STRAITS KITCHEN BUFFET.

My Mum decided to celebrate the first official day of Christmas celebrations with a trip to the Grand Hyatt Hotel for an Asian food buffet. It also happened to be my first day of leave, so I was pumped for it. HAHA. From all my previous posts you probably assume that food is the only thing that excites me like this, but I assure you it's not.

I have nothing much to say except that the food was pretty amazing, especially in comparison to the last buffet I had a couple of months ago at Swisshotel Merchant Court. That was honestly quite terrible and a complete waste of your money, unless you like cold shellfish. The buffet spread at Straits Kitchen was pretty big, and featured many local dishes from all the different cultures that we have. There was even a satay station, which of course was very popular and had a pretty long queue most of the time I was there. The Malay food was the best I think, with all the different kinds of meat, prepared specially in different sauces. *Salivates*.

The Chinese food station had everything from Chicken Rice to different types of noodles, and some stir-fried stuff too. The Indian station also boasted a large variety of different dishes, which were mostly South Indian. Oh, there was also a popiah and rojak station.

The dessert station was the least impressive, although they did have a lot of kueh that was apparently really good. I didn't try them, but I had some coconut ice cream, which was ok I guess. I don't like Asian-flavoured ice cream as much. Overall a fantastic place for all-you-can-eat local food, perfect for tourists especially who prefer a nicer ambience and are willing to pay a little more for it.

EXPLORING UPPER THOMSON

I'm back after what seems like a really long hiatus! Haha, haven't been going out much with friends or family in the previous weeks. I was just really tired for some reason and really wanted to just stay at home and chillax for a bit. Plus my Mum was overseas most of the time, which meant that I couldn't rely as much on my "let-my-Mum-pay-for-it budget", as my friend from work calls it. Heh.

So after about a month I went around upper thomson again with some friends, just not for cafes this time. We wanted somewhat cheap supper food, so we first headed to the dim sum place that me and Dan Ling had been wanting to try for the longest time, but never got around to. It's called the Hwa Nam Restaurant, located along the side where Udders and Salted Caramel is, but is closer to Mookata and Meng's Kitchen - all also very popular eateries. The dim sum was pretty decent both in terms of taste and price, we paid a total of $16 for everything you see in the pictures below, which came up to about 4 bucks per person. Not bad, I'd say.

We then hit Meng's Kitchen, where a couple of my friends had more to eat. I didn't have anything cos I was saving stomach space for dessert. I can't remember the prices exactly, but I don't remember the food there being as cheap as I thought it would have been. 

We ended our little supper adventure at Beegurt. It wasn't the first time I'd been there, but I went back cos I really love their frozen yoghurt. If you look at Beegurt and Llao Llao, Beegurt definitely has better tasting yoghurt, but Llao Llao has way more toppings to choose from. So it really depends on what you personally prefer I guess. Beegurt isn't as popular as I think it's gonna eventually become so, if I were you, I'd head down ASAP. 

Think I'm almost done with my Upper Thomson food-tasting adventures, but I still have a few places to hit! Check in with y'all later. 

XMAS DECORATING.

I just love this time of year. When we finally get together as a family to put up the Christmas tree to the calm tunes of holiday music. I love that we go all out to make the entire first floor of the house look so utterly majestic for Christmas, when we don't even really celebrate it in the traditional way. It just puts all us in a good mood to come home to the sight of the yellow lighting and colourful tree.

This year's tree was no different - we always go for a really messy kind of look, where we just load the tree with almost every single decoration in our collection. I don't think we ever tried colour-coding it, but it always turns out looking absolutely incredible. People all love it, and it's become our signature Christmas look that I'm kinda hoping we never change.

We usually put everything up in stages, with the tree and the lights before we finish up with the other colourful decorations. This year we found time to finish everything in a single day. I love how we just forget about all our troubles and shit that's going on in our lives as we get together to put the tree up. Just saying. I can't wait for December to arrive, and I can't wait till Christmas Day itself. I hope we have a genuinely joyous one.

STICKY SESAME CHICKEN.

Made a last-minute decision to make lunch for the family yesterday. Fearing that I wouldn't have many ingredients available to make something too fancy, I hopped on Pinterest to scout for something yummy yet really easy to make, and I found this. I was so excited cos it was my first time actually using a recipe from pinterest. It turned out pretty well, as you can see: (All due credit to the creator of the recipe)

One thing I wanna point out is that the sauce tasted EXTREMELY sweet before I put it in the chicken and cooked it, but it turned out fine. I did reduce the amount of sugar that I put in though, which you may want to consider if you want something a little less sweet. My family loved it so it sure looks like I'll be making it again soon!

Check out the recipe @

http://lecremedelacrumb.com/2014/01/sticky-sesame-chicken-30-minutes.html

PACAMARA BOUTIQUE COFFEE ROASTERS.

I popped on over to Pacamara this morning to get some breakfast with my mum and sis. I'd been wanting to try it for a while since it first opened a couple of weeks ago, in my very own neighbourhood. I love that Upper Thomson's now becoming like the next Holland V, and a hub for all the things that I like - coffee, ice cream and good food. 

Pacamara's different in a sense that the entire place is painted white, and they have huge glass panels instead of walls that surround the vicinity. It definitely made me feel like I had more space to myself, and the positioning of the tables and stuff makes sure that you don't ever feel cramped when in the cafe. The glass panels also provides aspiring photographers like me a lot of natural light which I really liked. I think the pictures turned out pretty great because of it.

The food is generally on the more expensive side of cafe prices, with the coffee already costing 5 to 6 dollars. The mains obviously cost more (I would say you'd pay an average of about $15). It was all pretty worth it though. I originally planned on getting my Mum to pay but because I had to order first while she tried to find parking I ended up paying. *Sighs*. I'M SO BROKE.

While my sister just got an iced chocolate, I got a mocha for myself along with some red velvet pancakes with mascarpone and berries. As you can see for yourself, the pancakes looked like perfection. The colours on the plate were really nice, and the pancakes were perfectly round and fluffy. AND LOOK AT THAT MASCARPONE. The pancakes tasted good as well, except that they didn't have that distinct flavour of red velvet that I was really looking forward to. They just tasted like the ordinary pancakes that you'd usually have. The mascarpone and berries really complemented each other though, and that's what makes the dish worth all the calories. Gotta head back to the gym next week.

Mum had a 5oz latte and a granola with yoghurt and mixed fruit, which I didn't try. It looked really neat though. I currently have a kind of obsession with clear jars like the one holding the yoghurt and granola. I can't explain it.

Well, that's one more cafe I've added to my list of favourites. Right now my top two are One Man and this. Go give it a try!