Porn's Thai food at Star Vista

Pornsak has opened another Porn's (wah big business wor!) at the new Star Vista, so we decided to check it out during lunch. Luckily we were there early because the whole place was packed by 12:30pm! Seems like Star Vista is attracting lots of lunch-goers from the surrounding offices!



Like seriously, how can you go to a Thai restaurant without ordering green curry or green papaya salad right? Porn's green curry is really nice - fragrant and rich. I think I can come here alone and order just this curry and a bowl of rice!

I'm someone that don't really like sour food and I've had some bad experience with very sour (at least to me lah!) Thai papaya salad. Luckily, the green papaya salad here is not that sour! I like the nice touch of that crispy bean curd skin (I guess!) which adds some texture to the salad. I think the salad will taste even better if they add some pomelo as well. After all, this salad is not cheap wor!



The minced chicken with basil leaves is overwhelming with basil leaves fragrance, so yes, another dish that needs another bowl of rice! But it does get kinda boring after chewing on the minced meat for some time. Maybe some vegetables added will be nice.



We ordered a small portion of the Tomyam soup which we heard is the authentic Thai kind, the kind that looks innocently clear but actually super spicy! And boy was this soup spicy! What we like is that it is not oily at all, but what we didn't like is that there are too little seafood in the soup. Could be a little bit more generous lah!

Overall, the food at Porn's is good, but for the three of us, it turned out to be about $16 per pax. So I don't think I can afford to lunch there everyday lah!

Old school dim sum at Red Star, Chin Swee Road

I really like dim sum. I'm a Cantonese so I guess it's in my blood. And sometimes I just want to break away from all those ATAS dim sum at Wah Lok or Min Jiang and simply go for something old school. Like Red Star.



I know porridge is one big bowl of carbo that will fill up half my stomach immediately and leave no space for the others, but I have to eat porridge when eating dim sum, and it has to be century egg porridge (皮蛋瘦肉粥). There is not much meat and egg in this porridge, but the taste and texture is good. Tasty and silky.

The popiah (春卷) is not bad too, with lots of ingredient in it, even shitake mushrooms.



These two dishes are supposed to be the new Chef's Recommendations. The durian pancake is nice in the way that they are quite generous with the fragrant durian paste. But feel kinda weird to eat this as part of dim sum.

The chicken is good though. It has a really high class name too - Golden Dragon Chicken (金龙鸡) - sounds like the chicken pieces will jump up and kick White-chan any time. It is actually sotong paste and chicken wrapped under those crispy chicken skin. White-chan said this is really a must-try!



After that we had some classics like shrimp dumplings (虾饺) and chicken feet (凤爪). The shrimp dumpling was not really that good, not really the standard that I've expected. The skin was not Q enough and too bland. The chicken feet was really tasty though.



We had planned to have egg tarts to end our dim sum but when the aunty pushed a cart pass our table with egg custard bun (流沙包), we changed our mind. Their egg custard bun is quite nice, with rich, sweet and salty custard flowing out of the bun as you bite into them!

There're still lots of other dishes that we didn't order because there were only two of us with limited stomach space. But if you're ever going Red Star, do try their mixed beef internal organs soup (牛什汤), big bao (大包) and feng chang (粉肠), among other goodies!

Set Lunch at District 10 at Star Vista

With the opening of Star Vista, we've got more lunch options now, but only when we feel rich lah, since the restaurants there are not really considered cheap. So this time round we made a visit to the District 10.

They have this set lunch during lunch time, but still not cheap, mind you. The Grilled Black Angus Cheddar Cheese Burger is about $19 and the Hoegaarden Battered Fish and Chips is like $24. The set lunch includes a soup or salad, and a drink. And yes, the mains are much smaller in the set lunch. For example, you get one fillet of the fish for the set lunch instead of the normal two. But no surprise lah, since they're not the only one doing this cheap act for set meals.



The soup of the day was mushroom soup and most of us ordered that. Heng I chose the salad instead. Just look at the photo! I was not playing with perspective here. The salad was really so much bigger bowl than the soup. My friend finished the soup in three mouths. But maybe that was not that bad either because they didn't really liked the soup. Some said it was "powder-ly". The salad was actually good though, with good amount of dried tomatoes and nuts, and the vegetables were fresh.



And we should have eaten our soup and salad slower. Much slower. Because we had to wait more than 30mins for the main course to arrive at our table. Not very lunch-time-friendly for people like us who need to rush back to the office.

Again, heng I ordered the burger because apparently the other main courses my friends ordered were not that good. I think it must have been my lucky day. Should have bought Toto or Big Sweep after the lunch. The burger meat was nicely done in medium rare that I requested, tender and nicely seasoned. The fries were good too. They remained crispy even after I had long finished my burger. I will eat this burger again (ok, probably not for lunch since I don't have so much time to waste).



The linguini with tiger prawns didn't really make it. While the prawns were not really huge, they were not stingy with the quantity. The linguini itself was not too bad either. The only problem, and the main problem, is that this dish was super duper oily. So oily that a pool of oil remained in the dish after my friend finished the linguini. Also, perhaps the chef didn't mix the linguini well, some portion was overly salty and some just tasteless.

As for the Hoegaarden Battered Fish and Chips, I was also told that the fish didn't taste well due to its texture. Guess I don't expect my table of friends to come back to this restaurant any time soon.

Krispy Kreme is coming to town? Orh.

Sure White-chan and I had Krispy Kreme for breakfast in Dubai. Sure we had it for snack in Kuala Lumpur. Had some more in Tokyo.

Sure Krispy Kreme is nicer than Dunkin because the dough is more melt-in-the-mouth, they have more interesting flavours too. But the problem is that, after coming back to Singapore, I don't miss them at all.

But we do miss the Mister Donut old fashion donut with strawberry cream topping that I had in Tokyo. Whenever we see a Mister Donut store in Japan or Taiwan, we just have to go in. They are THAT good. Their dough is so rich and soft at the same time, and you remember the smell of the doughnut even after you are back in Singapore. They are so good you don't even remember whether they are too sweet. Because it doesn't matter.

And how about Dunkin Donuts? Don't even go there.

This is the Halloween special at Krispy Kreme Japan...


And here's the Halloween special at Mister Donut Japan!

Crystal Jade Jiang Nan's rainbow xiao long bao

Crystal Jade has opened a Jiang Nan restaurant at Vivocity level 1, right at the same level as the other more ATAS Crystal Jade restaurant. Looking at the menu, the Jiang Nan restaurant seems to be a upgraded version of the La Mian Xiao Long Bao restaurant, now with more variety added.

One change we love is that now you don't have to finish up a big bowl of la mian only to realise that your stomach has run out of space for other dishes. Now you can order the smaller bowls, which also means more business for Crystal Jade lah since now you don't have excuse not to try the other dishes. And mind you, the smaller bowls are not that stingy ok! We ordered the "small size" dan dan mian at SGD4.50 instead of the "normal size" at SGD9.50. The amount of noodles is still reasonable, still bigger than a pack of instant noodles lah! And then we ordered the rainbow xiao long bao that most tables seem to be ordering.



And here's our take on the different flavours:

• Yellow = Prawn = like a prawn dumnpling.
• Green = Vegetables = nothing to shout about... actually already forgotten how it tasted like...
• Brown = Foie Gras = really can taste the Foie Gras and this actually went well!
• White = Original =nothing beats the original!
• Yellow = Cheese = like eating a pizza filling.
• Magenta = Spicy beef = not too spicy and very beefy, this is good.
• Orange = Spicy chicken = not bad but not very memorable too.
• Black = Black truffle = not too stingy on the truffle, not bad.
• Yellow round one in the middle = custard = Just the usual custard bun. Nothing to see here.

Well, White-chan still prefers the famous xiao long bao from THE OTHER restaurant that starts with Ding. We've also ordered the Sheng Jian Bao to see if this dish has improved in this upgraded version of La Mian Xiao Long Bao.



The verdict? Nope, nothing has improved. The soup inside is still not enough, and the bottom is still not crispy enough. Ok let's move on to the most sinful dish that wee ordered... the fatty Dong Bo meat!



When we ordered the Dong Bo meat, we were still thinking "Wah! Why three pieces of meat so expensive?!" because we didn't expect three buns to come with the meat. Either we were too blind or they didn't indicate it explicitly enough... And since this was the last dish, by the time we moved on to it, we were already very carbo loaded from the previous bao's... so luckily the buns are delicious enough to keep us going! In fact, the chewy buns really go well with the sauce!

As for the meat, the lean parts are not so lean that you'll have to chew 100 times before you can swallow, and the fatty parts just melt in the mouth! So yes, this dish is expensive, but well worth it!

At the end of the day, we spent like SGD50 for two persons, and of course we got very bloated from all the carbo. Oh, and remember, DON'T ever order plain water because it costs 50 cents!