Pin Si @ Yishun Safra

A few weeks ago, a few of us were invited to attend a food bloggers get-together session that is organized by OpenRice Singapore at Pin Si Chinese Restaurant. This restaurant has being shifted over from it old located at Yishun Central (near the bus inter-change) to Yishun Safra since last year. According to the restaurant manager, the restaurant can cater up to a maximum of 54 tables for different co-operate functions, wedding banquets and special events. They also have two special VIP rooms that is equipped with KTV system (max 1 table per room) for entertainment too.

While at our seat, each of us is presented with a special scroll that highlights the menu of the night. From a glance, we saw it consists of appetizer, soup, a few main dishes and guess what, we are having “Bird’s nest” as our ending dessert.

First dish to be served as starter is this “Trio Varieties Combination Platter - 品食聚财三宝拼”. It consists of Prawn Roll (Xia Zhao), Crispy Roasted Pork Belly (Siu Yuk) and Pork Floss Tofu where you get to try a piece of each mentioned. I love the roasted pork belly that is well season and the meat is so tender that it can just melt within a few bites. Pork Floss Tofu has a very silky texture and it goes well with the floss coating too.
Price: S$10.00 per serving

After the yummy starter, everyone is being served with a bowl of this superior “Double Boiled Shark’s Bone Soup with Twins Treasures - 鲨鱼骨汤炖双宝”. The broth is boiled for at least 8 hours using chicken, pork ribs, scallop and etc to achieve the taste and flavour. When you first give it a sip, it taste sort of like those “pig stomach pepper soup” because of the peppery taste. But after a few mouthful, you will sure start to like it, as it is full of goodness and flavour together with that tender and juice Abalone.
Price: S$12.00 per serving

I love Asparagus especially those that are lightly stir-fried with garlic and olive oil. This vegetable is a low in calories and with a good source of calcium, dietary fiber, protein and vitamin A. Our asparagus dish today is known as “Stir-fried Fresh Scallops & Prawns with XO Sauce - 酱皇露顺玉带伴虾球” where you can see really big fresh prawns and scallop in it. All the ingredients are well blend with the XO sauce and the taste is good with a bit of spicy tingle in your tongue.
Price: S$10.00 per serving

Having this common dialect dish to be served in a restaurant is definitely something new to us. Their “Pan-fried Trio Stuff Varieties Hakka Style - 客家煎酿三宝” is served in a very special mini claypot with 3 different varieties such as stuffed Green Capsicum, Brinjal and Beancurd. The meat stuffing is well seasoned with a hint of salted fish taste, which makes it so delicious together with the sauce. This is indeed a recommending dish for those who love pan-fried style of Yong Tau Foo.
Price: S$8.00 per serving

Their “Roasted Pipa Duck - 美味京酱琵琶鸭” was not as good as what we thought. The meat was kind of tough when bite and it is a bit kind of salty to taste. But overall it still taste good with its crispy outer skin and it goes pretty well with some red wine too. According to restaurant manager, the duck need to be marinated with some spices and dripped dry for a few hours before roasting in order to enhance the taste and achieve good texture on the outer layer.
Price: S$14.00 per serving

If you could remember our recent September Bloggers outing post, there is a scary “paw” dish where we featured uncommon “Stewed Crocodile Palm - 红烧鳄鱼掌” from Café De Hong Kong. And for today’s menu, we have another creepy “feet” dish that is called “Braised Goose Web with Mushroom & Broccoli - 西兰花鹅掌扣花菇”. I have tried similar goose web dish from another restaurant sometime ago and I think the one served here at Pin Si is definitely much tender and tastier on their gravy.
Price: S$16.00 per serving

The last dish of that night is “Stewed Meehon with Minced Salted Fish & Assorted Seafood - 咸鱼茸海鲜粒焖鸳鸯米”. This unusual combination of rice vermicelli (aka bee hoon -米粉) and glass noodle Cellophane noodles (aka bean thread - 冬粉) is stir-fried together using some diced scallop, prawn and hint of salted fish to enhance the flavour. But sad to say, a few of us agreed that there is much fragrant or taste of the salted fish, perhaps they can improve further on the taste for this unique noodle dish.
Price: S$8.00 per serving

Having Bird’s Nest, as a daily dessert is always what most woman dream of it is believed to provide health benefits, such as aiding digestion, raising libido, alleviating asthma and an overall benefit to the immune system. So having a bowl of this “Bird’s nest with Water Chestnut & Egg White - 蛋白燕窝马蹄露” might helps to digest those dishes that we had. Although we can taste the fragrant f the bird’s nest when served, but most of us find that there is too much water chestnuts cubes in this dessert, which unintentionally spoilt the texture and taste.
Price: S$20.00 per serving

Every one of us enjoys the great companies of new and old friends, food and wine as well as exchanging of our views on the dishes and a bits of our current updates. From the above dishes, I would like to recommend the “Double Boiled Shark’s Bone Soup with Twins Treasures 鲨鱼骨汤炖双宝”. As a soup lover, I love the flavour of its' thick and sticky soup texture that leaves your taste buds filled with all the goodness from the broth.

Pin Si also offered daily Dim Sum menu from 11.00am - 2.30pm for those who enjoy dim sum for lunch with different varieties of choices such as Shrimp Dumplings(Har Gau), ShaoMai(Siu Mai), Egg Tart, Assorted Steam Buns, Porridge and etc.

Pin Si Chinese Restaurant
60 Yishun Ave 4
#02-V1
Yishun Safra Country Club
Singapore 769027
Telephone: 6852 8933
Fax: 6852 9669
Website: http://www.pinsi.com.sg

Operating Hours:
Opens Daily: 11am - 2.30pm; 6.30pm - 10.30pm

Dim Sum Ala-Carte: 11am-2.30pm (daily)

Swensen's @ Northpoint

To start off our dinner at Swensen's, we have the "Clam Chowder" soup that is served in a sourdough breadbowl which is enough to feed two person due to it's huge serving. The soup is full of yummy ingredients such as baby clams, diced potatoes, carrot, onion and etc in creamy soup.

Here comes our main course which is the "Seafood Lasagna" with succulent shrimps and crab sticks between generous layers of pasta that accompanied with that attractive jade green creamy spinach sauce and topped with golden fried potato sticks. This dish might look good but it taste rather cold which we thought it might have being taken out from the freezer and just reheat in the microwave or so. And when eating, this cold dish gives us that greasy and odd feeling too.

For dessert, we ordered this "White Chocolate Blondie" and "Sticky Chewy Chocolate". The Chocolate Blondie is filled with rich white chocolate blondie sizzling with maple butter syrup and served together with Ol' Fashioned Vanilla ice cream and a shower of pistachios, peanuts and almonds. This really taste great for after meal dessert and it makes you crave for more after each mouthful.

My boy's favourite dessert which is "Sticky Chewy Chocolate" that he loves so much because the whole cup is full of chocolate! But before eating, he will scoop off all the whipped cream which he dislike the taste of it.

This Swensen's outlet at North Point Shopping Mall has being around since the opening of the shopping mall more than 10 years. And their newly renovated concept do add extra points to the dining environment.

Wild Turtle Soup Restaurant

"Wild Turtle House" located at Jalan Tampang, just opposite Sembawang Shopping Center. Due to the recent rainy weather, we hope to grab something comfort that might warm-up our body, so instead of their famous "Wild Turtle Soup"(which we don't dare to try by the thought of eating "turtle") we decided to try out their "Herbal Crocodile Soup - 砂煲药材鳄鱼汤". In this herbal soup, the chef used fresh Crocodile Meat instead of those dried type that you can find in most Chinese Medical Hall. Overall this soup taste great with it lightly herbal fragrant that cover up the "fishy" smell from the Crocodile Meat.

Yam Rice - 芋头饭 is one of our "Teochew" signature rice whereby most of the Teochew housewife can whip up this dish in their own kitchen. But for modern working mum like most of us, unless is during weekends or our leisure time, I guess we won't be sweating in the kitchen just to prepare all these traditional food. If you are not picky about specify taste, the yam rice served here was rather good with it's ingredients and seasoning.

Claypot Bak Kuet Teh - 肉骨茶 is one of the dish that is recommended by my 3rd aunty who is dinning there with her friend when we pop by the restaurant. Although their Bak Kuet Teh does not taste fantastic compare to those famous stalls in Singapore, but they do have their homecook style standard that attract customers to order this dish.

Stir-fry Chinese Spinach with Century Egg & Ikan Bilis - 江鱼仔苋菜 was quite similar to what my late father used to cook for us. But we find this vegetable dish was kind of overcooked and which overall makes it look kind of not appetising.

Claypot Pork Liver - 焖猪干 is always one of my favourite dish since young and I can have two bowl of rice just to go with this dish alone. The Claypot Pork Liver served in this restaurant was those very homecook style and the pork liver are so tender to bite as it is not overcooked.

Finally after a long wait, here comes their homemade Ngoh Hiang - 肉枣圆 which taste great with the sweet dipping sauce. The Ngoh Hiang served is cut into individual pieces then deep-fried till crispy on the outer layer but soft and juicy inside.

Wild Turtle Soup Restaurant
20 Jalan Tampang
(Opposite Sembawang Shopping Centre)

Xin Zhao Yang Seafood Garden

Soup! This is always the first category that I will look for before ordering any other dishes from the Zhi Char - 煮炒摊 Menu. From the menu, we ordered this “Kau Khee Soup - 九杞菜汤/枸杞菜汤” which is cooked with slices of pork fillet, minced pork and egg. This is a very quick and easy soup that you can also whipped it up at home with simple ingredients such as egg and minced meat. The soup itself is infused with light ginger fragrant which it very refreshing. Look at the amount of ingredients in it, this bowl of soup cost S$4.00 which I think is worth it's price.

Xin Zhao Yang Seafood Garden - 新朝阳海鲜 is a Zhi Char Stall located at a corner in the coffee shop near Yishun Bus Inter-change at Block 921, Yishun Central 1. It is usually packed with crowds during weekends from as early as 5.30pm onwards.

This is our first time patronising this Zhi Char stall which is quite new in this coffee shop. But actually a few weeks back we had actually tried their “Hor Fun - 河粉” which mum has bought for us. And because of the good review we had from the hor fun, today we are here to try more on their dishes.

From their staff’s recommendation, we ordered two of their signature dishes which are “Thai-style Deep-fried Fish Fillet - 泰式酸甜鱼片” and “Braised Spare Ribs - 红烧排骨”. The “Thai-style Deep-Fried Fish Fillet” was kind of different from what we expected from the usual one that is cooked with those refreshing ingredients such as shredded cucumber and mango. This is dish is rather some deep-fried fish fillet that serves with some chilli sauce. Overall the taste is not too spicy or sour but we just feel that it’s still not towards our liking of thai-style sauce.

A few minutes later, our “Braised Spare Ribs - 红烧排骨” are served together with some "Deep-fried Mantou - 炸馒头". According to the staff, they only have limited plates of this signature dish available each day and from what I have observed, most of the customers do order this dish on their table. The texture of the spare ribs is very tender and it is well flavour by the seasoning and gravy which makes it a "hot" ordering item . You can also use the fried mantou to dip with the sauce or sandwich the meat from the spare ribs which is easily fall off due to the long hour of cooking time. This dish cost S$10.00 with about 6 spare ribs and 4 deep-fried mantou.

This Zhi Char stall still has a lot of interesting dishes that we would definitely go back and try out some of it soon. So if you are staying around this area or happen to pop-by, perhaps you might also want to give it a try too!

Astons @ Sembawang Shopping Centre

What pops into your mind first when we talk about cheap and nice western food with with perhaps a restaurant serving standard. Maybe you will think of Astons, Botak Jones, UNO Beef House, Char-Grill Bar or some other place which is good and cheap.

Astons which is located at level of Sembawang Shopping Center has both indoor and outdoor dinning area. It was on a raining evening that we went and the crowds of about 20 people are queuing outside waiting for seats since it's only the indoor dinning area that is available.

We are asked to place order of our food while waiting for the next available seats and the waitress seems to be very impatient when we are looking through at the menu. Most of the customer in the queue felt so odd that it seems like we are being force to decide our order within less than 5 minutes time. And yet we have to stand there waiting for at least 20 t0 30 minutes before entering the resturant.

After about 45 minutes of waiting time, we finally managed to get our seats and settle down for dinner. While in the restaurants, we saw a few hiccups from the tables around us like:- the steak is over cooked rather than medium raw, chicken chop is not proper cooked through, food and drinks have being wrongly served to the customers and etc.

Finally about 5 minutes our food arrived, but unfortunately it's also a wrong ordered which does not belong to our tables. With hungry mood, we have to wait for another 10 minutes for our correct orders to be served. But this round they served the food without any cutlery and drinks, and for them to take the cutlery it takes another 5 minutes.

At the point I was kind of annoyed with their service and furthermore our medium raw sirloin steak has became over cooked steak instead. And our drinks only being served half way through our meals after a few reminder. Although the food look decent and presentable but the taste is not as good as what they have over at their East Coast branch a few months back. Still wonder how come there is such a long queue while inside most of the customers are complaining about the wrong orders .......

Lerk Thai @ Woodland Civic Centre

There are a lot of Thai Restaurants in Singapore for those who fancy hot and spicy Thai cuisine that range from budget to high-end spending. But no matter which type you are targeting for, I am each restaurant will have some of their special dish that will capture your taste bubs. Today we will be trying this Open-concept style Thai restaurant that is located on the ground of Woodland Civic Centre which is known as Lerk Thai.

The 1st appetiser to be served is this Vietnam Spring Roll which is accompany with their special "peanut dipping sauce". These spring roll are stuffed with “rice vermicelli - 米粉”, “assorted vegetables” , “cooked prawns” and etc and it is wrapped with a layer of Rice Paper wrapper. It is a very light dish which can be served as appetizer or finger food.

Next to come is this “Yam Som O – Pomelo Salad with Shrimps & Peanut” which is a very popular appetizer amongst the Thai Kampong Folks. I was attracted to the presentation of this appetizer where the chef used the orange peel as a “serving cup” for this dish to give it an extra critic flavour. This appetizer is rather towards a bit of salty dish due to the adding of "Fish Sauce - 魚露" and I find the adding of small onion(shallot) has actually overpower the taste of this dish.

This “clear” seafood Tom Yum Soup comes with a generous amount of assorted seafood like fish, prawn and squid together with some straw mushroom. Although the soup look clear without any chilli oil or so, but it does taste hot and spicy with a light critic fragrance which makes it absolutely refreshing. You can either have it with some steam rice or you can order this soup to be served with rice noodles.

Here comes my favourite “Deep-fried Pandan Leaf Chicken” which is a popular dish in Bangkok. The Pandan leaf is used to keep the juices of the chicken in a parcel so that you will still able to taste the tender & juicy fried chicken.

"Pad Thai - Thai Style Fried Kway Teow" is one of my favourite noodle dish on the ordering dish. I love the texture of these thin rice noodles and the combination of the side ingredients such as lime wedges, peanuts and chilli powder. This is very different compare to the usual "Char Kway Teow" that we have in Singapore which is stir-fried over very high heat with light and dark soy sauce, chilli, belachan, tamarind juice, prawns/deshelled cockles, bean sprouts and chinese sausage.

After a hearty meal, it is time for some sweet refreshments. From the list of desserts that they have in the menu, we select these "Colourful Mini Dumplings" which is cooked Tapioca dumplings served in coconut milk. But we are kind of disappointed as the dumpling is hard and not chewy and it seems rather tasteless too.

As for the "Mango Pomelo Sago", the mango cream looks dull and it seems to be lack of the mango taste which compare to those that we have tried in other restaurants. Personally, we don't find the these two dessert worth to try on, perhaps their "Mango & Glutinous Rice with Coconut Milk" is much more worth it than these two.

Happy Kampong Seafood

Happy Kampong Seafood located in a coffee shop somewhere near the road junction of 81 Jalan Malu-Malu where they are a lot of terrace/semi-detached house. This coffee shop had being there for more than a decade or so and other the "Zhi Char - 煮 炒", this coffee shop also has a very popular Prawn Noodles stall which opens from morning till lunch hours.

This coffee shop is always crowded with customers as early as 5.30pm during weekends. From a glance of it, they have rather about 25 tables range from 4 to 10 seats. And sometime during festive season such as Chinese New Years, they even have wide varieties of seafood which is available for your choice.

Today's dinner we bring mum to try their signature Nonya -style Fish Head Curry which is common dish found on each patronisers table. The fish is very fresh and sweet in taste which goes well with their special nonya sauce. The fish head is pre-steam till done before they braise it with some lady finger, tomato, pineapple cubes and special sauce. It costs about S$18.00 for half a fish head.

We also try one of their egg dish which is this "Furong Dan". The inner layer consists of shredded red onion, carrot and chilli and shrimp which is being covered by a layer of egg skin. Usually you can find different fillings for this egg dish, some stall even add in "Char Siu - Roasted Pork(叉烧)", capsicum, minced meat and etc.

This "Braised Homemade Doufu With Gingko Nut" is also one of their signature dish too. The doufu which they made into rectangle-block symbolised like a "gold bar" in this dish. We love the texture of the doufu which is so silky and smooth and it goes pretty well with the sauce which is made from their special broth. The combination spinach, gingko nut and doufu makes this a healthy dish to crave for.
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UPDATED: 22 November 2011
 
Happy Kampong Seafood has shifted from Sembawang to 164 Tagore Lane, Singapore 787572, Reservation: +65 6755 1018 .