Warren 1st Birthday Party!! 1st Meet-Up with my Multiply friends!!!

As teachers, we always tell our students never meet up with your cyber friends as these "friends" might fake their identities and harm them. By chance, I had been actively involved in "Multiply" social websites for a number of years and got to know many online friends through Multiply. Although we had never met before, through one another's blogs and photos, we seemed to know each other very well. My Multiply friend, Hazel invited me to her son, Warren 1st Birthday Party. I was pretty excited and agreed almost immediately. I had been reading her blog, her photos for so many years and finally I would get to meet her and her family and also many other Multiply friends at the party! :)

Warren has got chubby cheeks!  So cute!!  =)

Gindako @ Ion Orchard

Got to go to Borders to get some storybooks for my "Multiply" friend's son. Hubby dropped me at Orchard and I went for my brunch first at Ion Orchard. As it was pretty early, many shops were not opened yet and I decided to take the set meal from Gindako.  This time round I ordered the Matcha Soy drink which was quite refreshing and most importantly, it made you less guilty eating the 6 tako balls after reading the posters on the benefits of Matcha at the seating area.  Haha... Self-deceiving?

Nakhon Kitchen @ Bedok North

My family went to the temple at Bedok as we needed to do some praying for Grandpa. (100th day since he passed away). After that, we went to a nearby Thai restaurant for lunch. I was quite surprised to find such a decent thai restaurant at this part of the neighbourhood. As expected, the restaurant was full and we waited for quite a while before they set up our tables outside the restaurant. As there were 16 of us, we ordered quite a lot of food. Every dish, we got to order a few portions so everybody get to sample abit here and there. I didn't take photos of all the dishes as most of us were very hungry by then. Once the food was served, whoever took it would immediately scoop a bit into their own plate first then passed around. :P

Thai Fish Cake

Pandan Chicken

These side dishes were good and I will greatly recommend you to try.

Pineapple Fried Rice

Fried Rice

We also ordered Olive Rice but I didn't quite like that.

Green Curry 

Ordered Tom Yam Soup and that was really HOT!

Red Ruby

Sticky Mango Rice

It is good to discover such a nice little Thai restaurant that is serving authentic Thai food at an affordable price in the neighbourhood area. Guess it will continue to gain its popularity amongst the resident there.

Kamado Japanese Wood Fire Restaurant @ 313 Somerset

[CLOSED]
Last 2nd stop (for makan) of the day after an already very packed afternoon. Rushed down to Somerset to meet my friends - Lijuan, Ruijun & Joyce :) This restaurant is a fairly new restaurant recommended by RJ and there is no review of this restaurant online yet, I think :P  It is also operated under The Asian Kitchen Group.

The adjacent tables are arranged too close for comfort.  Also, the chairs that they use are higher than the cushion seats inside.  Thus, Joyce and I felt a bit weird at first as we were seated much higher than RJ and LJ. :D

RJ and I had this ala-carte Unagi Kamameshi each (~ $12)

LJ ordered the Chicken Kamameshi ala-carte and Joyce ordered the Beef Kamameshi ala-carte.  Actually the restaurant only has 4 different types of Kamameshi, namely Beef, Chicken, Pork and Unagi.

We all didn't order the set because the set deal, which consists of miso soup, pickles and a side dish didn't seem to be very impressive (also not too sure what side dishes are available, we couldn't find them in the menu).

Grilled Squid ($12)

Haha.... First time seeing Ginko Nuts on grill! ($2)

Oh yah... Did I mention that this was only our 2nd last stop for makan?  Because we adjourned to Ootoya for desserts after that!!  However, when we reached Ootoya, the restaurant was full at around 9pm and we got a queue number and were advised to come back 20 minutes later.

Our desserts... Soy ice-cream and the bitter green tea cake was good!

Nihon Mura (Jurong West)

99 cents sushi!  How come the lack of variety?  Haha... cos one of our friends here is a vegetarian.  Other than these sushi, we ordered lots of mushroom dishes and also 2 bowls of cold soba.  I love the fried mushrooms and our vegetarian friend said their soba was good too.

Sashimi... ordered by hubby, as usual... :D

Looking outside the window, we could see this view:

Helped the guys to take a photo outside the restaurant after lunch :)

After lunch, at around 2.30pm, hubby drove me back to Pasir Ris to meet my students to go to a student's birthday celebration at Costa Sands (Pasir Ris). 

Add:

20 Jurong West Street 93
#04-01 Jurong West Sports and Recreation Centre
Tel: 6795 9162

Group photo along the staircase

Me and the birthday gal :)

with The Gals

and with The Guys

Stayed there till 6 plus and after that, I rushed off to meet my friends at 313 Somerset.  Didn't even have time to wait for cake-cutting session.  Haha... What an eventful day!  Meet-ups and Makan!  :) 

Pepper Lunch Express @ Raffles City Shopping Centre

Today I have one whole free day on my own. Decided to go down to City Hall to do some shopping and also to get a pressie for my student who has invited me to her birthday party tomorrow. I wanted to try the tempura again from Tenya but was disappointed that the stall was no longer there. Has it closed down or relocated? I am not too sure. Thus, I decided to settle for Pepper Lunch Express.

Ordered the Unagi with egg :)

Actually the unagi was already cooked, but still got to stir everything including the egg till it became like this:

Of course, I added in a lot of honey brown sauce and the garlic source to give it a stronger favour.

After shopping, I bought some bread from "Epidor - Four Leaves" bakery and of course not forgetting my favourite cheese and onion focaccia bread for dinner. 

Chui Xiang Kitchen 醉香小厨

Saw the advert of this restaurant from the tv claiming that lobster porridge for $5.50. As we hadn't decided where to go for dinner, we thought may as well go for this and checked out the restaurant. The restaurant is located at next to a street with a funny name - "Lim Tua Tow" Haha.... Lim "Big Head"? Anyway, parking can be a headache here too. 

We ordered the lobster porridge of course.  So it is really $5.50?  Haha... $5.50 is for 100g lobster.  Thus, before we took our order, the lady staff asked ask how big we wanted our lobster.  100g?  200g? or 300g?  Hubby ordered the 300g one and thus, our lobster porridge cost $16.50 instead.  The porridge was served in those type of big sharkfin bowl and the lobster, they cut it into half and served each of us half.  The lobster was quite tough and I didn't quite like it.  :(   However, I was quite impressed with the all the other dishes.

Lobster Porridge

Sliced Duck with Mongolian Sauce
This one was really good.  The mongolian sauce was their special BBQ sauce and added much favour to the sliced duck.

Tofu with Golden Mushroom
Their homemade tofu was also very soft and tasted really good.  Yum!  Yum!

Herbal Prawns

Overall, we were very satisfied with their dishes.  Good and affordable.  I feel that their other dishes win over the lobster porridge.  There is a 10% discount even if you pay by cash.

Chui Xiang Kitchen 醉香小厨
13 Teck Chye Terrace
(Lim Tua Tow Food Street)