My Simple Birthday Celebration with My Family at Jane Thai Food and BLIC @ Simpang Bedok

November is an extremely busy month for me with lots of celebration and of course, feasting.  I suggested to my family this Thai restaurant to celebrate my birthday after reading reviews from many food bloggers.   This restaurant was not very crowded on a weekend afternoon and we didn't need to wait very long for all the dishes to be served.  I DREAD long waits especially when you need to queue or wait for more than half an hour with a growling stomach just to get a seat in the restaurant.

 Hey!  This was the first time I was being served rice moulded in heart shape!  Ok... it was not because I got special treatment for my birthday, as long as you order rice, you will also get this.  :P

Deep-fried Prawn Cake (Thod Mun Thong)

Fried items like this will seldom go wrong.

 Fried Vermicelli with Seafood

 Pineapple Fried Rice

 BBQ Pork (Moo Yang)

-  Nicely marinated pork meat, goes well with the special sauce provided.

 Green Curry

 Steamed Fish

Overall, we all felt that the food at Jane Thai was not bad and of course, value-for-money.

We wanted to order dessert like red ruby or my favourite mango sticky rice,  but on the day that we went, they only served tapioca.  As such, we decided to adjourn to the ice-cream stall next door instead.

BLIC

My brother had the "Durian King" in cone.

 Hubby and I shared 1 scoop of Bailey's and 1 scoop of Durian King in a cup.

Thai Village Restaurant @ Kallang Leisure Park

This is considered a belated mothers' day dinner treat from me for my family. Mummy chose the venue and also the date as she didn't want to "fight" with the crowd on the actual mothers' day itself.  She also wanted to utilize the $50 discount voucher that she cut out from newspaper. :)

Nuts and Pickles ($6)  This was really expensive!!

Lots of beansprouts.... to be put into the sharkfin's soup

Sharkfin with Crab Meat ($98)

Sorry to people who support sharks protection.  Frankly speakly, I am not too sure why my parents and many older folks love this dish.  I will not go to a restaurant and order this for myself.  

Deep-fried beancurd ($12)

Seafood Fried Rice ($24)

Chinese Spinach Soup ($18)

Baked Duck Web ($20)

My mummy....

Total bill was $183 before Service Charge & GST.  After the $50 discount and adding back the additional charges, the bill still total up to $160.

Thai Village Restaurant

5, Stadium Walk,

#01-50, Kallang Leisure Park

Tel:  6440 2292

The Beauty of Thai Look Choob

I had just signed up for a hands-on session with People's Association (onePA) to learn how to make the beautiful fruit-shaped or vegetable-shaped Thai dessert made of green bean paste.  So looking forward to the workshop tomorrow and I will share more about it after attending the workshop!  :D  

Have a Nice Weekend Everyone!!  Yay!!

Updated on 13 May 2012:  I had attended the workshop and it was fun!  It was like an art and craft workshop too because we also learnt how to shape 11 different fruits/ veggie with the green bean paste and also added colouring to them.  I had not attended cooking classes from PA since 2008.  With the advancement in technology, almost all the participants who attended the workshop were equipped with cameras or handphones to take photos or even video-record the teacher's demonstration.  The teacher didn't seem to mind and at the start of the lesson, she wanted us to take photo of the beautiful look choob that she had prepared in advance - shown in my opening photo for this post.  Very beautiful right?

Ingredients for making the look choob.

 Our teacher

 Each table will get a tray of colourings and paintbrushes.  Seem like an Art lesson right?

 Done by teacher.  We have hands-on session after each demonstration.

 After we had "painted" our look choob, the teacher helped us to dip them into the heated agar agar.  This step is important as it will add a gloss the the texture.

 This was done by moi.

 Our work table.

 Brought my creation back home to share with hubby. :)

Hearty lunch at Thai Express after workout at Amore (Tampines One)

Met up with an ex-colleague to go workout at Amore.  We attended pilates and followed by bellyblitz together with another 2 friends.  Our instructor for bellyblitz was actually a male!  We were quite shocked as he also wore the hipscarf used for bellydancing.  He was actually quite good as he was very patient and would slow down the steps so that we could all catch up with his dance routines.  It was great to catch-up with my friend and we got so much things to talk about.  We had a long lunch (almost 3 over hours) at Thai Express.

Complimentary starter

 Beef salad for sharing ($8.90)

 I ordered the shrimp fried rice.  ($9.90)

 My favourite mango sticky (glutinous) rice!  Served warm.  ($6.50)

 

Didn't take photos of what my colleagues ate.  All of us were famished after the 2 hours session of workout.

Any blog readers here also signed up with Amore package?  Which are the classes that you all like to attend?

Mookata Traditional Thai BBQ @ East Coast Road

I took this photo about one month back after our meal at Saveur.  I was attracted by the interesting signboard which stretched above two storefronts with the two prominent little pink piggies at each end.  Along this stretch of road, we can find many specialty restaurants that will definitely whet your appetitie.  I was happy to come back just within a month to try out Mookata!

Mookata Traditional Thai BBQ - This is their trademark logo :)  So cute!  The restaurant is located along the same stretch of road where you can find Astons, 1928 Peranakan shop.  It is not easy to miss it.  If you are driving there, I would suggest that you go to Katong Village, just directly opposite to find your parking lot. 

I reached the restaurant at around 6pm on a weekday.  There was still no crowd yet as the heavy rain had just stopped.  Around 7pm, the crowd then started to come in. 

The whole place is rather spacious and most importantly, you don't feel too hot and stuffy after all the BBQ.

You can find a ceramic plate (with a metal plate on top to hold the hotpot) placed on every table to prevent overheating and damaging the table top.

Prior to this visit, I had not heard of the Mookata dining concept.  Its direct translation is "Pork Skillet".  Mookata is a combination of BBQ and asian hotpot altogether.  Normally, when we have our steamboat cum BBQ, the steamboat hotpot is at the core and we will grill our meats around the hotpot.  However, Mookata reverses the concept.  You will find a dome-shaped metal pan with a trough running around the edge for steamboat. 

Mookata at East Coast Road just celebrated their first year opening anniversary recently.

They serve 3 types of home-made chilli sauces of different degree of spiciness.  I find the one at the middle tasted a bit sweeter and the one at the far end the most spicy.  Oh well, you got to try them on your own and have fun experimenting with the different tastes.

Let's check up the menu!

We had a "Set for 2" which consisted of a plate of meat and another plate of veggies, egg and vermicelli (aka tung hoon).

The egg was nicely nested amongst the veggies....

This is one of the business partners of the restaurant, Mr Lee Bajin.  He brought in the hotpot and showed us how about cooking our meat.  A very sincere and attentive guy, we saw him making his rounds very often to ensure that the customers were happy with the food and service.

He poured a kettle of vegetable broth into the hotpot.

After that, he put a piece of lard on the top of the metal dome and rubbed it against the dome surface to prepare for the BBQ.

 

The lard will then melt and the oil will drip down from the dome to the broth, to add taste to it.

Table Setting

We started to place the meat on the metal dome.

If your stomach still have space for more good food after finishing up the set, you might want to try some of their premium a-la-carte selections. 

We had a plate of Wagyu Beef and...

Tom Yam Chicken (Thighs).  Make sure that you don't overcook the wagyu beef.  Normally, I like it medium well.  I love the tom yam chicken.  It was really well-marinated and tender.  Try eating the chicken meat on its own without adding the extra chilli sauce to taste the original tom-yam flavour.

A nice plate of flower clams which the other blogger, Joycelyn loves to eat.

We had fun stacking the meat on the dome and flipping them to ensure that they were well-cooked and not burnt.  The meat used here were all really fresh and of good quality.  Maybe you will find the pricing a bit high compared to other steamboat restaurants, but they are really worth the money that you are paying for.

All is cooked with charcoal instead of electric stove.

Spread of BBQ meat and steamboat.  The broth might get a bit salty at first and you can request to top up the steamboat with water instead of the veggie broth.

We were also being served with a plate of Kurobuta (Very thinly sliced high grade pork collar).

Nice!

Hmm... Overall, the three of us had a very satisfying meal at Mookata.  Hope you all can come down and try the Mookata experience too!

Here is the address of Mookata Traditional Thai BBQ Restaurant.

Click the link for the location of the restaurant within streetdirectory.com map

http://www.streetdirectory.com/428797

Have fun "Pigging Out" at Mookata!

Thank you Mr Francis Tan from streetdirectory.com for organizing this wonderful makan session,

Mr Lee Bajin for hosting us, Joycelyn & Kenneth for the company.

Mookata Traditional Thai BBQ

103/105 East Coast Road

Singapore 428797

Phone No:  6344 2985

Opening hours:

Monday to Sunday:  1200hr to 2230hr

Tuesday:  1700 to 2230hr

(Closed on Tuesday during lunch)

Website:  http://www.mookata.com/