Taste Paradise: Fine dining or just fancy restaurant?

The Paradise Group is a home grown wonder...from a small cze char stall to a rather large conglomerate of restaurants, spanning the range from fine dining to traditional favourites.

The post today is on Paradise's top end offering...their Taste Paradise in Ion offers a fine dining environment, where beautiful decor, impeccable service and excellent food using innovative cooking techniques and ultra premium ingredients are the order of the day.

We started with quite standard fare...a roast pork

Well presented. The meat was tender, tasty, and the skin was roasted to a perfect crisp. Very good sio bak.

Prawns in two styles were presented in a rather unusual way in a martini glass...a la cocktail

Impeccably presented. The prawns were succulent, and fresh. One done with a mango sauce, the other a wasabi sauce.

Paradise is rather famous for their XO carrot cake, so we ordered one

Again excellent. The wok hei was apparent. A tad too much egg, though it tasted heavenly. The XO sauce...a home made speciality from scallops, prawns, dried shrimps, pork, and other ingredients selected by the chef...each XO sauce is different because of the special ingredients used. The radish cake itself was a bit too soft and tender...I wish for a more firm bite on the cake. But the flavours meld well in the palate.

A simple bamboo clam which was well received

Bamboo clams are at once easy to prepare as well as difficult to execute. Easy, because it is usually simply stir fried, or steamed. Fresh clams have a wonderful sweetness that is just so intoxicating. But the cooking time needs to be judged right...just a tad overcooked, and the clams turn tough and spoils the dish. Needless to say, the chef tampered his work very well.

We had the crispy seafood noodles as well

The noodles were faintly aromatic...just nicely so. Very crisply done. The scallops, prawns and mushrooms complement the sauce and the noodles very well.

And a bit of the unusual, though a dish which can be found in some hawker offerings in Malaysia...deep fried ice cream

Ice cream, in this case, I suspect a rather generic type as it did not taste anything special...is encased in a flour shell, which is quickly deep fried. The flour crisps up, and provides the ice cream with a heat barrier while in the deep fryer, and the ice cream remains cold and frozen. The sensation of hot and cold that one experience on the palate is what makes this special. A bit like a molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.

A rather well presented menu, great tasting, if a bit expensive. But definitely a great place to entertain clients or foreign guests to show off our culinary diversity and heritage. Recommended.

Taste Paradise
2 Orchard Turn, #04-07 ION Orchard
Mon–Fri: 11.30am–3pm, 6pm–11pm
Sat–Sun & PH: 11am–4.30pm, 6pm–11pm

Eating Italy: Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, Lake Como

The Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio runs a superb restaurant.

Situated on the northernmost tip of the southern lip of Lake Como, it juts out into the lake, commanding a wonderful view of the beautiful lake. I attended a Lange sponsored dinner at the hotel's restaurant. Begining 2012, Lange is one of the sponsors of the Concorso d'Eleganza della Villa D'Este, to be held in Cornobbio the following day. Our table ovelook the hotel's pool, which in turn overlooks the lake.

Amuse bouche

I am not sure what the amuse bouche was...the waiter did not explain, and it was not listed in the menu. I didn't really quite like the amuse...but it was decidedly not spectacular in any way.

The first course was the reverse...spectacular in every way...it was a serving of crunchy prawns with mixed greens and citrus salad

The prawns were indeed crunchy and very sweet. Super fresh. The pastry which wrapped the prawns were light, crisp and broke to the touch...not a tad of grease was detected, though I am sure it was deep fried. The greens wer also fresh, light, and the salad dressing was quite superb.

The next course was also quite spectacular...a homemade ravioli with cottage cheese and spinach, fondant egg yolk, parmesan cheese and truffle.

Very tasty as well...except for the truffle, though looked like a fairly generous shaving, it lacked punch and taste. The aroma of truffle itself was very mild. But the ravioli was perfect. The pasta done superbly...al dente, and bursting within the stuffing.

For mains, we were served the loin of veal cooked in olive oil, fried potato and broccoli tartare and baby aubergine

In a word superb. The meat was done to perfection. The meat was glorious. The texture - text book perfect. The meat was tender but at the same time provided a bit of resistance. A light lingering taste of milk fed to the calf remained. Very good.

Next a show of sorts...the desssert was coffee cream with chocolate cookie with a nitrogen frozen Calvados ice cream. Liquid nitrogen was poured into the bowl of milk, briskly and expertly stirred, and served. All done in situ, right by the table side.

Judging by how busy this little team of waiters were making the calvados ice cream, this is indeed a popular dish.

Excellent meal. I overheard someone saying that the restaurant had one Michelin star, but searching the web sources, I could not confirm it. But the meal I had was spectacular, and worthy a Michelin star.

Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni
Via Roma, 1
22021 Bellagio Como, Italia
+39 031 950216

Swedish cafe: Fika...

For some reason, Swedish food is rather popular in Singapore. The Swedish furnishing giant Ikea runs a roaring business with their restaurant serving up literally tons of Meatballs, Salmon and dessert. I too have eaten several times at their huge Alexandra store, though found their meatballs to be too salty, the salmon a bit frozen tasting.

Kennard, one of my makan kakis suggested we saunter over to Fika after a bak kut teh meal at Bliss Cafe...and we did...Fika as the restaurant was known...according to the restaurant's own website, the word fika in Swedish means taking a break from work...what a wonderful word.

We only had dessert and coffee...and amongst the 6 of us, we shared 3 portions.

First the Swedish Pancakes, thin swedish pancakes sprinkled with icing sugar served with whipped cream and jam.



I found the pancake rather hard...and firm consistency...a bit like just slapping regular flour mixed with some water and egg, and frying it on a griddle. They were like very hard crepe. As you can guess, I didn't like them very much. I am not sure what ice cream they use, but the vanilla served with the pancakes were superb...nice, rich, milky, thick.

We also had Brownies with Ice-cream



The brownie is a dense warm rich brownie, also served with a rather generous scoop of the excellent vanilla ice-cream. The brownie lived up to its name...very nice rich chocholate, with some nuts embedded...moist inside...goes supremely well with eh excellent ice-cream. Satisfying.

And the Apple Crumble with Ice-cream -



The warm apple crumble was also excellent. The shortbread crust was crumbly, and not too sweet, and provided a nice textural counterpoint to the soft, sweet but acidic and slightly sour apple insides. Again perfect with the delicious vanilla ice-cream.

Interesting desserts, had us satiated.


Fika Cafe
No. 257 Beach Road / Arab Street, Singapore
(on the corner of Beach Road and Arab Street)
Mon-Fri 11am-11pm
Sat-Sun 12am-11pm

Eating in Tokyo: Musa Shimo Sabo

with SYT in Tokyo

The Japanese have a knack for taking something totally alien, and through obsession and hard work, refine the product to their own. I already said that in an earlier post...

Anyway, what I truly love about the Japanese people is their obsession to anything they put their minds to. The best magazines on any product, be it handmade shoes, or shirts, or pens, or watches, or cars, or food...are Japanese. Many of the best food is found in Japan...indeed, when the Michelin team went to Japan, they only managed to cover less than 1% of the best restaurants on the land, and yet, when they totalled the stars awarded...the total for Japan is higher than the total of both France and Italy combined.

Japanese cuisine is refined...treats all the senses...and none more so than dessert. Just a few doors away from my favourite tonkatsu place in Tokyo lies Musashimo Sabo...a great red bean dessert place.

I always eat dessert here after my tonkatsu meal. I always order the same dessert...red bean with mochi and green tea ice cream.



The red bean is different and higher quality than any I have found in Singapore...it is somewhat larger, and cooked soft, but not so soft as to be mushy. I understand the beans are boiled for 8 hours in each store. The sweetness is just right...not too sweet as red bean can tend to be.

The mochi is simply a lump of glutinous rice ball...made so that the texture is spongy, springy...offering some resistance to the bite, but eventually gives way...wonderful texture.

And finally, the green tea ice cream. Made from powdered green tea of very high quality...known as Myukure and milk from the Aichi Prefecture, the ice cream is special. Not too sweet, the slightly astringent green tea blends well with the cream used it is full of green tea flavour, and smooth, creamy. Excellent.

But how all these seemingly disparate ingredients come together is yet another tale...each complimenting the other. Each adding and never taking away from the other's flavour. Symphonic is the word which comes to mind. Harmony. Lovely. Oishi.


Higashishinbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo
1-5-2　汐留シティセンターB111
B111 Shiodome City Center 1-5-2
105-7190 ZIP 105-7190
http://www.musashinosabo.com/intro/index.html#siodome
TEL:03-5568-6340 TEL :03-5568-6340
Opening hours 10：30～23：00 Sunday 10:30 to 23:00 Sunday closed

Ice Cream: The u.d.d.e.r.s, Singapore

with colleagues

Ice Cream...few can resist it, and many succumb. But to succumb to mediocre ice cream is akin to committing a crime...the calories, fat, cholesterol, sugar are high...and if the taste is just mediocre...its just not worth it.

So I surfaced the idea of an ice cream degustation to some of my makan kaki colleagues, and they were super-excited to try.

So after the hawker degustation (see previous post), we trooped to Goldhill Square for a piece of frozen dessert.



The place looked more like a workshop than a cafe or creamery. Plain white, high tables, with equally high stools adorn the space. On one wall, was a huge blackboard...scribbled with all manner of flavours. Is this the order board? No...its a kind of voting system...the owners put up suggestions of flavours to experiment with, and visitors are invited to vote on what they should priortize. Wild flavours like "mee siam", "char kway teow" were amongst the suggestions...would be interesting.



At the far end of the room, was the ice cream freezers...hey this caught my eye...not only durian ice cream, but mao san wang ice cream and d24 ice cream! These guys are serious!

I immediately had to have the mao san wang...but one scoop is not enough...two scoops please...and make the second the "Rum, rum raisin" Double the rum!



Rum rum raisin on the foreground, and Mao Sang Wang in the background. The flavours are intense...to the extreme. The MSW tasted like eating an aearated, frozen version of the real fruit. The full, strong, powerful taste, flavour of the MSW durian hits the palate immediately. Superb...but can be a bit much for a casual eater. The serving size was rather generous, and with the rich ingredients...let just say, leave some room for this dessert after lunch.

The Rum rum raisin is an immediate winner. Doubling the rum...one can really taste the rum. Powerful alcohol...can almost get drunk, eh? Large raisins adorn the portion I was served. Smooth, creamy ice cream. Very nice.

Kennard also had the Rum, rum raisin and Lychee Martini.



A generous serving of vodka was used...and one can really taste the kick of the alcohol. The lychee base was delicious...rich, creamy, and strongly tasting and smelling like lychee.

Nabil had the Green Tea-rrific and Gila Melaka.



The Green Tea was as intense as the others we have tried...strong Japanese green tea, mixed into a creamy mass. Very nice. The Gila Melaka was something else to try. Attap chee (palm seeds) were generously mixed into a very special ice cream made from Gula Melaka (black palm sugar)...the taste was heavenly...like a mix of chendol and ice cream.

And Joyce had a cone - Orange Choc Bitters:



Made from very dark, bitter Belgian chocholate, it was generously spiked with Orange Triple Sec...I am not sure which they use, but an example of Orange Triple Sec is Cointreu. It was strongly bitter, and the alcohol was so powerful, that Joyce's face began to flush red.

Very interesting ice cream shop...inspired flavours...and very innovative. Generous in the serving sizes as a well as very generous in the amounts of alcohol used. Prices are quite reasonable too...especially compared to exorbitant prices charged by Haagen Das.


Address: 155 Thomson Road, Singapore 307608
Milking hours:
Sunday to Thursday: 12 noon to 11pm
Friday, Saturday and eve of PH: 12 noon to 12 midnight
Tel/Fax: 62546629
Email: david@udders.com.sg

Golden Mile Food Centre, Singapore

Hawker degustation...this is an experimental post with no pictures. Just cross referenced back to the ieat blog. I have been following the blog for about a year...without knowing Dr. Tay who runs the blog, I identified with his taste, and generally agree with those of the places he recommends. Lately, I joined the forum, and finally met with the ieat gang, and including Dr. Tay...interesting bunch, I think I have found a foodie home...and I look forward to many makan sessions with them.

So after church this Sunday, the family decided to go try out the many hawker places recommended by the blog and forum.

We started at ROC Pizza, but when we got there at noon, it was not opened yet..."come back at 12:30"...hmm...hungry, we strolled downstairs and ordered 2 plates of Fried Hokkien Prawn mee. This was not the same HKM as I blogged before in Beo Crescent, nor like that one found in Kims. But the method of preparation was different. No gravy, but it looked like the noodles were cooked in gravy, which had time to be infused into the noodles. The plate looked like fried bee hoon mee...dry. Each strand was tasty, and full of flavour. Nice. Highly recommended.

By the time we wallop 2 plates, yes, the chilli also packs a punch, and unusually they included slices of raw chilli padi which provided extra oomph, it was half past, and we strolled upstairs to ROC. Ordered a Pizza Margarita and Pizza with ham and mushrooms...both 12 inchers - $15 for both was reasonable.

While he baked the pizza one at a time...we were the first and then only customers, Kin walked over and bought a plate of Char Kway Teow...it looked like a plate of fried chye sim, with some crispy silver fish...but within the folliage was some CKT...sweet, empowered with some nice see harm. The store was very popular, perhaps because it proclaimed in a large sign that no pork, no lard. The taste was ok, sweet. Reminded me of the CKT you get in the morning breakfast fried noodles store...the one which is ready prepared. I liked the use of the crispy silver fish in lieu of crispy lard. But a real CKT needs some lard to taste right. Eat again index? Not really.

By then the pizza arrived. The dough was very thin...the sides bloat up into a crispy balloon at the edge of the pizza. The ingredients were quite thin as well. The consistency of the bread was crispy. It was more like eating crackers with topping. The family rated this pizza as ok, no great shakes. The ingredients used...the ham, cheeses used in were not exceptional...the Quartro Formaggi at Modesto's was my reference standard...four kinds of superb cheeses, parma ham...etc...but, of course at a different price level. The ROC version could not compete. For the low prices charged, it was ok, but I won't return just for this pizza. Our favourite at Modesto's was not threatened.

By then, we were almost full...and not yet sampled the chilli mee, the pasta at the other end, and the beef hor fun...which had a very long queue and looked wonderful. Next time.

But wait, we were not done yet...we next went to the Ice Queen and ate some gelato. Made in-situ, the gelato claimed to use only fresh milk...less sugar, less fat, no eggs. We had 2 triples ($3.90 each triple) - Black sesame, Peanut, Rum n Raisin and Durian, Green Tea, Hazelnut chocholate. The Black sesame was nice...can really taste the sesame. The Rum n Raisin was rather strong with rum...the way we liked it. The Peanut tasted like cold peanut butter. Durian was quite strong tasting and pleasant (incidentally we had durian the evening before...tapow from the fruit store next door to Two Chef in Commonwealth Crescent...one Mao San Wang and another the seller claims to be better than MSW - he calls Tek Kar. Both were excellent.) The Green Tea was lesser than those I have tried in Tokyo, and the Hazelnut choc was forgettable.

This Food Centre was an interesting to do a tasting...many great stores, and good mix of old style, traditional looking hawkers with new, yuppie like hawkers. Worth another visit if just to try out the other stuff mentioned above.

Golden Mile Food Centre
Various stalls.

Wood Restaurant, Vivocity Singapore

With Jems and Dr. Mycroft.

Smoked meats are a staple in the beef towns in American states like Texas and interestingly in Montreal. A typical cut used is the brisket...a cut of meat from the breast or lower chest - the pectoral muscles form the bulk of the brisket. In Hong Kong cuisine, the ngau lam is usually coupled with collagen rich tendons to balance the sometimes tough muscle tissue. But a traditional Jewish method, as is practiced by the famous institution of Schwartz in Montreal (I once queued outside the tiny restaurant for about an hour in Montreal winter, minus 20C! to sample this delightful delicacy) is to smoke the marinated brisket over a low hickory fire. The resultant flavour is a smoky, tender slice of muscle which, depending on the degree of marbling of the beef can be very tender and tasty.

Wood Restaurant in Singapore promises the same enticing experience. The restaurant is at one end of the walkway (broadwalk?)in Vivocity, just below the cinemas. As one enters, one is greeted by a hostess at the front desk. The interior looked very dark from the entrance lobby, looked more like an evening entertainment club than a restaurant. As one enters, a long dark corridor leads directly to a beautiful glass cellar showcasing some very interesting wines. Flanking the corridor are private rooms, and this leads to the very bright dining hall...perhaps its just the contrast from the dark corridor, but it was lunchtime, and the sun was streaking in from the full length glass walls as the restaurant faces Sentosa.

We started with a shared plate of Wood signature chicken satay with spicy peanut sauce.



The smell which greeted us as the dish was presented was very woody, smoky. Chicken breast meat was used, and all three of us find it a bit on the dry side. I thought the flavour was quite interesting, but Mycroft demanded more fat...and would have prefered thigh or drumstick with a good helping of skin. He reminisced a yakitori meal we had comprising bishop's nose and grilled chicken skin. This doctor loves his fat.

The mildly spicy sauce was very thick, had plenty of ground crunchy peanuts. Not quite like the super thick sauce they serve on board SIA. But much thicker, and less oily than those found in Kajang.

I had read earlier that the Cardamon coffee 12 hour smoked wagyu brisket is the dish to try. Even the name was enticing. So I ordered that, as did Dr. Mycroft. Jems chose the 2 course set lunch comprising of a Spinach Salad, Chinese Sausage and quail egg in Oriental sauce and the House aged tenderloin with mash and veal jus.



The brisket was quite tender, and had a wonderful smoked flavour. Again Mycroft found the meat a bit dry and was not sufficiently fat. I guess his umami sensors felt unloved. My cut was slightly more marbled and as a result was more tasty. The charred bits hanging on the sides were smoky and full of flavour, but was dry. I am not sure what grade is the wagyu, but the marbling seems to be quite slight. In comparison, Schwartz's smoked brisket was wonderful, melt in your mouth whilst retaining the smoked flavour. Their charred bits were crunchy and as one bits into it, the fat exploded in the mouth, providing great sense of pleasure. But that's half way across the world in Canada.



The salad was very interesting. A concoction of leafy spinach and quail egg in a thin sauce, the chef chose slices of fried Chinese sausages as a topping. The crispy saussage added crunciness, and a beautiful rich flavour and a punch to the mild salad. The dressing was also very mild.



Jems' serving of tenderloin was also very lean. She cut me a small cut to taste, and I found it to be reasonably tender but the lean cut made the meat a bit dry to the palate. I don't normally like jus reduction, so would ask for jus on the side. The red wine reduction technique used will typically result in a thick, sour sauce. Although the two slices of tenderloin was generously covered in jus, it was not sour, but had a mild veal flavour.

Perhaps the cuts of meat was selected for a more health conscious crowd than the 3 of us. We generally felt the meat was too dry, and would have loved more fat.

We then adjourned to Bon Bon Tea one floor up for some dessert. We all tried crepe with ice cream.



The crepe was not as thin as those typically found on the streets of Paris. It was crispy on the outside and still soft on the inside. Reminds me of roti prata. I had hazelnut chocolate filling (I guess Nutella, also a common filling in Paris) and a huge scoop of hazelnut gelato. Mycroft and Jems both had the Bounty Cream on the side of their crepe, and had Hazelnut and Ameretto ice cream. The ice cream was very rich, slightly on the sweet side, but quite tasty and satisfying. The hazelnut flavour was evident in my scoop. And strong taste and smell of toasted almonds was clear in the Amereto.

Wood Restaurant
1 Harbour Front Walk
#01-53 VivoCity
Singapore 098585

Bonbon Tea
1 Harbour Front Walk
#02-141 VivoCity
Singapore 098585

Photonote: The Wood shots were high ISO - 1600. Though the entire wall was glass, where we sat was rather dark. Our table had a tungsten ceiling lamp shining on the table. This usually wrecks havoc on the white balance. White balance was done with a calibration shot of the white table cloth as white reference using custom white balance. After I took the last photograph, the waitress came by an told me, quite politely, I must say, "Sorry sir, our food is not for photoshoot"...to which I replied, "OK...I am actually planning to eat it." I don't understand why I cannot take photographs of the food I ordered and will pay for, especially when I am not disturbing other guests as I am not using flash, and not shooting them. The Bonbon shot was taken at ISO400.

Disclaimer: I actually went to school with the owner of Wood, but we have lost contact for some 20+ years, and only recently got in touch with each other. He was not in the shop when I visited as he was travelling. The staff did not know me, nor were they expecting me, and I believe had no special treatment.