21st May - Birthday dinner @ parents'

The best meals are the ones that keeps your tummy warm and are cooked with lots of love of you in mind. So every birthday, when mum and dad asked what do i want to eat on my birthday, its usually my mum's cooking. :-)

At 6:45pm, we arrived at my parents' newly upgraded apartment in Toa Payoh, i went in to greet mum who is busy in the kitchen with multiple pots cooking on the stove and dad singing to his favorite Elvis's album. It is a joy taking in all the lovely fragance coming from these assorted pots. My favorite item from every meal is double boiled soup (Cantonese style)... Soup is like soul food for the chinese.

For my special day, mum prepared 'Braised pork with peanut soup', one of my favorite. Dad knows my love for roast duck (one similar love of ours) and made sure he got some from a roast meat restaurant nearby. In my family, a dish of fresh, steamed fish with mushroom is a 'MUST' for any celebration. All in all, plus curry chicken and spinach with abalone in abalone sauce, it was a BIG BIG meal !


I ate, ate and ate ...
How can i resist when all the dishes are my favorite ? :-P



Well, we watched a version of 'Decoding The Da Vinci Code' on Channel News Asia and started the whole discussion on speculated truths of the book and everyone in my family pondered at the 'The Last Supper' portrait we have hanging by the dining room.

To conclude on the Da Vinci Code movie's many points of view, i say, 'Who cares as long as you stay true to your beliefs.' And why not, if it make the lay catholics ponder harder about the history of the church and go in search of the truth ?

This is day 3 of Angie's birthday celebration ...

il Lido - The Grandest of All Celebrations

il Lido is the latest and most exclusive italian restaurant opened not too long ago in Sentosa Golf Club. It is the most stylish restaurant in Singapore these days. The interior's gorgeous and furnished by the famous designer, Philippe Starck. Just all the right elements to make a gal feel like a princess on her birthday. Thanks Jacque!

Jacque and I made it this day really special by taking a week to decide what to wear Indeed, we were dressed to the nine. I was dressed in a antique bustier dress with cool japanese print (bought from Potion when they 1st opened their doors in Paragon) and Jacque was in a pretty flirty black dress. Of course, our male companion, Frederic was stylishly fashioned in a funky Industrie shirt with embroidery details.

For starters, we decided to share 2 portions of the Anti-pasti and a portion each of the 24 months aged Parma ham from the degustation menu. The anti-pasti was so-so only probably because the order was slightly messed up and the waiter had to combine the 2 plates into 1 at our table, resulting in quite a mess. Every item was decent except the really bad Parmesan cheese, so hard ... so salty ... so boring ...

For mains, we each ordered a pasta dish. Overall, the taste is good, unfortuately all 3 plates had been sitting too long under the plate warmer. Therefore, was tart, hard and sticky. Well, serve us right for taking 40 minutes on the starter. Just wondering what would happen if Europeans were having dinner there...

Most interesting that nite was the number of birthday cakes served up, 3 of us counted, probably 10 altogether including mine. I must say that their birthday cake was yummy (bear in mind, i am not a dessert person), bittersweet in taste and just the right textual. :-) Also, Jacque ordered the warm chocolate cake, amazing!! il Lido must be the best italian restaurant around when it comes to chocolate desserts. Mind you, Jacque and i tried many a warm chocolate cake, nothing comes quite close to this one.

In short, il Lido is magical when it comes to the ambience as it makes every occasion extraordinary. As for food, we haven't given up as yet as we felt that it does have lotsa potential so we made a reservation for lunch here for the coming friday.


'Voila! Cest La Vie, mon cheri !'

19th May - Ps. Cafe

My 1st birthday celebration was held at PS. Cafe at Harding Road. Reservation had to be made 2 weeks before that and even then, we were told that it was a busy friday that nite and our table was booked at 830pm so we got to leave before that ...

Anyway, my bday dinner companions;- Sharon, Emerlyn and Ian made it there by 7pm sharp. Ian got taken for a ride by the Taxi driver and had to walk quite abit before arriving at PS. Cafe. 'Yes, he was grumpy when he met us.'

Well, we got a terrace table outside. As always, PS. Cafe is a really lovely place to hang out at as it tranforms one from a busy city scenary to one of a lovely English countryside. With the relaxing Jazz music playing in the background, it never fails to relax me. As usual, i am skeptical about their dinner menu, they usually don't live up to the expectation of the ambience and the aura of the place.

Sharon, Emerlyn and I ordered the Beef Ragu with Mushroom from the regular dinner menu, Ian had the Steak Sandwich with Fries (Probably the best of the lot), Linda did finally made it to PS. Cafe and ordered the chicken special from the daily menu (also better than the regular dinner menu).

Both Sharon and my take on the Beef Ragu is that it just too chunky and too rich to finish. You get there half-way and it starts to bother you. Maybe they should serve it in a flat and slightly curvy plate instead of the soup noodle bowl they served it in. The presentation's not so elegant with the salad on top(as one of my dinner companion highlight, 'Grass on the top of the Beef Ragu').

In short, these are my tips for all of you looking for a grand time at PS. Cafe:-

1) Stay with the daily menu instead of the regular menu.
2) Stay indoors in the evenings if you don't like mosquitos. Though, the terrace is alot lovely, wear jeans or spray 'Off' to keep them away
3) Dress stylishly as most of the customers do
4) Heels are stylish but be mindful of the wooden steps outside. My heels got caught three times.
5) PS. Cafe serve a brunch menu on weekends, starting at at 9ish. The 'Big Breakfast Sandwich' is the best from the regular menu.

Finally, PS. Cafe is a lovely place to be at if you will like to get away from the hustle and bustle of restaurants in the city and it's one of the best place in Singapore to people watch as well.

I dedicate this blog to my lovely dinner companions, Emerlyn, Ian, Linda and Sharon for a lovely start of my birthday week despite having a long and tiring work-day.

Loved you all!

Birthday, birthday birthday ....

Must be wondering why i've been missing for such a long time.. :-)

Well, i have been meaning to blog but being a perfectionist, i though; every entry should come with an equally glamourous photo that enhances the entry so as you can see ... I probably still trouble in that department. Not that i don't have a good digital camera, i do and just very recently learnt some tricks to deal with low-light and white dining plates.

The tip;- ' Get rid of flash ...'

Yes, this entry was supposed to be more about my birthday week-long celebration. I decided that as we get older, time flies so why not extend birthday celebrations to a week long instead, since i can slow down everyday's 24 hours, i might as well enjoy getting old and make it an extended celebration ...

So this begin the start of my week-long birthday celebration blog; my thoughts, my companions and the dining we did .... Stay tuned ... Cest La Vie !