

Grilled White Tiger Prawn in Pandan Leaves - 440 Baht

Nicely Wrapped in Leaves

Excitement was curb upon looking at the lobsters. Wow, they were huge and the biggest that I had savoured so far. it was halved and presentation of food was nicely done with tomato carved into a rose, accompanied by sides like tomato and pineapple. In terms of the meat, I was kind of disappointed with its firmness.

Steamed Phuket Lobster with Sweet Basil Sauce - 480 Baht / 100g

Dinner was a good sum up for a Hua Hin Trip, at least we knew we had done dining by the sea. No doubt ambiance was good, I was not used to the intermittent animal's feces odour that blew towards us and that kind of bring down the mood. If you are attracted to insect, perhaps you may want to prepare yourself with some repellent before going there.

By the Sea

Walking out of the Restaurant

While passing by their kitchen

Rating: 3.25 / 5

Baan Itsara Restaurant
Location: 7 Naeb Kehardt Road, Hua Hin Subdistrict, Hua Hin District., Hua Hin, Thailand