Churros and Sangria - Octapas @ Clarke Quay

Post by James

We arrived at Clarke Quay a little early for our Wine and Tapas night, so we decided to kick it all off with some Sangria and Churros!

Octapas is right on the river front at Clarke Quay so the people watching is quite good at night. The staff seem a little slow to take our order, which ended up being two glasses of white sangria and one order of Churros (Spanish doughnuts with choc dipping sauce).  The sangria was ok (we could definitely tell it had alcohol), with the churros being not bad as well.  However, don’t be expecting San Churro’s (http://www.sanchurro.com) standard here at Octapas. 

So not a bad way to start a night off, we might have to try some more of their menu before making a judgement call on whether Octapas is worthy of a regular appearance…

Wine and Tapas Night – Host @ Clarke Quay

Post by Kristyn

Our friends Paul and Phoebe invited us to a wine and tapas tasting night at Clarke Quay for $100 per couple.  Now we love wine, tapas and friends, so why not!  So we head down to Clarke Quay and arrive just after it’s started, and am handed a glass of prosecco on arrival. Now allegedly this was an Italian wine tasting night, so being handed the glass of prosecco made sense.  We were starving by the time we arrived and after a glass of bubbles I was ready to eat. 

The guy that was presenting the wines and food, was a very sociable type of guy and Aussie of course, but I definitely would not trust his judgement in wine that’s for sure (please excuse if I don’t explain myself well, I was quite tipsy by the end of the evening!). 

Anyhoo in a nutshell, the wine wasn’t great at all (they bought out NZ wine at an Italian wine tasting night?!?) and the tapas, well there wasn’t enough of it; I know I left there feeling like I could eat a meal. I had maybe one prawn, some gazpacho and not a lot else that I remember. 

In saying all of that though it was a fun night, we got to dress up and we make some new friends.

Mixing Music on Traktor

Post by James

Today Kristyn and I ventured to our friend Paul’s place.  He lives in Toa Payoh, which is a few train stations away from where we are in River Valley.  Paul wanted to show us his recent purchase… a Traktor Kontrol S4 mixer.  Effectively it hooks up to a laptop/pc and allows you to mix music without the need for turntables or CD’s etc… 

We played on it for quite some time while I was pretending to be some big name DJ.  Paul was clearly better than I was, but hey… he’s had more practice!

It was so much fun, I'm thinking of getting one for myself!!

After a while decided to go for a walk to a nearby Ice Cream place Paul had mentioned last time we were over, and from the rave reviews he was giving the place, we couldn’t wait to try it out (see post Ice Cream and Waffles).

Ice Cream & Waffles

Post by James

After playing on my friend's music equipment (see post Music Mixing on Traktor), we decided to go for a walk to a nearby Ice Cream place Paul had mentioned last time we were over, and from the rave reviews he was giving the place, we couldn’t wait to try it out.

The Ice Cream shop was called Creamier (https://www.facebook.com/creamier.singapore) and they had some of the usual suspects like Vanilla Bean and Cookies & Cream, but they also had some pretty cool concoctions which I hadn’t seen before, such as Black Forest, Rose Water.  As Kristyn and I missed lunch, and the time now nearly 5pm, we were both quite hungry.  So we both ordered Waffles to go with our Ice Cream selections.  I got a couple of scoops of Cookies & Cream while Kristyn opted for Sea Salted Caramel and Banana.

I have to say the waffles and ice cream didn’t disappoint, however, I suppose it would be hard to be disappointed by Waffles and Ice Cream!!!  The only criticism would be they were a little light on with the maple syrup and they didn’t provide the bottle separately. 

Despite that, we both would definitely go back to try some of the other flavours in the near future.

Music Matters Live – Clarke Quay

Post by Kristyn

We headed down to Clarke Quay to meet our friends Kiran and Tracy, for some dinner and to check out the Music festival that was on down there, Music Matters Live.

www.allthatmattersasia.com

Shiraz – 3A River Valley Road (Clarke Quay)

We met Kiran and Tracy at Shiraz, which is a Persian restaurant in the very middle of Clarke Quay.  The place was crowded, as it was a Saturday night and the music festival was on.  So between the Persian music and the live stage that was 100m away it was extremely loud, but the dinner was really nice, and as you’d expect from a Persian restaurant it was a meat fest!  We were lucky enough to be there during the dinner entertainment of an Asian belly dancer, which was good for a laugh, until she kept coming out every 15 minutes with her dancing lasting about 10 minutes, and every time you thought the music was going to stop...it started back up again.  If you’re into a delicious meat fest and some funny entertainment, head down to Shiraz.

http://www.shirazfnb.com/display/home.asp

Shuffle Bar – Clarke Quay

After checking out a band on the live stage in the centre of the Clarke Quay and realising that heavy metal NZ band wasn’t really floating our boats, Kiran mentioned that he’d seen a Singaporean blues guy on the opening night, who was based in Melbourne now and he was quite good.  So we thought we’d go and check him out.  His name was Charlie Lim, and he was playing at the Shuffle Bar (quite aptly named for James), so we headed up to the packed bar.  After finally getting in to the standing room only bar, we had to wait 15 mins until Charlie came on, so we ordered some ciders and settled in.  Whilst there, we came across the towers of beer.  Yep that’s right, as seen in the photo, instead of jugs here; they have towers of beer/cider.  These ones were in the form of the Eiffel Tower, of which we saw one topple over whilst being carried through the crowd, which was quite funny.  So Charlie Lim comes on, and he as Kiran said was really good, so if anyone from Melbs hears of him playing, definitely check him out.  After Charlie finished, we headed back to the main stage, saw five minutes of another "band", and then headed home.

http://www.shuffle.sg/

http://charlielim.net/

Singapore Randomness

Here is a collection of some random things we've found in Sing Sing...

The view from our bedroom window...

 WTF!

 Fragrant pears anyone...

 Our landlord sitting on our courtyard chair...

 Mystery Nando's locked door...

 What's wrong with this picture? 
 And no not James' face...

 No Dumping!

 1 for 1 anyone...

 Eiffel Tower beer jugs...  Why didn't I think of that!

 150ml soda water = $1.55 (read on...)

 330ml soda water = $0.95 = Singapore

 Everyone loves "Booze Martinies"...

Epicurious – Robertson Quay

We came here again on a recommendation, Epicurious is down at Robertson Quay, the hub of expats!  So it was no surprise that when we sat down and had a look at the menu, that it was quite westernised.  Unfortunately we’re both not really feeling like Western food much, but we’d already sat down and ordered some drinks, so we decided to stay.  James ended up having a parma and I had ‘king’ prawn vegetable skewers.  Now I put the ‘king’ in adverted comma’s here, as you’ll see from the photo below that these were definitely not the ‘king’ prawns I’m used to, more like a king shrimp.  Anyway the food was nice enough washed down with a cider that came in a drinking jar and it is on a good spot along the river, but I don’t think we’ll be rushing back here in a hurry...

Bar Bar Black Sheep – 86 Roberston Quay

Some of our friends recommended Bar Bar Black Sheep to us, and since Robertson Quay is only a short stroll away and we LOVE recommendations, so we headed on down to the river one night to check it out.  This place does three flavours – Thai, Western and Indian.  Thai wasn’t being served that night, so out of the options of Western and Indian, there really isn’t any choice; it’s Western all the way!  Ah yeah right, I don’t think so, Indian it was.  The food was really good and the setting is nice as its right by the water.  I had the butter chicken (my old Indian fave) and the garlic naan, James had the Veggies in tasty North Indian gravy.

Back for Seconds....

Okay so we may have went back here again, last night in fact...we were craving Indian, although when getting there I had all intentions of ordering something different, but when it came to telling the waiter what I wanted, I spat out butter chicken again, come on it was good so there is nothing wrong with that!  James was a bit more adventurous than I, he had a Chicken vindaloo this time.  We did however, try a new cider, it was a Somersby apple cider (which from the bottle said it was a Carlsberg brand – which is huge over here for some reason), any way, this cider was delicious, it was like drinking an appletiser, I was far more impressed with the cider than the food and it was 4.7% which isn’t bad for a cider, so I have found a new love, if only it didn’t cost $10 a bottle to drink oh well...so I can recommend this place for good Indian, next time I think I will venture outside the square and try Thai, but definitely check this place out.

Five & Dime Eatery – 297 River Valley Road

This cute looking little eatery is literally around the corner from where we’re living right now.  We originally thought it was some sort of bar type place as it never seemed to be open in the late mornings on our way past.  Turns out it is an eatery as it says in its name, how peculiar.  However, the only reason that we went in there was that a friend of ours told us that they do amazing espresso martini’s and you know that if we could, we would live on these.  So one hot and humid afternoon, as we were walking past the Five & Dime, we thought that we better pop in and test this theory.  So they weren’t what I’d call amazing, they were good.  The coffee used was burnt, so they were quite bitter, and they didn’t use any vanilla vodka which also increased the bitterness, but the more you drank it, they slightly better it kept tasting, but $45 later after only two of them, we won’t be heading back there in a hurry to drink these, unless we get jobs that pay us so much money that we’d willingly throw it away on martini’s!  I do jokingly say ‘espresso martini?’ to James as we walk past daily, I know for a second he’s thinking yes, but the $45 is an immediate deal breaker.

Genki Sushi – 181 Orchard Road (Orchard Central)

Upon craving sushi while walking around Orchard Road, hungrygowhere led us to this place, which was on the way home in the Orchard Central Mall so it was perfect.  What a cool place this was!  All the tables had iPads which you ordered your meal from, then a F1 car delivered your food!  Yes I did a say an F1 car, I took a video of it, which is below, but what a fun idea.  We had a lot of different tasty morsels, and they were all good, This is a really fun place if you want to try something different, but with some good sushi on offer.

Real Food – 110 Killiney Road

With all of the great food options in Singapore, we have been craving vegetables the most.  This was our main staple in Melbourne, so we are dearly missing it.  Real Food is an organic vegetarian cafe/grocer/book store, there are a couple of locations in Singapore, but there is one just down the road from us, so we decided to try it for dinner one evening.  The restaurant is new and quite big and spaced out and looks the part, with big wooden sharing tables and smaller ones with a polished concrete floor.  Anyhoo, back to the food, so first of all, it took us ages to get the attention of the waiter to take our order but in the mean time he also took an order of a table that arrived after us, so this coupled with the fact, that I am currently sporting a two week old bad cold, I was not happy.  So by the time he eventually took our order, I ordered a brown rice bake and James ordered the dumpling noodles dry which was handmade dumplings with a side of vegetable soup and some salad.  So after a while, James’ dumplings arrive, which is fine, I figure mine must be coming soon...but no, James finishes his dumplings and there’s still no sign of mine and trying to get the attention of the waiter (yes just the one wait staff) is ridiculous, and the place wasn’t even that busy, we had also ordered water, of which I was in dying need of with a sore dry throat and a cough.  Maybe 5 mins after James has finished, they bring out my dish, and I ask for our water order.  Now I’m not a particularly fast eater, but by the time I’d finished my meal, there was still not sign of the twice ordered water, and although the food was really good and was quite cheap, I had all intentions of never coming back, as this left an extremely sour note with me, I’m used to bad service in Melbourne, but this was ridiculous.

Back for Seconds....

But in our quest to find good vegetarian food around us, we ended up back here again for lunch a couple of days later, which I caved and decided that everyone needs a second chance.  This time it was a Friday and it was quite busy, but we got a table and had a look over the menu and decided on what we wanted....and waited....and waited...in the end James ended up going up and ordering for us.  This time, I had the brown rice vermicelli with stir fried vegetables and James had signature brown rice set (see photo’s).  Wow was I surprised when our water arrived quite quickly, and the food was a bit of a wait, but it was busy, so I’ll let them off for that, again the food was really good, but the service is atrocious here and even trying to get the attention of the staff doesn’t work.  So if you like really good vegetarian food (they do have quite an extensive range of options to try, like pasta, pizza, rice dishes, all day breakky etc) and you don’t really mind extremely bad and slow service, then this is definitely the place for you. 

Farmers Market Brunch & Home Cooked Goodness!

Today we met our friends Kiran and Tracy at Loewen Gardens for brunch at a Farmers Market.  From looking at the map, it appeared that we could catch a train from Dhoby Ghaut to near the Gardens.  So we trekked down to DG and check out the map there, and realised that we could catch a direct train, but it went right around the other side of the island before arriving where we wanted to be, so with only 20 mins before we had to be there, we decided that we’d catch a cab instead.

It took about 10 mins to hail a cab, and then off we went to the Farmers Market.  We jumped out of the taxi, at a cross road where we saw a sign for the Farmers Market.  We had to walk a bit further past some road works, until we reached the market.  Tracy and Kiran were already there, so we sat down with them, ordered some breakfast from The Pantry, which was great cafe! 

James had the eggs benne and I had French toast.  We would definitely go back there for brunch.  They had little market stalls and things.  One lady made amazing quiches and pies, so we think we may have to go back and get one next time.  We left there at around 1pm and started walking back, hoping to catch a taxi on the way past as it was extremely hot.  Unfortunately we were unable to get a taxi as they all refused to take us for the 5 min drive!

We ended the night off to our first home cooked meal at our friends place.  Paul showed us around his apartment complex (which had awesome views of the city from the rooftop), while Pheobe cooked up a storm!

Freshly Baked by Le Bijoux – 57 Killiney Road

Luckily for us this place is extremely close, but not lucky for our expanding stomaches!  Freshly baked as its sounds is a bakery cafe and my very first experience there was cinnamon French toast, and what a first experience!  It was amazing.  We’ve been back a couple of times since then for lunch, and everything is really good.  They have lunch specials for SGD10.90 which includes soup, a sandwich and a drink.  I’ve had the mushroom soup and a broccoli and carrot soup, both were really good, and also the BLT and the corned beef sandwich which were again really yummy.  James has had the scrambled eggs with bacon and toast, of which he was actually served crispy bacon.  Now if James’ bacon isn’t served crispy, then don’t bother serving it to him, so he was extremely happy this.  They have a wide range of pastries and cakes, and I’m dying to try their chocolate salted caramel tart, but I’m holding out until I start to exercise again, but I did buy half a loaf of their cinnamon bread the other day, which was demolished in about the same time, so that really doesn’t sound like a good excuse not to try it now...

Din Tai Fung – 290 Orchard Road (Paragon)

Dumplings!!!!  Everyone knows of my particular love of dumplings, I was known to have them once a week in Melbourne and it has been hard to compare anything else to Hu Tong, especially the xiao long bao.  Our friend Paul took us here the first week we arrived.  There are quite a few locations of this restaurant around Singapore, but we went to the one in the Paragon centre, it was quite busy when we got there, which is always a good sign, so we had to wait 15 mins before being seated.  They did hand us a menu to order from first, which was good, as it saved some time when we were actually seated.  Fantastic dumpling restaurant, it was all so good, lots of different xiao long bao, but my favourite for the evening definitely would have been the red bean paste and chocolate dumplings!  If I could ever remember how to get to this restaurant in amongst the maze of stores that is shopping centres in Singapore, then there’ll be a round two of Din Tai Fung that’s for sure!

Peidra Negra – 241 Beach Road

So we stumbled across this little gem, after the original place we tried to get into for lunch was closed (ok, so it may have been 2:45pm when we walked into the original place and they closed at 3pm for lunch but this is Singapore right?), so after being sent away, we decided that we felt like Mexican and you know what comes with Mexican food, yes that’s right margaritas!  So we “hungrygowhere’d” and this place came up as relatively close to where we were at the time, so we headed on over.  It was 3pm in the afternoon so there was no one else there, but a margarita beckoned, so first things first, a frozen lime margarita x 2 ordered.  To be honest the place did look a little dodgy (it may have included a huge paper mache lady coming out of one of the walls – no I didn’t take a photo), so when our margarita’s arrived we were pleasantly surprised, they were really very good, and they used fresh limes in the mix which is always a winner.  We both then ordered the burrito’s, which when they came out, did not look like your average burrito, more like beef and salad wrap cut in half, with “French fries” which were actually lattice shaped potato chips.  As unlike a burrito they looked, wow were they amazing!  Now I’ve been to a lot of delicious Mexican restaurants before, and as James will attest, the words may have been uttered out of my burrito filled mouth “this is the best burrito I’ve ever had”! Upon ordering our second margarita and hoeing into the “French fries” which were coated in delicious spices, we both decided that this would not be the first and last time we eat at this place, oh yes Peidra Negra, we plan to come back!

First Things First...

We get up early for our first day in Singapore, and head off to Bugis to get ourselves an MRT ticket and Singtel sim cards for our phones.  We head down to the station, planning to get an EZ card, which we can top up ourselves (much like a myki or other travel card). 
We head straight to the ticket desk who proceeds to tell us that we buy them from the ticket machines, which we thought was odd, but went over to the ticket machine and of course, we couldn’t buy them there, they were for topping up and single tickets only.  So we went to the information desk, who informed us that we had to buy them from the ticket desk, surprise, surprise.  So we end up getting two EZ cards, then topping them up on the machines. 

We then head up to Singtel, only to find that shops don’t actually open in Singapore until about 11am.  We were 20 mins too early, so we head to Starbucks and I grab a chai and eat our bakery goods (which we bought earlier)and wait there until Singtel opens…

We arrive at Singtel at about 11:10pm only to find a queue!  After queuing for 10 mins we’re told we need our passports, which of course are back at the Hotel!

 After a round trip to retrieve our passports, we go to buy the sim cards again, and negotiate which pre-paid plan to buy (which James had researched online for quite some time).  We end up with a weird plan where we have to buy two types of credit.  Special credit for calls and normal things, and standard credit for topping up data, which is $7 every 7 days!  But we now have local phones, so its all good…

Eat, Drink & Be Merry

Those who know us well know that we do love to dine out, and drink, and be merry.  So moving over to Singapore with their vast array of cuisines, at particularly good prices, was dare I say it, mouth watering.  So we’ve compiled a list of the places we’ve been good or bad, that will either give you some guidance on where to go whilst visiting, or just give you a good laugh if the food we had was bad, so sit back, and enjoy our food/drink blog – I’d advise not to read this on an empty stomach as it may make you hungry.

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