ECP … East Coast Park … not the expressway
Headed there with Aly and her sis Samantha for dinner after that round of clothes shopping at Chinatown

Sam had the Gold Medal Macau Baked Rice ($14.80) which is actually pork chop with tomato sauce, Chicken chop with portuguese sauce and seafood with cream sauce all in one plate … I didn’t take a pic of it as Aly had eaten this before and I did blog about it previously…. er… I think … (do a search? )

Sze chuan fried spicy french beans ($8.50)
I’ve always wanted to try this after seeing others order it countless times, but was afraid to do so ‘cos of the word “spicy” … fearing that I would have to finish it alone if it’s too spicy for Aly.
Since Sam’s here today, I took the chance to do so.
The dish WAS spicy… but it was also appetising and darn good in my opinion… even Aly ate lots of it… and drank lots of water

Erm … What’s this? It’s Aly’s order!!!

Noodles…. egg… beancurd skin …. fish balls…. er…

Together with the stuff in the hot pot… it’s Aly’s
Drunken Chicken mini steamboat ($13.80) !!!
The soup was pretty tasty… don’t worry… you won’t get drunk ….
Didn’t eat or taste much of it though… ‘cos I was more interested in….

Abalone sauce spicy pork leg noodles ($8.50)
Couldn’t resist ordering this when I read PORK LEG
The port was soft … yeah!!! …. I hate eating pork leg when it’s tough
The sauce was delicious! Mixed with the noodles, it was awesome!!!
Portion was too small  though!!! I was tempted to order another plate

After eating at so many hong kong cafes, Aly and I still prefer the ones by C.Nai
Lots of items in their menu, the milk tea is good … and the food is good as well.
The only gripe I have is that the service can be quite lacking at times

C.Nai Hong Kong Cafe
1000 East Coast Park
Tel: (65) 6444 1234
http://www.hkcafe.com.sg

Summary

Menu Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Value for money Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Ambience Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Service Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Fai’s birthday … didn’t get him anything
He didn’t want to go anywhere far or something as he had to go back to take care of Breanna …
So he suggested going to Sunset Way…
I’ve heard of the place being spiced up with lots of pubs and restaurants for the last couple of years.
I haven’t been there since going to Lavinia’s place for some gathering way back during secondary school days

Anyway when I arrived there, Fai and Kelly were already seated at Sunset Tavern.
We took some time to go through their menu (food menu wasn’t too difficult to look at)
We managed to decide on what to eat before the waitress informed us (after us being seated at the table for 10mins and the waitress herself asking to take our order twice) that the fish and chips and the burger we had wanted to order was not available…. duh…
Surely she could’ve told us earlier???
Even the buffalo wings were out … the only things left for us was chicken done in 2 styles and a steak item on the menu (and some other stuff…. okay… it’s a more of a bar I guess… but … )

What did we do? We left… and headed to the Hong Kong cafe thingy just round the corner…

Cafe d’ Orient … serving Hong Kong cuisine as claimed…

We were seated at one of the inner corners of the place…
The chairs were really awkward … like some old Qing Dynasty Emperor chair… which was too high for the low table … Fai complained he had nowhere to put his legs

The table was also still dirty (despite the guy wiping it when we got there … )

Air conditioning was moderate … could’ve been better for such a small place…

Bird cage display was out of place (with some fake birds and butterflies in it) … totally weird

Aly ordered Iced Lemon Tea ($2.50)… she didn’t think it looked or tasted much like Iced lemon tea

My drink … Lychee with Aloe vera ($3.90) …. SWEET …. I drink bit by bit and kept adding water from the additional glass of iced water served to us. By the end of the meal, I realised that I had added the entire glass of iced water into this

Kelly’s Longan Rambutan Fizzy Drink thingy ($3.90)… she said that it was very sweet as well….

Fried trio mushroom ($10.90) … not too bad… but eleven bucks for this tiny bit?! Man… daylight robbery

Soya Milk Beancurd ($7.90)…. pieces of beancurd dipped in some batter and then deep fried I reckon… so so …

Garlic Fish fingers something thingy ($8.90) …. they mentioned garlic… what garlic? Fish… what fish? More batter than anything else

Could the garlic be in the dip that was served with the fish fingers?

Aly’s baked rice… she chose the combination of scallops and prawns with Portuguese sauce ($10.90)
Okay… maybe we haven’t been eating out much But we certainly didn’t know that Portuguese sauce tasted and looked exactly like curry
Luckily for Aly it wasn’t spicy … so she could finish off the meal …
At the end… she left lots of rice uneaten …. why? Read on…

My order of baked rice with chicken cutlet with tomato sauce ($8.90)

Chicken cutlet was okay I guess…
However…. the tomato sauce was … erm… crappy…
Tasted like they added cheap sugar into the sauce. Either that, the tomato sauce was some low grade thingy out from some bottle or something.
Rice… was hard… and dry … the whole thing didn’t seem baked… but then again, to have this meal baked from scratch would’ve taken much much longer … the least they could’ve done was to serve it with better rice or something…. this is the first baked rice which I’ve ever had which had rice this dry … it ain’t fried rice dudes

Fai and Kelly ordered some chicken bamboo rice thingy… ($6.90)
Fai said it was so so only … normal… nothing fantastic …

The both of them also ordered a small steamboat set C ($8.80)

The soup base was suppose to be chicken stock. They complained that the soup was tasteless (even after adding all the ingredients in)
I asked them how were the ingredients…fresh? So so was the answer

We got 2 servings of this for dessert … mango pomelo sago thingy ($3.90each)
SWEET!!!! No wonder the chinese call this 甜品 plus I couldn’t add water to this one

The total bill amounted to $82… that’s about twenty bucks each for the four of us… sheesh …
I could’ve had a much better meal elsewhere (don’t ask where ) for that kind of money …

Kelly says “There are other better places serving steamboat and hk cafe styled food, not likely to go back there again”

Fai said “Think dinner so so nia”

Tough luck Fai… we go out and re-celebrate your birthday dinner somewhere else with some REAL food in the next couple of weeks okay?

Cafe d’ Orient 新香港茶餐厅
Blk 106 Clementi Street 12
#01-38L
Tel: 6777 4680

Summary

Menu Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Food Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Value for money Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Ambience Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Service Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

After walking around Lavender… we headed back to Bugis for some shopping at Bugis Junction and Bugis Village….
Dinner time came pretty quickly and we were both famished

We walked past this poster/banner…. Hey! Isn’t that Roger Kwok? (Hong Kong TVB Actor)
Hmmm…. another HK Cafe thingy… Aly and I decided to try it out

The pic says it all… Wong Kok Char Chan Teng…

Here’s the entrance… there was a long queue when we went in by the way …

Here’s the menu …

Quite a number of things in the menu ….

Aly’s peach tea ($5.90)…. totally sour… so sour it tasted like sour plum… ewww….

My milk tea (shaker milk tea as on the menu) ($3.60)…. not the best I’ve had…. Aly didn’t like it

Borsch soup ($3.80) …. they got this all wrong…. TOTALLY AWFUL … it was FISHY… wtf…. it was the worst soup I’ve EVER had….

Aly’s baked rice with chicken ($10.50)…. I didn’t taste this mainly due to the nasty faces she made while eating it

Some chicken and ham roll thingy ($7.90)… with thousand island dressing

Deconstructed… there’s a piece of honeydew inside…
This roll thingy was totally salty….

My order of fried spaghetti ($6.90)… with pork cutlet slices

It wasn’t too bad… just a tad oily… and salty again

but what’s with the frozen vegetables? I thought this was a restaurant… well… so called restaurant… not food court?! Sheesh …

Aly laughing after I exclaimed to her that we should’ve ate at the restaurant opposite instead of this nightmare…

This would’ve been a much much better dining experience!

All in all… one word sums up this place…. CRAP

Service was bad…. staff didn’t know much about the menu… didn’t understand what we wanted…

Food took forever to arrive and when it did, we wished it didn’t… ‘cos of the crappy food…

The table next to ours had raised eyebrows as well when they tasted their food … you guys should’ve seen their faces when they tasted the same soup… the 2 guys caught Aly and I sniggering at them take their first spoonful of soup when which they both made nasty faces upon first taste…. they then noticed that we had abandoned our soup and realised why so and gave us a look of acknowledgment coupled with a good laugh

Man… Roger Kwok sure endorsed the wrong place …. I would never step foot in here again.

We both went down to the basement to grab some buns and stuff to bring back up to the hotel after the awful dinner…

Wong Kok Char Chan Teng 旺角茶餐厅
200 Victoria Street,
#02-50, Bugis Junction,
Singapore 188021
http://www.wongkokcharchanteng.com/

Summary

Menu Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Food Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Value for money Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Ambience Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Service Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

2nd day of Chinese New Year to be exact …. Early morning of the 3rd day … at 1am
Supper at HK Cafe at East Coast with Tong & Kelly.
Not many places were opened at this time and during Chinese New Year as well.

Here’s my hungry kitty ready to fight for her food

Toast for the ladies … still prefer the ones here than elsewhere

“Fu pei” … beancurd skin with prawns… crispy and prawns were fresh.

My noodles with egg and chicken meat in shanghai sauce…. just looked at the yummy egg

Noodles were rather dry… needed more sauce… but after some really thorough mixing… was pretty okay

Supper topped off with an ice cool mango drink with mango bits … SLURP!!!

Happy Chinese New Year once again!

Here we are again at the branch of Hong Kong Cafe at Novena (Thomson) … this time with Fai and Kelly. Much nearer than the one at East Coast… and with better parking as well

Fai’s order of stewed beef brisket rice…. yummy!

Pork and chicken chop rice with Shanghai sauce

Both Kelly and Aly ordered the same thing….Gold Medal Macau Baked Rice …
It’s pork chop with tomato sauce, chicken chop in curry sauce and seafood in cream sauce … 3 in 1!

Fai’s order of Iced milk tea with glass jelly

Cheesed baked broccoli to share …

and lastly… fried carrot cake with XO sauce Was crispy… interesting taste … but portion was very small though