Inle Myanmar Restaurant

It took a long time for four of us to find a common time to meet. We finally met for dinner at Inle Myanmar Restaurant at Marina Square (#02-201). The restaurant was quite empty, perhaps because it was a weekday night. Yeah... no need to wait for dinner and not much waiting for food. We ordered the set dinners and had a communal meal asian style.

This was what we had:

Pennywort Salad. Delicious but can't eat too much as it is very very salty.

Seafood Glass Noodle Salad. A bit sour and spicy.


Gourd Fritters. Like tempura with South-East Asian twist as it came with a spicy sauce.

Butter Rice with Soup of the Day and Belachung (dried shrimps with chilli). Belachung was delicious as shrimps were fried till crispy.

Chicken Curry. Tasty but quite oily.

Crispy Seabass with Chilli.

Moh Let Sung. Similar to chendol without red bean.

Hpa Luda 'Rose-Scented' Dessert.

In addition, we had Mohinga and Traditional Fried Rice which are not shown as half the food was finished by the time I remembered to take photos. Mohinga is a noodle dish that is a bit like satay bee hoon and a bit like mee rebus. One of my friends ordered Sakyalama "Bird Nest" drink. Only after the drink came did we realized that the bird nest comes with " " on the menu. No wonder no bird nest in the drink. Haha...

The dishes were good and tasted similar to Thai food. The dishes are also a bit like Chinese and Indian food. This is not surprising since Myanmar is next to Thailand, India and China. Although the food tasted rather similar to Thai food, the dishes still taste unique. The food might be a bit jelat for Singaporeans as they were very salty and spicy. Even the soup had abundance of pepper added into it.

Conclusion:

A hearty and satisfying meal. Worth another visit to try more of their dishes.

Yoshimaru Ramen Bar

I went to Yoshimaru ramen bar at Holland Village with my colleagues a few days ago. This is a small eatery opposite the famous Provence bakery. We reached there around 12.30pm and it was packed. As it was a HOT day, we wanted to sit indoors so that there will be air-conditioning. Can you imagine slurping ramen and drinking hot soup outdoors when it is sunny and humid in Singapore?

We managed to get a seat after ten minutes. After we had ordered our ramen, we were given a pestle and a bowl of sesame to grind into powder for adding into the ramen. The sesame given was rather fragrant.

I ordered the Moridakusan Ramen (all-in) as I wanted to try everything. I’m not greedy, but adventurous! It comes with cloud ear mushroom, soft boiled egg, takana, mentaiko, seaweed and char siew. The ramen used is the thin kind from Hakata, Kyushu and they used tonkotsu broth. I love the soft boiled egg with its slightly runny yolk and the mentaiko. However, I felt that the soup was too salty and had too strong a porky taste.

Conclusion:

The food was good and the price was reasonable. The only drawback of the place was the service. The staff could have been more helpful in assisting us in moving our cups and sesame bowls to the bigger table as we were squeezing in a small table while waiting for customers at the bigger table to leave before we could move there.

Yoshimaru ramen bar

31 Lorong Liput Holland Village

Singapore 277 742

Tel: 6463 3132

Pineapple Tarts from Indonesia

Two weeks ago, my relatives brought pineapple tarts back from Indonesia and they had generously gave a box of these fragrant and delicious pineapple tarts to us. I think they bought the tarts from Bandung. This was how the box of tarts looked like in the box.

When the sealed plastic wrapping was removed, the fragrance of the tarts permeated the room. And I am not exaggerating. Whenever someone opened the container and ate the tarts, others at home would know as the smell of the tarts would diffuse everywhere.

The smell would make you want to bite into one of these cute little tarts. The pastry was buttery and so tasty. It has a hint of saltiness that went well with the sweetness and slight sourness of the pineapple filling. From the photo below, you can see that the filling was so moist and the pineapples bits were not shredded as fine as those commonly found in Singapore. Hence, this gave the filling more bite. The filling tasted so fresh and had a more real pineapple taste, as opposed to pineapple flavoured jam.

The box of pineapple tarts disappeared so fast. Well, since the filling was so moist, better finish them up quickly in case they grew mouldy right? =P

Conclusion:

These pineapple tarts are just irresistable!

Peach Garden

Last weekend, I went to Peach Garden at Thomson Plaza with my family. We were there around 11.45am and had to queue to enter the carpark. By the time we entered the carpark, the queue had extended all the way along the main road. We decided to have dim sum for lunch.

We had their century egg porridge. I felt that the porridge was not smooth enough and preferred Crystal Jade Palace's century egg porridge. My three years old nephew loved the crispy crackers they placed on top of the porridge and he finished a whole bowl of the porridge.

We chose a wide variety of dim sum from the push carts going around, such as siew mai, char siew bao, char siew sou, har gao, spring roll, zhu cheong fun, xiao long bao, pork ribs, carrot cake etc. Among the dim sum items, I enjoyed the char siew sou and siew mai. The dim sum items were good but not fantastic. The super cold air conditioning made the food turned cold quickly.

In addition to dim sum, we tried their Peking Duck. It tasted great. The duck skin was crispy. The skin had enough fat underneath to make it juicy, yet not too oily. Wrapped in pancake with cucumber, spring onion and sweet sauce, it was so delicious that I had five slices. It came with keropok too, but the keropok tasted more of flour than prawn.

We chose the option of having the duck meat with lettuce. The duck meat had a great umami taste. The combination of diced tasty duck meat wrapped in crispy and sweet lettuce was so yummy.

The restaurant is a good choice especially if you are bringing kids along as there is enough space to put strollers between tables. Also, it was not noisy and cramped like most Chinese restaurants. The service staff were also very attentive.

Conclusion:

Good dim sum. Comfortable place to have a meal.

My FIRST Blog Post!!!

My blog was created on the auspicious date of 9 September 2009 (09/09/09). I have thought about starting a blog for a long long time. But the operative word is “thought”, and now I have finally started one.

My display name is munching cow. I chose the word “cow” as cows are one of the most hardworking animals in the world. They work hard for humans when they are alive, ploughing fields and providing milk. Milk is then used to make a whole range of dairy products like cheese and yoghurt. When they are dead, they provide meat. My blog will be dedicated mostly to my eating (or munching) adventures, therefore putting two together we have munching cow.

I love food, I love taking photos of food, and I love hunting down food. I use the word hunting as I often don’t bother checking the exact location of the stall, but will go to the area and try to find the place. I have to thank other bloggers and food journalists for posting photos of the stalls that enable me to do my treasure hunt. I find it satisfying when I manage to find the place and get to enjoy the good food.

Through my blog, I hope to share with readers places with that serve good food in Singapore and beyond our garden city. If you have the time, kindly leave your comments about my posts or recommend other good eating places at my blog.

Hope that you have an enjoyable time reading my blog and have fun munching!