Deal Review 2: Asian Buffet Lunch at Quality Cafe (Quality Hotel)

Deal Details:
From $12.06 Onwards for Local Cuisine Buffet at Quality Hotel – Enjoy Asian Buffet or Famous Taiwan Porridge Buffet (Valid Daily)


My family wanted to have a buffet lunch on Sunday and so we decided to give the deal above a try. We bought the following deal: "Weekend Asian Buffet Lunch (Fri – Sun) – Only $20.53 instead of $25.66".

My family and I have tried several pricey Asian-themed buffets but the food were disappointing as a whole. Come on, the food sold at the hawker centre near my house tasted much better! So honestly, I wasn't expecting much out of the Quality Café Asian buffet lunch. Haha I forgot to bring my hp along and so the few pictures were taken from Deal.com.sg.

We reached at 12noon and the restaurant was quite empty. The restaurant slowly filled up and it was full house by 1pm! We noted where our table was and proceeded to check out the food. I was pleasantly surprised that the food spread was almost similar to that written on the deal website.

For the Live Station, they have the Popiah and Singapore Laksa.



Popiah. Photo Credits: http://www.deal.com.sg/

Singapore Laksa. Photo Credits: http://www.deal.com.sg/

For the cooked food selection, they have:

• Radish and Carrot Soup
• Chicken Porridge             
• Steamed Prawn
• Tempura Soft Shell Crab
• Steamed Seabass      
• Stir fried Venison with black pepper sauce
• Stir fried Chicken with dried chillies
• Stir fried Broccoli with fish maw
• Stir fried Long Beans with Brinjal (Spicy)
• Prawn Paste Deep Fried Chicken
• Roasted Duck
• Sambal Sotong
• Fried Bee Hoon
• Steamed Chicken/Chicken feet (Served with chicken rice)
• Siew Mai
• Fried Item



Stir fried Venison with black pepper sauce. Photo Credits: http://www.deal.com.sg/

 

Prawn Paste Deep Fried Chicken. Photo Credits: http://www.deal.com.sg/

Roasted Duck. Photo Credits: http://www.deal.com.sg/



 

Lastly for desserts, they have: 

• Fresh Fruits (Pineapple, Watermelon & Orange)
• Assorted Nyonya Kueh
• Ice Kacang / Chendol
• Mango Pudding
• Mini Cake (Cheesecake)
• Goreng Pisang
• Donut with icing sugar
• Ice-cream

 

I started my meal with the Popiah and Singapore laksa. For the Popiah, I ordered one roll without the sweet sauce. Was it a weird order?? The chef stared at me for several seconds before confirming and preparing my order -.- The filling of the popiah consisted of minced garlic, stir-fried turnip, lettuce, coriander leaves, beansprouts, egg and peanut. I took a bite of the popiah and all I could taste was the spicy minced garlic! >.< It overpowered the taste of the other fillings. Even for my parents who eat raw garlic, the taste of the minced garlic in the popiah was still too over. 

 

For the Singapore laksa, the condiments include beansprouts, tau pok, fish cake, quail eggs (!!!) and sambal chilli. I personally love quail eggs a lot and so I was very happy to have it in my bowl of laksa ^^ The laksa broth was quite thick and fragrant. Also as the laksa broth was rich in coconut milk, it was slightly sweet and not spicy. Suitable for children consumption! I added sambal chilli for a spicy kick and my laksa tasted even better! Haha yummy!  

 

From the cooked food selection, I enjoyed the fried bee hoon, steamed chicken with chicken rice and roast duck the most. The white bee hoon was fried slightly wet, just the way I liked it. The chicken rice had a faint fragrance and tasted much lighter than the usual chicken rice. People may complain that the chicken rice is not fragrant and tasty but I liked it that way. It's probably healthier too as less chicken stock and oil were used. Both the steamed chicken and roast duck were tender and delicious. 

 

Desserts! I am someone who can't stand cheese but I gamely tried a piece of their cheesecake. The cheesecake piqued my interest as it had a thick biscuit crust layer. I'm a fan of biscuit crust in cakes! The ratio of the cheesecake layer to the biscuit crust layer was like 50:50? Haha I was glad I tried the cheesecake as it tasted quite good to me. There wasn't much cheese flavour (hmm is that good or bad??) and the biscuit crust was nice.

 

On the whole, the food and dining experience fared much better than I expected. The staff were very attentive and efficient to clear the used plates from the table. For the price I'm paying, I would say the Asian buffet lunch was worth it. ^^  

 

 

 

Quality Café

201 Balestier Road

Singapore 329926

Quality Hotel Marlow

Tel: 6233 6363

 

 

 

Smiles,

Mari

Good Eats at Nex

Is it because it's been 2 years since I have stepped into Nex? Why do I not remember the mall being so big? o.O

Last week, my family and I decided to make a rare visit to Nex. As it was a Sunday, the huge crowd in the mall was just as expected. We started window shopping and a sale at Hang Ten caught my mom's eye. They were selling skinny fit jeans at $19 per piece! The jeans are made out of my favourite stretchable and comfortable material. I dislike jeans that are stiff and heavy. Definitely not to be missed, I grabbed 2 pairs of jeans for myself ^^

Haha knowing that there is a Shokutsu 10 Japanese Food Street in Nex, I dragged my family along to take a look. The theme of the food street is "Yokoso! Japan", which translates to "Welcome to Japan!". The ambience of the Japanese Food Street is such a contrast to the bustling and noisy mall. With the dim lightings and beautiful contemporary Japanese interior décor, it really made one feel so relaxed and welcomed.

It was just too bad that my family had lunch already. The food photos on the restaurant menus looked so appetizing! My ramen, donburi and gyoza ):

Feeling sad, I made my way out of the food street. I walked past this...

 

BUT this made me stopped in my tracks. DORAYAKI and so many flavours to choose from!!!

  

 

The flavours are divided into 3 categories; Ice-cream, sweet and savoury. The dorayaki are priced at $1.20 to $1.80. Affordable right!! Eager to try both the sweet and savoury flavours, I ordered the Original Azuki ($1.20) and Potato Salad ($1.60).

 

You can also order the Dorayaki Set ($$3.90) as shown below. It comes with a cup of house brew coffee. Haha the cute Doraemon figurings!  

 

The dorayaki must be good since it was also featured in the newspaper!

 

Yays the lady staff started to prepare my order. The dorayaki are prepared upon order so that customers get to eat freshly made dorayakis. You can also watch while it's being made ^^

 

The pancake mixture was first added to the preheated surface grill. 

 

While the grill cooked one side of the pancake, the staff used a blowtorch to cook the other side. Cool right! Haha the blowtorch got to be their secret weapon. You can see the pancake mixture bubbling and rising up to perfection.  

 

The staff then proceeded to flip two pieces of pancakes.

 

Time to put the fillings! A generous scoop of potato salad and azuki bean paste.

 

Tadaa..freshly made Dorayakis!!

 

My brother took a huge bite of the potato salad flavoured dorayaki before I could take a photo. -.- But here's a photo of the azuki flavoured one.

 

I have tried dorayaki from Four Leaves and other bakeries but they were not enjoyable at all. The pancakes were too dry and the red bean paste was too sweet. It made me wonder why Doraemon love dorayaki so much. But now I know why!

 

The freshly made dorayaki got to be the nicest dorayaki I've ever had in Singapore. The nice warm aroma just whets your appetite up. The pancakes of the dorayaki were so soft and moist! I liked it that you could still see bits of the azuki bean in the azuki bean paste. It improves the texture of the azuki bean paste. A bite of the warm pancakes and cold azuki bean paste..YUM!

 

Ohh not to forget, the potato salad flavoured dorayaki was not bad too. My brother really enjoyed it. So if you are not a fan of sweet flavours, do try one of the savoury ones!   

While I'm interested in the Japanese Food Street, my brother was more interested in this. Hot-Star Large Fried Chicken.

 

Looking at the signboard that states "台湾士林夜市第一品牌", the fried chicken got to be good!

 

Besides the large fried chicken ($4.50 - $4.70), they also sell flavoured fries ($2.50 - $2.80), crispy fried mushrooms ($3.20), sour plum sweet potatoes ($2.80), tempura ($3.50), crispy chicken wings ($2.90 for 2), sotong balls ($2.50 for 4), popcorn chicken ($3.90) and drinks.

 

 

Together with their "Fried-to-Order" concept where the chicken will only be fried upon customer's orders, Hot-Star also insists on "No-cutting service" for large fried chicken. The large fried chicken has to be eaten whole to fully enjoy the flavours of the fried chicken. Haha reminds me of KFC! Just got to eat the chicken with bare hands ^^

 

As it was our first time trying the fried chicken, my brother and I ordered the Original Large Fried Chicken.

 

My brother and I waited for about 3-5 minutes and we got our order. How could it be so fast? Haha that's because we were given a wrong order! We blindly took it and walked off. By the time we realised it, it was too late to head back and change it -.-

 

In the end, we got the Seaweed Large Fried Chicken. I did not manage to take a photo that could do the large fried chicken justice so I'm not uploading any. BUT I can vouch that the large fried chicken is really yummy and huge. It's about twice the size of the fried chicken sold elsewhere!

 

The large fried chicken was really crispy on the outside and moist and tender on the inside! As the fried chicken was only thinly coated with batter, it was not too oily! Personally, I do not like seasonings on my fried chicken as the seasonings are sometimes too salty and overpowering. However at Hot-Star, the staff smartly sprinkled seaweed seasoning only on one side of the chicken. Good right!

 

Both the Dorayaki and Large Fried Chicken at Nex are really worth trying! Thumbs-up!

 

 

 

 

Warmly,

Mari

Ssikkek BBQ at Novena

On Saturday late afternoon, Will had a craving for Korean BBQ and the first Korean BBQ restaurant that came to mind was Ssikkek at Novena! ^^ 

 

For those who are unaware, Ssikkek has moved from Novena Ville to United Square.

 

 

Upon entering, I was amazed at the size of the restaurant. The current restaurant area is approximately two to three times larger than before! Despite that, the trademark long queue and large crowd in Ssikkek stayed the same (:

 

As Will and I did not make any prior reservation, we were told to sit at the chairs and wait. Seeing that there were empty chairs near the entrance, we grabbed our seats. NOTE!! Please do not make the same mistake as us. A minor confusion occurred and I learnt that customers were supposed to be seated in an orderly manner. If you are the first group of people in the waiting queue, please kindly take the seats nearest to the entrance. Subsequent groups of people are to queue and take the seats behind. As the staff will arrange tables according to the queue, do not sit randomly!!

 

After the minor confusion, we were finally told that a table was ready for us. To our surprise, we were led to a table for 6 in a small room for just the 2 of us. The staff (probably manager) kindly explained that he did not want us (customers) to wait too long and thus he gave us a reserved table. However, the condition was to finish our meal before 8pm. As it was only 6.30pm then, Will and I agreed.

 

The posters that decorate the wall of the small room...

 

 

 

 

My view from the room. Look at the crowd in the restaurant! This was only part of it -.-

 

Ignore the crowd, it's time to grab FOOD!! First up, they have salads, fruits and sauces on this round umbrella table that is so cute ^^ The round table design allows more people to have access to the food items at the same time.  

 

Next up is the wide spread of soups and cooked food! There were 4 different soups available that evening; Kimchi soup, chicken ginseng soup, seafood soup and seaweed soup.  

 

As for the cooked food, there were japchae mandu, fried chicken wings, fried noodles & beehoon, ddeokbukki, dakgalbi and japchae.

 

Food items for the BBQ include brinjal, radish, potato, enoki mushrooms, prawns, sotong, sausage, kimchi, fresh lettuce and more! 

 

 

And our star of the day, MEAT!! They have the spicy chicken, garlic chicken, spicy pork, rib eye, short ribs, pork belly, pork collar, beef roll, chunk tender and bacon. ^^

 

Not only does the restaurant offer a wide variety of cooked food and meat, they offer several choices of drinks too! With mango smoothie, lychee smoothie, lime juice, pomegranate juice and sikhye to choose from, I happily went with sikhye.

 

Finally time to dig in and enjoy our meal!

 

My favourite among the cooked food got to be the japchae mandu!! Although I had the mandu when it was cold, it was still good. The japchae and seaweed soup were great too. I love the sauce of the ddeokbukki as it was seasoned to be slightly spicy and not too sweet. Sadly, the ddeokbukki was not well cooked. It was still hard and not chewy.

 

As for the BBQ, I enjoyed the enoki mushrooms, sausage, garlic chicken, chunk tender and beef roll! The meat were really tender and well-marinated. Haha you can also prepare your own bacon-wrapped enoki or beef roll-wrapped enoki! Yummy!

 

On the whole, the BBQ buffet was decent! Being a meat lover, Will really ate his fill that day. ^^  

 

 

 

Ssikkek Korean Grill BBQ Buffet

101 Thomson Road #B1-15/16/17&34

United Square

Singapore 307591

Tel: 6254 8123

 

Mon to Fri: 11.30am - 2.30pm & 5pm - 11pm

Weekend, Public Holiday: 11.30am - 11pm

 

Lunch (Mon to Fri only): Adult $14++ / Child $9++

Dinner (Fri, Sat, Sun, PH eves & PH): Adult $24++ / Child $18++

 

 

 

 

Bye for now,

Mari

Deal Review 1: Brazilian Churrasco Buffet at Wavve Grill & Chill

Deal details:

Only $19.80 for All-You-Can-Eat Brazilian Churrasco Buffet at Wavve Grill & Chill, Toa Payoh Central - Includes Beef Rump, Assorted Sausage, Chicken with Bacon, Pork Belly, Pasta, Salad Bars & More (Min 2 Pax)

 

Last Saturday evening, Will and I met up to redeem the deal (above) that we bought on deal.com.sg. Both of us reached Toa Payoh early and so we decided to walk around the area to pass time. Guess what! The neighbourhood Bata store had SALE with discounts up to 70% off retail price! Haha I was totally drawn towards it and I managed to grab a pair of ankle heel boots at $15!! Just love shopping ^^ 

Shopping just makes time passes so fast! After I made my purchase, it was time to make our way to Wavve.

 

 

When we reached, we were 15 minutes ahead of the buffet time. It was nice that the staff allowed early-comers to settle down in the restaurant and not wait outside. We were given a table for 2 and I must say, the chair was very comfortable!

 

The design concept of Wavve is "Abstract Aquatic" and hence water features can be observed throughout the restaurant’s interior and décor.   

 

The bar with blue neon lights to match the design concept...

 

 

After a few minutes wait, the food was finally ready! Ok first up, they have soups, assorted sushi, potato & pasta salad, and a mini salad corner to prepare your own customized salad. The salad condiments include cherry tomatoes, olives, shredded carrots, shredded cucumber, corn, chickpeas etc. Haha can't remember the rest.  

 

As for the cooked food, they have aglio oglio, fried rice, baked fish, seasonal vegetables, pizza and sautéed potato with thyme. For desserts, they have chocolate cake, fruits and mango pudding.

 

 

Besides the food spread above, the staff also served a plate of appetizer to each table. The appetizer of toasted garlic bread and fritters with tomato salsa sauce tasted good to me.

 

My plate of food...

 

 

The assorted sushi was basically sushi with the same ingredients (cucumber and crabstick) but wrapped and presented in a different way. The sushi tasted as average as it looks. The potato and pasta salad was not bad and I had a few servings of it.

 

I am a fan of aglio oglio and thus the generous portion of it on my plate. Huge regret. The aglio oglio was very dry and bland. While I am not a fan of rice, my spoonful of fried rice tasted much better. -.- Will found the baked fish ok but it was a little salty for me. The sautéed potato was good but it was not well-stirred. Some of the potato chunks tasted alright but some were really salty! Fruits and mango pudding were the best out of the food spread. The fruits were fresh and sweet. Although the mango pudding could be less sweet, I liked it.    

As Will and I were munching through our first round of food, the Churrasco appeared. In Brazil, Churrasco is the term for a barbecue where a variety of meats, pork, sausage and chicken are cooked on skewers. As written on the deal voucher, beef rump, assorted sausage, chicken with bacon, pork belly etc will be served on rotational basis.

The serving style turned out to be really poor and inefficient as there was only 1 staff serving the food. Moreover, the staff would only serve a single skewer of food from the kitchen each time. A single skewer of food could only serve up to 4 tables max. For the rest of the tables, I'm sorry but you have missed your chance and you will have to wait a long time for it again. Remember, Rotational Basis.

Although it was not stated on the deal voucher that there was a dining time limit, food was no longer served to us after 8pm?!?! -.-

Will and I sat around till 8.30pm and these were all the food served; Normal hotdog (where's the assorted sausage??), chicken with bacon, corn, chicken wings, chicken drumlets (the inside was not cooked), chicken heart, pork belly (I couldn't bring myself to eat it as it was too oily), prawns (not fresh) and beef rump. I did not take any photos as the small quantity of food served each time looked too miserable on the large white plate.

On the whole, the food offered was mediocre and definitely not worth recommending. But for a place to chill out and have some drinks, the cosy ambience and comfortable seats of Wavve fits the bill.


Wavve Grill & Chill
430 Lorong 6 Toa Payoh #01-01
Orange Tee Building
Singapore 319402
Tel: 6255 5771



Smiles,
Mari

MADO at JEM

Last Friday, Will and I decided to meet up in JEM and settle our dinner there ^^ Although I had initially intended to try out one of the restaurants located in basement level, the dinner queues were just too long :(  JEM seemed to have regained the usual crowd since the 'incident' that happened about 2 months ago.

 

So Will and I took the escalator back up to the ground floor in search for other restaurants, and this caught my eye. Dinner Specials!

 

 

And the daily dinner specials were offered by...MADO! 

 

 

Will and I have actually tried their dessert promotion a few weeks back and the dessert (Pistachio Special) was good! Since there wasn't any queue, we decided to patronize the restaurant once again for their dinner specials.

 

Ok before dinner is served, I shall give a brief introduction to MADO.    

 

MADO is actually a well-known Turkish ice-cream brand and has hundreds of café and restaurant outlets all over the world. In 2013, MADO has officially opened up their first outlet here in Singapore, at JEM.

 

When you buy ice cream from MADO, you know that you are in for an extraordinary treat – the finest ice cream perfectly crafted through completely natural processes. MADO Cafe serves the World’s Best Ice Cream, imported from Turkey. Our ice cream is unique in flavor and its variety, bringing in to Singapore the only ice cream eaten with fork and knife.

MADO Cafe offers more than the finest ice cream imported from Turkey. We love how freshly-roasted coffee complements with our ice cream for a perfect tea-time treat and we want to bring that experience to you. We serve main courses as well, with a hint of the balmy Turkish flavor in our international cuisines. [Credits: www.mado.com.sg]


Alrights, dinner is being served!! As seen from the menu in the first photo, we were given 3 set menus to choose from and they all come with a Soup-of-the-day. Our soup-of-the-day was Pumpkin Soup.


 

 

The pumpkin soup tasted ok but sadly, there wasn't much of the pumpkin flavour in it.

 

Will ordered the Wagyu Beef Steak w/ Potato Gratin & Fetta Cheese Salsa. ($24.90 nett) 

 

 

Haha a funny episode happened. Will ordered medium rare for his beef steak, but it came rare! As he was lazy to request the kitchen to have the steak cooked a little longer, he made do with it. Throughout his meal, he kept commenting on how he felt that there was a live cow in his mouth. Eww but amusing! hahaha

 

I ordered the Cheese baked Lobster & 1/4 Spring Chicken w/ Potato Gratin & Salad. ($21.90 nett)

 

I could smell the butter and cheese from my seat as the kitchen prepared my order. Despite the fragrant smell, the food didn't taste as great. The salad and potato gratin were ok, but the cheese baked lobster and spring chicken were a disappointment. It was really tough to get the lobster meat out as it was stubbornly stuck to the shell. The spring chicken had a nice spices and herb flavour to it but was unfortunately too dry. I had to take a sip of water every time I swallowed a bite of the chicken. It was that dry.  

We were both very full from our not-so-great dinner but there was always room for desserts ^^ 

 

We flipped through the dessert menu but realised that many of the things listed were marked 'not available'. We wanted something small for dessert and thus we decided to just grab a scoop of their World's Best Ice Cream.

 

As I walked out of the café to get my ice cream, I saw this familiar advert once again. Haha Will and I saw this advert weeks ago and tried their Pistachio Special. It came with 3 pieces of Pistachio Baklava and a slice of their specialty cut ice-cream that was to be eaten with a knife and fork. It was really yummy!!

 

 

Besides ice-cream, MADO also offers cakes and traditional desserts such as the Baklava and Dolama.

 

A wide variety of flavours for the ice-cream!! Haha the staff had quite a hard time scooping the ice-cream.

 

 

Tadaa...my single scoop of 'Sade' (Original). ($4.90)

 

Trust me, the MADO ice cream is really good and special unlike any other ice-cream. The MADO ice-cream has a dense consistency and its 'chewy'. You can really stretch the ice-cream like muah chee!!

I really love the texture and flavour of the ice-cream! <3 Also, no worries about having to finish up the ice-cream within minutes. The ice cream does not melt easily!

All in all, I will definitely visit MADO again just for their ice-cream!! ^^


MADO
50 Jurong Gateway Road #1-04,
Jurong East 608549
JEM
Daily: 10am - 10pm



Enjoy,
Mari

Deal or No Deal

Yay it's FRIDAY! And for those who have to work tomorrow (like me), it's a HOLIDAY!!!

Photo Credits: www.pupsmile.com

 

Haha ok I don't really party but I do hang out with friends to wind down and relax on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons after work. Guess what's our favourite activity??

Hint ~

"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." -- Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, from Pavarotti, My Own Story

LOL yes, it's EATING!! Doesn't it feels great to grab a table at a restaurant with friends, order your favourite mains and desserts (ignore the calories), pig-out together and listen to the latest hot gossips? Haha I sure love it ^^

As I'm someone who loves to explore and try new stuff, I'm always on the look out for new and affordable dinner places. Honestly, I'm kind of a budget person who does not like to splurge too much on meals. I believe it's possible to have good food at an affordable price! You will just need to know where. For me, $50 is the max I'm willing to fork out for a meal. Unless it's a special occasion of course.

It isn't really tough to find restaurants that offer affordable lunch and dinner menus. A large number of restaurants in malls usually have special set-menus for budget customers like me. And in recent months, I have developed an interest in Dining deals on Deal.com.sg and Groupon!

Although the dining deals seem really cost-saving and worth it, I do have my fair share of not-so-good experiences; The food variety was not as stated on the deal voucher, food served (from a supposing good restaurant) was substandard to probably save cost, bad staff attitude... ...

SO to do consumers a favour, I have decided to post up reviews on the dining deals (and maybe Wellness deals) that I've bought through Deal.com.sg and Groupon!! I will also be posting reviews on the dinner places that I've visited ^^

Stay around ok?



Will be back,
Mari