Alfresco Wine and Dine @ Kuching, Sarawak

Hey everyone! I'm back once again! After taking a long break during my final exams, I decided to take a trip back to my hometown in Sarawak, both to pay my folks a visit & also to celebrate my best friend's birthday!

I booked this place before leaving from SG, in order to ensure that we will have good seats. Going there on a weekday, it is not crowded. Furthermore, the place itself is quite easy to locate. You will be able to see it's main signboard from outside the shopping centre itself. The name of the shopping centre is Hock Lee Centre.

The place itself serves more of a pub and wine place, than a place for dinner. They also provide KTV services, but that is very common in most pubs anyway. The internal design is very much like an open-concept kitchen where you can observe a great view of the chef preparing the food while you enjoy your current dish.

Above is just a quick view of what the pub area looks like.

Moving on to the actual dishes, my friends ordered the same dish, which was the chicken chop & mushroom sauce. The portion is rather huge because it consists of 3 slices of chicken, which they can't finish. But with its price of just RM15 per plate, this dish is definitely a huge bargain for foreigners or anyone with a huge appetite. The meat itself is really tender, and juicy. They also served with the mash potato as a side on the dish, and the portion is really huge for us ladies as well.

And for myself, I decided to go with the Poached Salmon and this one, I also didn't finish. The salmon itself is truly fresh! Like it was alive before they actually kill it for cooking. When it comes to seafood, the most fresh ones are those that are prepared immediately after killing. 

On a whole, we ladies definitely enjoyed a great time chilling out there for almost 3 hours. We arrived around 7.30pm and left around 10.30pm. Guessed the crowd wasn't huge because it's still early for most people looking for a drink past midnight. Generally, the place is definitely worth visiting again!

In all, 5 of us only spent a total of RM131 including drinks. There's no GST or service charge like in Singapore!

Dim Sum Buffet @ Bugis Junction

So, after months of craving for Dim Sum, plus I'm about to fly off for a week to visit my family in my hometown, my hubby & I decided that its time to go for our favourite food of ALL TIME!!! Wait for it.....DIM SUM!!!

The place at Bugis is called Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant. It's really quite easy to find. Its on the 2nd level in bugis junction itself, where all the restaurants are located. The seats are quite limit, so if you are not going there with a voucher (like we did), its going to be quite hard to find a seat/table. I recommend making reservation at least 1 day prior.

First impression, the service was rather bad! We were there for 10 minutes, waiting for our seats, and the front desk lady, a.k.a also the waitress, didn't even bother to help us find a place to sit. Instead, we had to wait till about 90% of the restaurant was emptied before we could go in. It was really odd, perhaps because of the limited space.

So, we decided to look at the menu, and wanted to order something different. That's the point of food exploration isn't it! It's to trying something that you cannot find some place else. And the Pork Ribs with Apple Juice was absolutely mouth watering! From the picture above, you notice the small cubes of apples, and it tasted absolutely marvelous!

Some of the more standard dim sum includes the pork ribs in preserved bean, which is also one of our favourites, but not the most! We'll leave the best for last. Moving on....

The Steam Siew Mai definitely tasted different from others we ate from many places we have been to! Seriously, I'm not sure what they have put into it. On the outside, it looks the same, but when you put it into your mouth, the flavours just explode!

And on our second round of orders, we decided to order this glutinous ball with wild mushroom. We have seriously never seen anything like this before. My hubby even made a funny comment that the entire thing looked like an alien egg! Lolx!!!

On the very first bite, we can't really figure out what we were eating, as it tasted rather strange. BUT....from the 2nd bite onwards, it tasted like heaven on earth! It's definitely a must try!

You must be thinking, why the hell would we order this Pan-Fried dumpling, which we can easily find at any hawker centre for $8/plate, with 20 pcs! And this is only 5!!!

But, before you jump to any conclusions, we will tell you this. The inside is not made of vege & minced pork! Rather, it was chicken! And we were totally surprised by the new take on the food!

Finally, on to our favourite dish! My favourite dish!!! I decided to order the chicken feet!!!!! I never eat dim sum without ordering one of this!! And my oh my, this chicken feet looks huge! Bigger than many other normal restaurants! And juicier as well! I had like 2-3, and my hubby had the rest!

We also decided to try the Smoked Duck, which has been marinated so that it will taste a little salty. And the slices was generous! The chef made each slice so thick, when you chew on it, you can actually feel the meat slipping in your mouth.

We ordered this Egg white with Crab Meat, but somehow it tasted quite salty, so we didn't really like it that much. Let's move on.

Looking at the signature shanghai style dumplings, they were mouth watering! My hubby was so hungry, when he took his first bite, the soup from within the dumpling splurt out! To really enjoy this delicacy, you really have to eat it with the vinegar! IT is totally amazing!!!!

For desserts, my hubby decided to order something familiar to his taste buds, and that was the longan with almond jelly!

And since I was feeling quite heaty lately, with ulcer in my mouth, I decided to try something that is cooling, which is the doubled boiled white fungus! It wasn't too sweet, and tasted just nice.

In conclusion, my hubby & I aren't designed for buffets. Therefore we didn't order too many things on the menu, but generally, I think this one was considered mission accomplished!

Using the voucher, we managed to save up to roughly $30+, and only end up paying $11.75 for the service charge and GST. If you are dining there without the voucher, you will probably need to spend about $50+ for 2 person, and depends on how much food you order. Try not order too much, as wastage of food is subjected to charges.

Nana's Green Tea @ PS!

Hmm, initially, my hubby & I wanted to try out the new japanese restaurant that served collagen. But shockingly, when we were there, the waiting list was so looooonnngg, the waitress told us we have to WAIT 2 Hours! With not much options available, since its Friday evening, and most places are packed with crowd, we decided to go to Nana's Green Tea instead. It's not our first time dining at this place.

The very first time we tried something at this place was back when it first opened in JCube @ Jurong East. Back then, it was just a small cafe, serving crepes, and desserts. And I absolutely fell in love with the crepes. They were opened for only a really brief period before they shifted to Plaza Singapura. And now, they have transformed their business into a casual dining environment with a change in their food menu as well. At the current moment, they are no longer serving the crepes, but when we last checked with them, they said that the crepes menu is still in their "storeroom" somewhere, and they might bring it back, but not too sure when. My guess is this, if they bring back those crepes, I think no one is going to order the main courses that much anymore! Hahaha! But that's just how I feel.

 

The new setting was really nice! Especially the design of the tables. You can notice the design on the right side of the photo where the lady is seated in the background.

Today, we decided to order something a little different, including the dessert and the side orders. And I must tell you, the side order tasted better than it looks in the photo!

This Prawn & Broccoli Salad was absolutely MOUTH-WATERING!!! I initially thought of going for something else, but my hubby suggested that we go for the salad instead, less fried food since we have been feasting quite a lot lately. And the mayo was not too over-kill, and it tasted just nice.

My hubby was hungry, like REALLY HUNGRY, so he went ahead to order the Chicken Cutlet Curry Don. It was quite main stream, but still tasted nice. The meat was chunky, thick, and generous.

 

OMG! Isn't that delicious or what!

Moving on, I ordered the Salmon & Maguro Don, which is salmon, my favourite, Tuna, and the Nori sauce. Quite frankly, I'm not sure what they put into the sauce, but it tasted amazing! I fed my hubby with all the preserved ginger (because ginger contained a chemical that helps to relieve muscle aches, and he sure looked like he needed lots of it!)

And on to the dessert portion!!! Well, its probably considered a drink, but with the matcha ice cream included, its hard to differentiate anymore! So, my hubby decided today that he wanted to go for something more sinful, but not so sinful! Haha!! WTH.

That's the matcha shiratama float, which contains matcha latte, topped with matcha ice cream and mochi! And when we finished our main course, and I started my matcha float, he already finished his drink/dessert! Haha!!!

Personally, if u ask me, I will say that the drinks are truly the main attraction at Nana's Green Tea! Green Tea contains many awesome benefits, and weight loss is one of them. Besides, Matcha green tea is one of my favourite tea!

Hopefully, they will come out with the crepes again soon! I am dying to go for the broccoli and prawn crepe! And...maybe other choices of ingredients in those crepe as well!

That's all from me! I'm signing off here.