Food: Going Austrian & Italian during Birthdays

OUR BIRTHDAY DINNER @ WIENER KAFFEEHAUS

Birthday at WIENER KAFFEEHAUS
Venue: WIENER KAFFEEHAUS
Date: 29th September 2007, Saturday
Equipment: Nikon D200 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 with Nikon SB-600

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The Food of the Evening
Wiener Schnitzel
Jane had the Wiener Schnitzel. It is rather similar to the Cordon Blue that I had earlier, except without the ham and cheese embedded among the thin slice of chicken or pork fillet.

Cordon Blue
Jason had the Cordon Blue, I did not snap any pictures of it, but reposted from the one I had.

Bratwurst with sauerkraut
Sze Wai had the veal sausage while Shufen had the pork sausage. The bratwurst comes with some brown sauce drizzled over it, served alongside sauerkraut and baked potatoes.

Wiener saft Goulasch
Fio and Bernard had the Goulasch. The Goulasch is actually a Hungarian style beef stew, served with a dumpling, runny 'sunny-side-up' fried egg and an 'octopus-like' looking frankfurter. The stew is fantastic and goes perfectly well with the soft tender beef.

Roast Pork with sauerkraut
Inn Chiau and myself had the roast pork with sauerkraut. I had initially thought that it is served as a complete roast pork knuckle, but I only realised that it comes in three thick slices. The roast pork is served alongside sauerkraut and mashed potato in a light sauce.

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Time for the Sweet Desserts
Sachertorte & Wiener Apfel Strudel
We must definitely try the two famous Viennese desserts!


Coffee Caffeine Coffee Liqueur Coffee!
We had different type of coffee, Inn Chiau ordered the Einspanner, which we kept hearing as "Ice Milo" from the waitress with a strong Chinese accent. The two most interesting coffee we had were the Maria Theresia (left image) and Honey Affogato (right image). Maria Theresia is an espresso with orange liqueur with brandy. We unanimously agreed that it is very strong in alcohol! The Honey Affogato is espresso with a dollop of gelato served hot in a glass rimmed with honey, very much how Jason would love it!

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technorati tags
Singapore Food Birthday Wiener Kaffeehaus Schnitzel Cordon Blue Frankfurter BratwurstGoulasch Sauerkraut Coffee Maria Theresia, Honey Affogato Sachertorte Apfel Strudel Apple Strudel Austrian cuisine Graniph


HER BIRTHDAY DINNER @ PEPERONI PIZZERIA

Peperoni Pizzeria

Photography by William Tan

Equipment: Nikon D200 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Nikon SB-600
We visited Peperoni Pizzeria. Peperoni Pizzeria is one of the many F&B outlet operated by Les Amis Group. Since our first visit to Peperoni Pizzeria, it has always been a restaurant that we will visit during special occasions. Getting there is not exactly very convenient without a mode of transport. We will have to take a bus (usually 74 from my place or work) to Dunearn road or Bukit Timah Road (Hwa Chong JC side, cross the overhead bridge to Dunearn Road), then take a 7-8 minutes walk into Hillcrest Avenue and follow the road until we reach a triangle junction, where a row of shop houses sits along Greenwood Avenue.

STARTERS
Portobello Mushroom
This is our favourite appetizer dish which we will always order every time we visit Peperoni Pizzeria. A huge piece of portobello mushroom fried in a tasty batter topped with chicken chunks, onion and Parmesan cheese. Though drowned in a rich brown sauce, the crust still retained its crispiness. You will need to cut the mushroom 'cutlet' like a steak, except that it is softer!





MAINS
Frutti de Mare
If you are expecting that this pizza is topped with fruits, you are wrong. The Frutti de Mare is a seafood pizza with fresh prawns, mussels, squid rings and succulent scallops. The toppings sits on top of a thin crispy crust base and covered with melted Parmesan cheese.

Squid Ink Sauce
This is the first time we tried squid ink pasta. We had ours with Linguine. The pasta comes with mussels, mixed Ravioli tossed in garlic and squid ink, topped with fresh tomato cubes. We had quite a bit of laughter when we saw each other's teeth and lips stained black.


Peperoni Pizzeria
6 Greenwood Avenue,
Hillcrest Park, Singapore 289192
Operating Hours:
Mondays to Sundays: All day dining - 12.00pm to 12.00am (Last seating at 10.30pm)
Public Holidays: Closed on certain Public Holidays. Please call to enquire.
Phone: (+65) 6465 6556
No dresscode necessary

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technorati tags
Singapore Food Peperoni Pizzeria Italian cuisine Portobello Mushroom Frutti de Mare pizza Squid Ink pasta Dunearn Road Bukit Timah Road Greenwood Avenue Hillcrest Park Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum Vairocana Buddha

The Manhattan Fish Market @ ©entral Mall

It was once called the SOHO along the Riverfront, now the mall that sits above the Clark Quay NEL station is complete and is called ©entral Mall. Most of the shops are not open yet. There are a few mainstream fashion outlets (eg. GG5 and S&K), a Callenger and a few small-scale entrepreneur fashion outlets. The main highlight of ©entral Mall is the vast selection of Japanese food. I spotted long queues at Waraku (there are two different Waraku restaurants in the mall), a Japanese western food (forgot the name Mia M... or something) and I believe more. There is also a not-too-expensive Chinese restaurant, Grains, which is rather popular. Apart from the oriental cuisines, there are also western cuisines such as Billy Bombers and even Burger King. I decided to give The Manhattan Fish Market a shot, since we had earlier thought of visiting Fish & Co.

Upon entering The Manhattan Fish Market restaurant, you are greeted by familiar Fish & Co style decorations and a huge LCD panel showing a high-definition deep ocean marine documentary. You can either have the twin-seater table with 2 single sofa, the saloon seats for four or regular tables that can cater to small or large groups. They have an al-fresco style seating that overlooks Clark Quay from the high viewpoint.
The menu looks similar to that of Fish & Co, with a variety of fresh ocean catch. We were introduced their Seafood Platter for sharing and so we decided to go for it. There are a few types of Seafood Platters for your choice. I ordered a grilled one (S$29.90) instead of the fried one (S$35.90, catered for 2 or 3) and had a fried Swiss Brown mushroom (S$9.90) for starters. We were given the option to make our meal complete with a soup and ice tea at S$4.90 pax.


The Fried Swiss Mushrooms come served with a light garlic dip. The flavour of Calamari floods was suspected to be from the batter. The mushroom is very moist and full of juice. Definitely a try for anyone who loves fungi!

The Grilled Seafood Platter for sharing is good for two persons. The platter comes with 4 mussels (replacing the original oysters), 4 shrimps, calamari rings, french fries, a fried dory fillet and garlic butter rice.

The momemt you are served, the waiter will use a small handheld blow torch to flame grill the shrimps before you, until the sauce starts to brown and sizzle. The shrimps are not too big and can be easily de-shelled (good for people like me who dislike handling shrimp shells). Putting the whole meat into my mouth, I could taste the freshness of the shrimp together with a sweet sauce. I was quite surprised as it was not cheesy at all! It tasted like the creamy filling in the famous Pork Floss bun (from BreadTalk), which I suspect to be Japanese mayonnaise. The mussels are juicy and fresh without any awful raw or iron taste. The mild garlic based sauce that soaked the mussels gave it a nice taste all thogether. The fried fillet which I strongly believe to be dory tasted good but nothing too spectacular to cry about. The fillet is fresh without any fishy taste. It managed to retain the tender sweetness of dory. Nothing to comment about the french fries. By the time, I was done snapping the meal, my calamari rings are rather soggy. Why? That is because the calamari rings are fried and not grilled. The problem with frying calamari rings is that the batter is rather important. As calamari rings are naturally full of fluid, hence batter might not 'stick' well during frying and during serving, the crust might just slip out from the meat into an ugly mess. Though my calamari rings where rather soggy, they just became soft but not messy. Not something which I like but at least it was not a mess. The garlic butter rice is full-bodied with butter flavour and tasty. It reminded me a lot of Fish & Co's without the raisins and definitely much better than that from SFI's.

At the end of the day, me and my girlfriend has a tough time trying to finish what we ordered. It sure does not feel good to feel your belly sitting on your belt, but the portion is definitely worth the amount you pay, compared to Fish & Co. However, in terms of taste, The Manhattan Fish Market fared very well compared to your neighbourhood western food stalls, but my vote still goes to Fish & Co. I do like their menu, especially when they serve my favourite mushrooms. A good alternative to the usual Fish & Co.

Go try it at ©entral Mall today!

technorati tags

Food Singapore Manhattan+Fish+Market Central Central+Mall Riverfront Clark+Quay

Fish Steamboat Celebration

Why do I call this a celebration?
This dinner marks the end of my four-week long IPT physical training session. During this four weeks, I will have to visit Khatib Camp on every Tuesday and Thursday to do physical training in order to pass my IPPT test on the 8th session. I am happy to have completed it with the shortest time possible ever! Test results? Let's not talk about it. The only satisfaction that I got is the end of the session and an improvement of my 2.4km run timing to 10m 51s.
So this calls for a celebration!

Last year, Guan and KK, my regular IPT buddies, brought me to Upper Thomson Road for Japanese food at Tamako. Time really flies and now we had intended to revisit Tamako, but they were closed.
So, we visited a Chinese cooked food shop along the middle of the short stretch of shophouses. Along this stretch is where Casuarina (famous for their prata) can be found. I forgot to capture the store front and name of this shop that we visited. But it sure is popular! There are a lot of people and luckily we did not have to wait to be seated. We bumped into Mark Lee (local comedian/celebrity) dining with his wife. He sure looks like a 100% 'ah beng'. During dinner, Guan broke an important news to us (scroll to the end).
We ordered Pomfret fish steamboat, since KK did not really fancy fish head. We also ordered hotplate tofu (beancurd) and salad you tiou (fried dough stick stuffed with fish paste).


Instead of the conventional charcoal steamboat, they serve as electrical hotpot style.
You get the fun of putting in the fish and greens into the hotpot.Just look at how they make the chilli taste niceHotplate tofu, tastes nice but I was disappointed that it was not egg tofu.
Salad you tiou, not too bad with no stale oil taste, but I've had better and not really a big lover of such unhealthy food :p
Pomfret is smooth, tender and fresh. Perfect!Yam, another important ingredient in fish steamboat, tastes good as well.At the end of the day, you get a really rich and tasty soup!Two thumbs up!

CONGRATULATIONS to Guan who will be getting married at the Registry of Marriage on the 23rd of March 2007.

I am delighted to be invited to attend and also be a self-proclaimed stand-in photographer!