Tag: Food

Food Report – Maxwell Market

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A job is a job is a job, and the consolation to even the most stressful and depressing job is payday. Anyway, things have been rather depressing at work for recently, with most of the sh*t coming from someone I considered an useless a**hat in my department. The final straw that broke the camel’s back was of course an outburst from someone whom I suspect is either having menopause or suffering from PMS.

That probably is part of the reason why I am getting writer’s block and have no idea what to put on the blog for quite a while. Either way, in between paydays, my other solution is either eating good food, having a good time drinking with my pals, and sleeping.

Several months ago when our office shifted from Raffles Place to Tanjong Pagar, I was even more depressed because I am leaving my usual lunching places behind. Fortunately for me there is some good food at Maxwell Market, which is about 10 mins walk from the office so even I can get some comfort in between work. This is a ‘field report’ *wink* of two of the stalls we used to frequent there:

Stall Name: Traditional Claypot Chicken Rice

I personally hadn’t try their Claypot Chicken Rice because it comes in a big pot which probably requires at least 3 people to finish. But their chicken drumstick noodle (or mee hoon or mee sua) is heavenly. The soup is made from some medical herbs and the drumstick is so well cooked that it usually just falls off the bones with a slight push from the chopsticks. At $3.80 a bowl it is very filling and would usually last me from lunch until knock off time. The tonic in the soup might probably even go into repairing some of the damage done to my body when I blew my top over the idiocy of the usual suspects.

However, my personal advice is not to eat this too often. But if you can’t resist the temptation and would love to eat it everyday, I would personally recommend you take some Chinese herbal tea to ‘cool’ your body. I bear no responsibilities if you get nose bleeds from eating so much herbal tonic.

Stall Name: 75 Peanuts soup

When done with the main dish, my colleague and I would usually queue up to get ourselves some deserts. Diagonally opposite would be a store selling peanut and red bean soup. But what is really nice isn’t the soup, but the sweet dumplings made of glutinous rice flour. For a bowl of $1.30, you will get two where one contains black sesame paste and the other peanut paste – the real heavenly stuff. If you would like more you can just go for the $2 one which will contain four dumplings.

Business for this stall is so good that by 1pm or so they would have run out. Thus they are usually closed after 2pm and you can only try it during lunch hours.


So far, all of the people I told enjoyed the food from these stalls. So, head down to Maxwell Market and try these stalls out if you work nearby in the near future.

El Sheikh at Pahang Street

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I should have done this before the one on Amirah’s Grill after I went there with some very wonderful people: nadnut, jean, rinaz, dk, chillycraps, malique and his wifey and musxzart on 26th July. However, I also didn’t take any photos then to make a proper post.

I must first thank rinaz for introducing us to this wonderful place, situated in the Kampong Glam area, right next to Amirah’s Grill along Pahang Street. To reach the place you can either take a bus to Beach road and drop off opposite The Concourse, or take the MRT’s East-West line to either Lavender or Bugis MRT station and take a short walk over.

I quote from Rinaz blog: The cafe already looks charming from the outside with the rustic two story shophouse where it was housed. Inside, it looked very cosy and rather condusive with its homely arabic styled decor all around.

The above is true. But as to the service, I think it is a little lacking. I recalled that when I was there for the first time I had to call them to bring the cutlery for late-comers, and on the second occasion when I was there I wasn’t even attended to after a few minutes (but that might be because the staff were having their dinner.)

The food is great. Adding to the fact that I am damned hungry, I swallowed my own order pretty as quickly as possible. Even so, I could taste it’s nice and I really want to go and try out the food again. Since I am not very good at describing how good the food is, I’ll let the pictures do the talking. You can check out some of the pictures taken by Rinaz when she was there some time ago before our outing.

All in all, I think the food is value for money and the portion is generous. Do visit when you can, and I believe most people will enjoy the wonderful food they offer.

The first few photos were given to me by dk, and the rest I took on my own when I revisited the place again on 21st Aug with xinyun mei.

Amirah’s Grills

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Meet up with an old friend today. He has not been well on and off over the past few weeks and since he’s feeling better today we decided to meet up at Marina Square for a chat. After a long chat, we had a hard time deciding where we should have dinner. We wanted to do it at Black Angus at One Full Of Shit Fullerton but we noticed some boards have been put up blocking the sea view so I proposed we might as well go down to Pahang Street and dine at El Sheikh instead as I sort of missed the delicious mixed kebab I had last week.

My friend then suggested that I should also try out Amirah’s Grill. So, we walked over to the bus stop outside Fullerton Hotel and took bus 196 to the bus stop in front of the Concourse along Nicoll Highway and walked over because both buses 100 and 107 refused to show up. (They did show up, after we boarded onto 196. Bleah!).

Surprising, both El Sheikh and Amirah’s were quite ‘deserted’ today. But even the entire SunTec – Marina – Raffles City hall area was empty today anyway, probably because many people were either down at the Natas Fair over at the Expo or have left the country on vacation to avoid the National Day week vacation rush.

So, my friend and I was all alone in Amirah’s. Great environment and interesting music – I was told they are in Arab – which I had no clue what was being sung. The decoration is probably Islamic and Middle Eastern, if I am not mistaken. There are also paintings depicting ancient Egyptians and the Pharaohs. Unfortunately, I took only one picture of a part of the restaurant with my Nokia 7390 camera phone because I suck at taking photos. The quality isn’t so good because I didn’t use the flash as I didn’t ask any permission to take photos

Again, I ordered the Mixed Kebab – the Turkish one. My idea is that the mixed dish always have all the meat in the same dish so you can sample them all, and if you liked one of the meat very much, the next round you come by you can always order just the kebab with that meat alone. Similarly, if one of the meat is not good, then you can always give it a miss. And if all three is good – as in this case – then you don’t end up missing something good.

While all three of the meat from the dish is good, the beef was fantastic. It’s been a long time since I have eaten beef so tender. The last round I had beef that good was back in Shanghai having Kobe beef there. But unlike El Sheikh (just next door) where the sauce comes separately, Amirah had them poured onto all the meat already. In both cases, the sauce goes well with all the meat. The portion is smaller compared to El Sheikh, and I actually liked it because I could no longer eat as much as I used to when I was younger. I strongly recommend this dish to you.


Inside Amirah’s


The Turkish Mixed Kebab


Moroccan Mint Tea (Cold)

For drinks, I ordered a cold Moroccan Mint Tea. It was quite soothing and refreshing and certainly value for money because every single sip I take, the mint flavor is present. I was presently surprised that the mint leaves put there aren’t just for show, unlike a lot of our so-called iced lemon tea with a slice of lemon and you had to use your straw to poke the slice to squeeze every last drop of lemon juice out it to even taste something.

Total damage, $51.10, and that include another plate of roasted potato because we finished our carbohydrates faster than we liked. I would say it’s certainly value for money as I believe it would have cost us 20 – 25% more – and probably not as satisfying – if we had taken our dinner at Black Angus. (Do not be mistaken, it is not that Black Angus isn’t good on its own!)

Do give Amirah’s Grill a visit when you have time. In fact, we are going to check out some of the eateries at Haji Lane in the near future.

兰州拉面

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I should have done a write up on this a few years ago when The Magus brought me her for dinner. That was when he decided that the Bush Administration Regime (if not America itself) no longer welcomes foreign talents (as a result of 9-11) and return to boring Singapore. I believe his opinion was that the U.S. under the Patriot Act was no different than Singapore with the ISD.

However, even before The Magus brought me to the place, Lanzhou La Mian (兰州拉面) used to be located in Lao Pat Sat some time in the late 90s. I was pretty sad when it moved out, and I have no idea where it has moved to.

Anyway, after I was re-introduced to the place, I brought a number of people to the shop (now located at 19 Smith Street) for dinner and it has so far not disappoint me and my friends. I am glad Daphne did a video with Bloggers’ Treat on the place because now it gave this lazy bum here the impetus to pay tribute to the eatery myself.

Lanzhou La Mian’s specialty is of course – la mian (拉面, which literally means ‘Pull noodles’ in Chinese). Simply put, it’s just ‘hand made noodles’ (手工面), but unlike the other kind of, the only machinery involved in the making the noodles would be the machine that mix the flour and water. Whatever else is all done manually.

My personal favourites would be the Chicken Chop (鸡排拉面) and Pork Chop Noodles (排骨拉面). And for sides, it would be the steamed (小笼汤包) and panfried dumplings (锅贴). They actually also have some Chinese style deserts, though the English names escaped me for the moment.

I am sorry I don’t take photo of my food, so do check out the video done by Bloggers’ Treat and Daphne. I believe the visuals would have more impact that the mere words I am using here.