Ember-licious!

In celebration of mine and Jenn's birthdays, we decided to bring ourselves out for a nice and quaint quiet dinner. It's kinda sad that the rest of the gals are no longer here to join in the celebrations, but life goes on.

Not knowing where to head, we decided to try Ember at Hotel 1929. We prob were one of the last few people in Singapore to uncover this much-talked and raved about gem. But well, better late than never.

I brought my yummy-licious sparkling Pinot Shiraz purchased at the last OZ trip at Domain Chandon. Ooh, speaking of which, Princess Min is now down under on her much much deserved holiday with her shining Lord in amour. Envy, envy.... :)

Alright, back to the evening.. don't expect a big restaurant! Ember was cosy and quaint, recommend to book in advance as the place does not serve a big crowd. When I saw the menu, I almost wanted to order everything.. haha.. it's just me being greedy!

For starters, we chose the pan-seared foie gras served under a warm bed of enoki mushrooms and the chilled angel hair pasta delightfully accompanied with konbu and abalone to share. What a wonderful start to our dinner. (Sorry, didn't manage to snap the foie gras, we immediately 'attacked' the dish the moment it was served!)

Pegs raved about the ox-tail at Ember, but somehow I couldn't find it out the menu. So either I am blind or this was a secret dish that only people in the know knew. For the mains, Jenn had the miso cod-fish (a house fave by many), whilst I selected the chilean sea-bass served with a warm yuzu-truffle butter sauce and mushrooms. I love, love, love anything yuzu. Having said this, I miss TOKYO and all the yummy YUZU delicacies the city beholds. The fish was perfect! The yuzu flavour wasn't that distinctive, I felt that the truffle overpowered the fresh and citrus flavour of the yuzu. But nevertheless, the fish was soft with its meat melting into my palette.

There is always room for dessert! But we didn't want to appear to be too greedy, so we shared the lemon sorbet mille-feuille served over strawberries. That was the much-needed finishing touch to end this wonderful dinner.

the day I turn 30...

Another candle to add on my birthday cake as I grow older! It was a quiet celebration of sorts this year. I guess as one grows older, you just want to sit back, relax and be with the people that are close and dear to you.

One of them of course would be B! He came back home for the F1 and of course to celebrate my birthday! :) Here's what we did on the actual day...

Dinner at Les Amis.. I always wanted to go there especially since I've heard the rave reviews of this lovely French restaurant!

The opulent interior decor! Loves the chandelier which B told me that we won't be getting anything soon. Oh well.. but lookie here, your handbag get its very own chair! Wow! :)

Instead of going straight for the Degustation Menu, this evening, we decided to just opt for the ala-carte menu, starting with a bubblicious Rose Champagne (sorry, I can't seem to rotate the picture). B choosing the wine for the evening with his bruised hand.

Amuse bouche, courtesy of the restaurant: breaded mushroom balls that are served piping hot! Next up was the spring roll stuffed with minced meat and served over a warm mushroom sauce.

We decided not to go overboard with the dinner and decided to share our starters. The Wagyu beef was served raw with shaved aged parmesan cheese and white truffles. And no dinner is complete with our favourite foie gras!!

The main course was a duck dish that was prepared in 2 different ways. The first dish saw the duck just served as it is with a red cabbage salad, grilled apple and potato puree. The duck was tender and done just nice. For the second course, the duck was prepared a little differently. It was served ala Japanese style with corn and seasonal Enoki mushrooms. Hmm... yumz is the buzzword for the evening! Of course, B chose the wine for the evening. He always knows what i like, would be clueless if I had to choose the wine!

Dessert was an assorted cheese platter. Lastly, petite fours!! We also had freshly baked madelines courtesy of the chef!

Thanks B for the evening and the pressie! :)

This evening, I met up with the family and had a cosy little dinner celebration at Jack's Place. Hey, the sambal steak is seriously quite good (for an entry level steak).

Stephie, we missed you!! You are the official photog at our family events!!!

And I love all my pressies!!! :)

• Earrings from B
• Boxers, Ahava toiletries set and shampoo from my loving sisters
• A fotofall frame from Min
• The Botkier bag that I was kicking myself for not buying earlier from Cat and that wonderful BMW Sabuer F1 cap from Cat and Chris
• Yummy-licious gifts from Molton Brown - Chempaka shower gel and body lotion - from the people at work! I love Molton Brown stuff.. the scents are always a loving treat for my body!
• A travel tag and girlie coin pouch from cult brand 'Flirt' from Mad

Tetsuya's

Remember my post about Tetsuya's? We couldn't believe when they told us there was a waiting list for dinner till the end of the year. So we tried our luck for lunch, but they never did get back to us, so we decided to give up. Little did we know, we did manage to score a reservation. They were trying hard to get hold of me but I didn't turn on my mobile till we arrived in Sydney. Was really quite ecstatic when we found out that we were going to having lunch at Tetsuya's!! :) Yippee dee doo dah....

It was an eleven course degustation menu at Tetsuya's... the diet plan literally just went down the drain! Anyways, that's the only menu that all patrons can have. The menu was delightfully and sinfully exciting!

Bread was served with not just any normal butter but non-salted butter with black truffles and aged parmesan cheese. The amuse bouche was a small serving of warm green pea soup that was drizzled with white truffle oil. This summoned our 11-course luncheon...

1. First up was the fresh ocean trout cake with Beluga cavier and scalloped egg. Initially, we thought that little white dollop was scallop mousse but it turned out to be a tiny little egg. The sweetness of the yolk matched the trout cake perfectly. This dish was paired with sake from Kyoto.

2. Next was the tuna sashimi with wasabi and ginger dressing. It was paired with the Lost Valley Savignion Blanc 2006. Wouldn't say this dish was super fantastic, but the dressing was refreshing to one's tastebuds. To quote my better half, 'this dish is very nice.'

3. Grilled Tasmanian scallop with diced onion and bacon was paired with Tyrell's 02 Seminion. The juices from the scallop made a nice warm broth, an added accompanient for the dish.

4. Another ocean trout dish but this time served with konbu salt over a crunchy green apple and fennel salad. I thought I couldn't stomach another trout dish but this dish proved me wrong. The konbu salt gave the trout a much needed salty boost whilst the green apple and fennel gave this dish its a crunchy balance on the palette. This dish is also said to be Tetsuya's signature dish and paired with the Eden Valley Joseph Hill 2007 wine.

5. Ravioli stuffed with Queensland spanner crab and served over a tomato basil sauce. Dish was paired with Pierro Estate Chardonnay 2007 - specially produced for Testuya's.

6. The last crustacean dish for the course was this baby barrumundi over a flower bed of baby fennel. By this point in time, both B and I have had enough of seafood and were raring for the meat dishes to come on out.. haha..

7. The first of our 2 meat dishes - the pinkish duck breast that was soft and tender, served with Tetsuya's Pinot Noir.

8. The seared veal with wasabi butter. Wasabi in butter, what a heavenly pair!

Oh.. the famed chef Tetsuya came out to greet all the patrons. I couldn't resist being a groupie and asking him to take a picture with me! :0

9. And you know how many restuarants normally just give you a sorbet to clean your palette? At Tetsuya's they gave us this spoonful of sugared lentils with shaved cheese. We just took a hard look at this and almost wanted to just give it a miss but our server told us to just give it a try. And we did... the result? Wow... this spoonful of sugar helped changed our palettes in preparation for desserts.

It's finally time for dessert!!! YAY... there were about 5 other tables around us, but we were the first ones to come this far.. I guess we eat really fast! haha...

10. Beetroot and blood orange sorbet on shotglass 1 and in shotglass 2, bread and butter vanilla pudding. Hmm, nothing too over the top and fanciful I guess.

11. Last but not least, petite fours!!! From left to right - Sweet potato chocolate truffles, white macadamia biscotti, gingered chocolate macroons and the chewy soft green tea marshmallow. What a delightful sweet ending for the entire meal...

What can we say about this? PERFECT and STUFFED....

drink, drank, drunk....

Am going to jump straight into day 3 of our trip where we headed to Yarra Valley to get drunk. We arrived at Yarra Valley about 2-ish and headed out for a light lunch at Domain Chandon (the only winery that is operated by the good people at Moet & Chandon). I had the beef pie that was served with a rocket salad drizzled with superbly yummy wine dressing and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. B chose the sparkling Shiraz to go with the pie. Never tasted sparkling red wine and it sure was bubbly sweet! :) The weather was a downer, so we stayed on and ordered the Cheese Board Platter that was paired with 4 different Champagnes. After drinking those 4 glasses, I was giddy high...hic hic....

Dinner was at the charming and quaint Chateau Yering. It felt like we booked the entire restaurant! Cos there was no other patrons there that night except for us. Remember that we went there during deep winter!

We each had the 2 course meal. Hmm, I can't remember the starters...forgot! But for the main, I had the pigeon served medium rare. At first, I thought 'Hmm, medium rare pigeon...scary!' But the pigeon served medium rare was surprisingly tender. The meat was soft and pinkish.. and tenderly soft! Perfect...paired with a great red wine!

B and I shared the apple souffle for dessert and ended up goofing around thereafter.. playing with our cutlery as you can see! haha...

Gastro oogling...

Because its not possible to get a table at Tetsuya's (double sigh!), here are the other top restaurants in Sydney that are worth considering:

Icebergs
1 Notts Avenue, Bondi Beach
Tel:(02)) 9365 9099

With uninterrupted views of the Bondi Beach, this restaurant offers diners a relaxed dining experience. Mediterranean entrees start from A$21. Ooh, it would be so nice to dine here with the soothing sounds of the oceanic waves. The Polenta with Crab dish comes highly recommended!

Marque
4/5 355 Crown Street, Surry Hills
Tel: (02) 9332 2225

Degustation menu starts from A$145, and the restaurant just completed its renovation to mark its 10th year anniversary. Serving French-Australian fare, this restaurant promises an exciting dining experience that will linger in your minds even after you leave Sydney. WOW...

Becasse
204 Clarence Street
Tel: (02) 9283 3440

Ten course degustation menu offered for lunch and dinner at A$120, seems like a pretty good deal! :) Becasse is one of Sydney's premier dining spaces with it's modern French cuisine and professional service.

Ooh, I can just hear my stomach calling ... there goes any form of diet for our 9-day holidaze!

B brought me to Kiku at Landmark for lunch on Monday. Kiku is his supposed canteen or fave hangout for business lunches, and since I love all things Jap so naturally I made him bring me there!! :)

Apparently, this place is always fully booked and since we didn't make reservations, we were pretty lucky to get a table (provided if we can finish our food within the hour).

Our food for the day...special vegetable salad with onion shavings and seared toro, yumz... Next was the prawn tempura, B also ordered the teapot soup and our last dish was the beef roll with vegetables! It was a super filling yummy Japanese lunch...

Oh, B also brought me to Roka..he still owe me the pictures ... will post them once I have them.

Valentino

B originally wanted to bring me to a restaurant at Upper Bukit Timah Rd, but we simply couldn't find it! In the end, we ended up at Valentino's Restaurant somewhere along Railway Road. We didn't make any reservations, but thankfully, we were there early so we managed to get seats. :) I guess I took a little longer than usual to eventually get here.. I mean this place was opened since 2005...so it took me about 3 years to come here.. oops... :p

The place was quaint, reminded me of Elio's in Tokyo. Decor was simple and minimal, nothing fancy, just imagine yourself stepping into a family restuarant in Italy.

Forgive the poor picture quality, these were all taken using my phone camera, wasn't expected a dinner outing so we were not decked in our finest! :p

First up, was the freshly flown cherry tomatoes drizzled with balsamic vinegar and mint leaves. The other appetiser we had was the Burutta cheese, it was a really huge cheese served simply with olive oil and greens on the side. The cheese tasted like mozzarella cheese. Combine the tomatoes and the cheese and you have Caprese Salad...ta-dah!

For the mains, we shared the Lobster Pasta with tomato and cream sauce. The other main we shared was the beef steak with proscuitto mushrooms drizzled with truffle oil. Though we were feeling abit stuffed but when the dessert tray rolled out, we really couldn't resist! So we again shared the vanilla sponge cake with white chocolate shavings.. decadent!

After the dinner, I bugged B to go to do a foot massage along with me.. afterall, he was my foot reflex buddy. After much persuassion, he finally caved in and went along with me :)

fun nights out..

Was a fun night out tonight... met up with Princess Min and just the night away chit-chatting.. She picked me up from work and recommended this new hang-out at Portsdown Road... CICADA.. apparently, its been open for 8 months and scheduled to open at the end of the year. Its rather quaint and serene. In Min's words, not competitive unlike Dempsey.. perhaps its still new, thats why! :)

We started the evening off with a nice bottle of white Chardonay from Napa Valley, USA. Chit chat abit about what's happening in the markets and then shared the yummy blue fin tuna salad. Thereafter, we shared the Penne Pasta with Marinara Sauce. Yummz.....

Oh, the dessert is said to be really good as well, but I should watch out for those extra pounds!! Try the brownie cake, comes highly recommended by the foodies!

Cicada, definitely the new place to watch out for. And if you dine outdoors, the friendly staff would ensure that the area that you are seated is 'well-protected' with lavender mosquito coils! :) No more sand flies bites for me...haha...

Wine tasting classes

B has been busy 'upgrading' himself..haha... attending wine classes. So I bugged him to bring me along when I was up visiting him in HK.

It was really quite an eye-opener, a total of 13 pax attended this wine-tasting class held in the private room of Amber restaurant.

When we arrived, I think most people were eager to start dinner... me included.. but thank goodness B pre-warned me, so I stocked my tummy up with 'bad' food like chips and cocktail nuts. :0

The teacher, Jennie, brought us through a presentation of wine (namely Bourdeaux) and we got to taste wines after every 20 mins or so of explaination. It was quite interesting tasting the bourdeaux and trying to describe the taste and the smell. The bottles were all covered and we had to guess the year. Only 1 person managed to hit the nail everytime! Good for him! :)

This time I managed to pace myself for the wines and not get drunk instantly. (Good Job!) And I found myself enjoying the wines and the dinner alot more, especially when some of the wines 'opened' up.

Ooh, next up was the dinner!!! I loved the foie gras on the lollipop stick, I guess I need not say more when the flavour of the foie gras just bursts in your mouth on just one bite! The next amuse bouche was a chilled asparagus cream soup. Oh the starter was really quite interesting if I can remember. It was raw scallops, oysters and salmon roe served alongside a jellied white wine and topped with granny smith apples. Yumz.. Our mains was the mini lamb chops... I resisted for finishing the entire plate. ;p And to end the dinner, was a delightful plate of assorted cheese. This was also the first time I was served mustard with cheese, tasted abit strange... so I asked for the honey :)

My quest for knowledge on wine stops here for now.. B will continue his last lesson (I think). Well, am going to count on you for our trip in Oz-land then!

OZ Gastronomical Want...

Tetsuya's Restaurant,

529 Kent Street,
SYDNEY NSW 2000
Telephone:+61 2 9267 2900

Wanted to go to try out Tetsuya since I have heard quite alot about him. So the moment I found out that we were heading to Sydney, I bugged B to allow me to make the reservations for his restaurant. Reservations are said to be ESSENTIAL! And since we booked the tickets like 3 months ahead, I thought better book the reservations for the restaurant.

Guess what?!?! The reservations for dinner at Tetsuya are filled till Jan 2009! Can you believe it? I can't imagine a restaurant with such a loooooong waiting list.... so so long...So we took the next better slot, B is now trying to get us in for lunch on a Saturday...

Up and around HK

My last trip to Hong Kong. Walked back from LKF back to Pacific Place and whilst walking, we enjoyed the twinkling bright lights from the CBD of HK.

No trip to HK would be complete without FOOD I guess. So here is my contribution to the food journals I have been compiling:

After touching down on Friday and leaving the luggage back in the apartment. We went for late dinner. B wanted to bring me to HK's best wanton noodles place but it was closed. So had to settle for the 2nd best wanton best at LKF. The noodles were chewy and the wantons were huge! :) Satisfying for a late night supper.

The next day, lunch was settled at Pacific Place. This chi-chic Shanghainese restaurant on Level 4. The highlight of the meal was this fish dish where they 'extracted' the meat of the fish and made noodles out of it. B over-ordered (in my opinion). Thats alot of food for the 2 of us! Ooh, I just had to take the pic of the leetle chair they had in the restaurant for bags. We attempted a little shopping at Causeway Bay but the best intentions got misconstrued... In the end, we left empty-handed.

Sunday morning, we went for dim-sum with Andy around Happy Valley. It was really quite a lovely place, and it got really crowded at 11am with loads of tourists. After lunch at about 12pm,we took a long tram ride to Kennedy Town and started stocking up on our DVDs. There started our craze for Celebrity Apprentice. We spent about 10 hours clocking in Donald Trump's famed show. What dragged us out was coffee with Colin and then dinner at LKF. Me love the crispy wantons! :)