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Monkey in deep thoughts @ Tree Top Walk

Thirsty? @ Hilltop walk along the Southern Ridges

Ducks @ Kampong Village

Boy playing with table football @ Changi Airport T3

Performance @ Esplanade Concourse

Nanbantei Japanese Restaurant @ Far East Plaza

Nanbantei's specialty is with their yakitori or Japanese skewers. This is my 3rd visit there and they did not disappoint. Located at the top floor of Far East Plaza, most people do not know the existence of this fabulous restaurant.

This could be due to the fact that there's hardly any queue outside the restaurant. Most patrons would already have had a taste of the crowd and be convinced that a reservation is a must to avoid disappointment. Others would probably have been discouraged by the long waiting time, typically more than 30mins. But don't be, we once waited for 30mins and it was well worth the wait. Even the Japanese themselves patronize this place, there is surely no mistake about it.

There are 3 yakitori set to choose from:

A-course ($36) being the exotic choice with 12 sticks of exotic yakitori. If ox tongue, chicken liver and the likes are your kind of things, then go ahead and get the A-course to have an exotic gastronomical experience.

B-course ($36) is the chef's recommended choice, featuring 8 chef's recommended yakitori sticks, sashimi, rice, miso soup and a dessert. This is the one I always ordered as, so far, it didn't really disappoint.

C-course ($30) is the vegetarian choice, which is pretty self-explanatory.

Ok, on with the food we go:


Yasai Stick with special miso sauce ($2)

A starters that everyone will get once you get seated. It cost $2 by the way, I'm not sure if you can cancel this but I would say it's worth a try as its a great appetizer. It's definitely the miso paste, you've gotta try it.


Warmed Japanese Sake ($7.80) and Assorted Sashimi [Part of B-course set]

Warmed Sake, great on a cold day, is a bit on the strong side but still manageable.

Sashimi is fresh and nothing much to complain about.


Pork with Shiso Leaf & Asparagus wrapped in Pork [Part of B-course set]

The first thing that came to my mind, and most first timer alike, would have been that the food here is pretty salty. If you get to sit at the counter seats, you get to witness the generosity of the chefs with their sprinkler of salt as they grill the skewers. I would strongly recommend hot green tea to go with the food or that a post meal water parade as a standard procedure.


Mini Tomato Maki & Okra (Lady Finger) [Part of B-course set]

Mini tomato maki is a must try. It's an explosion of flavors inside your mouth; now repeat after me: it explodes. The juice simply bursts out as you bite it and its just feels great and makes you feels like tomatoes just became your heavenly food ever since. Ok exaggerated and oh don't forget to let it cool down just a tiny winy little bit before you attack it, for it burns...enuff said.

Okra was grilled with a right proportion of salt, but nothing special. Its fiber. And you need it. Trust me.


Tsukune (Chicken meatballs) & Chicken with Leek [Part of B-course set]

Tsukune is tender but not juicy, definitely better than the Tori tori ball, no? Leek never tasted so good before, the grilling removes the unpleasant taste that causes most people to have a certain grudge with. grudge with.


Tebasaki (chicken wings) & Garlic Chicken with Leek [Part of B-course set]

Chicken wings was pretty tasty but a tad too salty for our liking. I kinda forgot if that's garlic chicken or garlic pork, I think it's chicken. But nonetheless, eat the garlic leek and chicken together; they blends well.


Sake Harasu (Salmon Belly) ($6.90)

The salmon belly was fresh, to say the least, and it was really juicy and tender, much to our delight and excitement.


Shiitake ($6)

BBQ Japanese mushrooms with all its flavors retained. It's good and juicy. Another option is mushroom stuffed with chicken, also not too bad.


Uzura Tamago (quail's egg) ($4.50)

I was actually having high expectations for this one. But it didn't really work for me. It's worse than hard boiled egg and the sauce really didn't quite blend well.


Tomato Pork Maki with cheese ($5.20)

After having a great experience with the exploding mini tomatoes maki, we decided to try out another of a similar dish. This one uses a tomato, not the mini one duh, cut into wedges and wrapped in pork and cheese. Not too bad as well, kinda preferred the mini ones. But considering this is our last dish and the law of diminishing returns, the result can be biased.


Red bean mochi [Part of B-course set]

Lastly, the dessert is the red bean mochi. It's thick and sweet, and we were very full.


Total time taken was 2 hours and total damage was $125. It was quite worth it, do try it as it could change your opinion about certain vegetables that you once considered untouchable, well.. at least for that meal that is. Service wise, I was hoping the staffs to be a bit more forthcoming; green teas normally goes unfilled and empty plates sometimes are unattended to. But I'm not complaining much, they are a friendly lot and makes the whole dining experience a pretty cozy and enjoyable one.


Nanbantei Japanese Restaurant
Address: 14 Scotts Road #05-132 Far East Plaza Singapore
Tel: +65 6733 5666

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Hatched @ Evans Lodge

In yet another of our food adventure in search of good breakfast place, we chanced upon this place called Hatched. It is very near to the NUS Law campus at Bukit Timah. So, it's a bit of a walk in, but its all worth it. And as the name suggest, Hatched's specialty is of course eggs! All kinds of eggs: boiled, poached, baked, fried, scrambled, omelettes. But I've been warned of my unhealthy eggs consumption of late, so yes will be eating lesser..


Apple Orange Juice ($4.50 Each)



Popeye's Salute ($14)

We decided to try out this version of egg Benedict which have spinach (and thus the name) instead of ham. Well other than the fact that the eggs are so puny, I must say that the spinach doesn't really go well with the rest of the ingredients. It taste very weird with the spinach; somehow the spinach causes the taste of the whole dish to be very separated. First, the spinach taste kicks in, which had a slight hint of a bittery taste. Follow by the egg with the hollandaise sauce and then the muffin. By itself, all taste great. But as a whole, it just feels wrong; better to stick with the original Eggs Benedict with ham which is called the Sir Benedict here.


Comes with tomato and mash potatoes as side dishes


Pancake Party with caramelized apples ($8)

The pancake is omg very fluffy and thus a bit too filling. But it's toasted pretty nicely and with the syrup and the cream, there's not much complain to this dish.


Where's Waffle? with black forest ham and egg ($12)

The waffle was pretty normal, but the ham was really good. The egg was disappointing.



Spent around $20 per person. Their service is a bit slow, but hey there's no service charge... It's a pretty cozy place to chill out on a nice Sunday morning.



Hatched
Address: 26 Evans Road #01-06 Evans Lodge Singapore
Tel: +65 6735 0012
Website: http://www.hatched.sg/

Of the lenses I want or want to try out

The AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f1.8G (~SGD 300+):


I'm currently using this one a lot and have thus replace my 18-55mm kit lens. Pretty good for low light shooting and its extremely light-weighted so it's quite fun carrying it around together with the D40. So far I'm more than satisfied with this purchase.


AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f4-5.6G IF-ED (~SGD 300+):


I think I will be getting this one next for the telescopic zoom ranges from 55-200mm focal length. I've never play with such ranges before so I'm not quite sure whether this lens suit my needs. But I guess I could use it to capture people and their expression at ease (as most people are not natural with a camera too close) as well as for macro purposes? If this is not my kind of thing, I can always get rid of it by selling in clubsnap forum.


AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f1.4G (~SGD 800+):


If the 55-200mm doesn't work for me, I will probably go straight into this one with a whopping aperture of 1.4. As I dun really like high ISO (very grainy photos), I usually compensate with wider aperture size (smaller f stop number) than to increase the ISO under poor light conditions.


AF-S DX NIKKOR 10-24mm f3.5-4.5G ED (~SGD 1.3K+):



This ultra wide zoom lens is of course the least priority of them all and its here because I've always wanted to try an ultra wide. But the price is ultra expensive too...! Haa

Our lunch and muffins

Our homemade lunch:


Potatoes with egg mayo with various side dishes. Pan-fried thyme chicken breast, sautéed mushroom, boiled broccoli and cherry tomatoes.




Baking session after lunch:


Blueberry muffins


Blueberry muffins, mini version

The garden slug @ Telok Kurau

This is our 2nd visit to this place and i must say we were disappointed... Located at quite a remote area in telok kurau's bright centre, it was quite a search the first time round. The staffs were friendlier the first time. I'm not sure, perhaps the not-up-to-expectations food spoils it all.



Carrot pumpkin ginger soup with almonds bits and peppermint leafs. The ginger taste was omg so strong.



Dory Fillet. I wouldn't say its horrible, but it really left a bad impression. The fish itself wasn't the problem. The freshness and texture was decent, just that the whole fish had this burnt smell and taste. The fish wasn't burnt though, it's just that it taste burnt, probably the grills they used are so burnt such that the food taste of them. Jeez.

The mash potato is worth mentioning as it's pretty tasty with a nice combination of butter. I would say it's one of the best I've tried.



Portobello vegetarian burger. Ok, first off, the potatoes patty was burnt at the side, pretty gross out. 2ndly, the portobello mushroom was undercooked; the flavors of the mushroom wasn't brought out as a result. We had to ask the cook to grill it more.



There is celery and carrots as sides, both raw.

Spent around $20 per person. Their main attractions are most likely their mixed grills, which from what I heard and read was not too bad. Our first visit we had lamb chop and it left quite a good impression. Perhaps, healthier choices here are not that much recommended then. Their slogan is "eat drink don't think", sorry lor i think too much and don't really agree with you on that.


The garden slug
Address: 55 Lorong L Telok Kurau #01-59/61 Bright Centre Singapore
Tel: +65 6346 0504

New lens: The Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX

Paradise Dynasty @ ION Orchard

Paradise Dynasty's specialty is in the xiao long bao and the la mein with their signature pork bone soup. I was attracted by their 8-flavors xiao long bao sampler to try them out with my gal. The 8 different flavors can be seen from the photos above.

Clockwise from Black Truffle: The black truffle's taste was weird, bad combination i supposed.

Foei Gras: Actually we didn't really wana get the foei gras, but the waitress decline our request for a replace. But in any case, I failed to appreciate this delicacy; not really my kind of thing.

Ginseng: There is a bit of the ginseng taste but the pork taste was too strong and it covers the ginseng flavors. Other than that it's really not that special.

Garlic: The garlic augmented the original taste pretty well and I thought it was next best to the original. But of course if you are the kind who can't stand garlic taste, that's a different story.

Szechuan: Szechuan was a bit too spicy to my liking. It's the kind of numbing ma la szechuan kinda spicy, I only had a bit of it and I already felt the numbness. Hahaa..

Cheese: It wasn't significant, just some cheesy taste to the pork.

Crab roe: Taste was too fishy. Sorry to say this but we prefer the one from ding tai fung...

White in the middle is the original: We are of the opinion that the original one still works the best for us, although it was slightly too sweet to our liking. The skin is thinner than that of their competitors and that we appreciate.

Other than the sampler, we had 6 more original xiao long bao to satisfy my cravings. We also got the la mien and it was pretty tasty. I had it with the vegetable pork dumplings and she had it with pan-fried chicken.

The price is also reasonable. Sampler costs $13.80 and the la mien is typically around 10 bucks. Total damage was around $25 per person.


Paradise Dynasty
Address: 2 Orchard Turn #04-12A ION Orchard Singapore
Tel: +65 6509 9118

Meow Meow

The big guns

155mm field gun from NDP 2010 Rehearsal

Meow

Caught a sleeping bee?