Singapore Food festival Tingkat Cruise

Its finally the end of Singapore Food Festival! This year, their theme is on "Food from the different dialects in Singapore", where their activities will showcase signature dishes from the various dialect groups in Singapore, like the Hokkiens, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese, Hakka, etc. There have been a myriad of activities that went on during the one week that this event was on for (see http://singaporefoodfestival.com.sg/), and one of which is this Tingkat cruise, where you can taste some of Singapore's signature dishes in a retro old-fashioned tingkat carrier (the predecessor of Tupperware) on board the river cruise.

The traditional Tingkat carrier

Soon kueh on the left (blocked by the chilli sauce, sorry!), Chicken rice on the right

Carrot cake on the left, Hokkien Mee on the right

There was also dessert which is a Cantonese classic, Barley with Beancurd skin, but i couldnt get a decent shot of it so i left it out from the pictures.

Generally the standard of food is decent, the Chicken rice was not bad, considering it was no longer hot after being left in the tingkat for duuno-how-long. The worst dish was the soon kueh. In fact it tastes dangerously sour to me, that i left it alone after 2 bites. However, although common, the pairing of dinner on a cruise is a double-edged sword, especially if you only get 45mins for the whole ride, as you can only choose to either eat, or enjoy the scenery, and not do both (which was supposed to be the main point of the whole thing?).

Just a suggestion for future meal-aboard-cruise organisers, have a longer time for the whole cruise so diners can enjoy their meal AND the scenery properly?

Ok, now i leave you with excerpts of the beautiful night scenery:

Potion @ Hotel Nostalgia

After watching Michelle Chia introducing this place on Buffetllicious, i was tempted to give this a try for myself. After "advertising" the invitation to join me on Facebook, i managed to get 1 friend who is willing to wake up before 9am on a Sunday morning to accompany on this lazy Sunday breakfast trip.

American Breakfast

Eggs Benedict

Pancakes

Omelette with ham and mushroom

Chicken porridge

The breakfast ala carte buffet didnt have a very extensive menu (there were only 8 items all together), but the quality of the food was pretty decent. Except for the pancakes (which were not warm and fluffy) and the chicken porridge (which pretty much tastes like the $2.50 ones you get in hawker centres), the rest of the western breakfast items were not too bad. And at $18++ inclusive of free flow coffee, tea and orange juice, it is pretty worth it.

Potion

Hotel Nostalgia

77 Tiong Bahru Road

Jumbo Seafood Restaurant

After walking a round through the row of seafood restaurants at ECP, we decided on Jumbo as we haven't ate here in a very long while. Pardon the bad quality of the pics, as it is shot with my handphone since i forgot to bring my camera out.

Assorted satay

Some new Golden Phoenix dish

which is actually seafood paste under a layer of roasted chicken skin

Pork floss prawns

tastes like wasabi prawns coated with a layer of pork floss, which in turns covers the actual taste of the prawns. not recommended.

Salted egg crab, not too bad.

BBQ fish

Seafood fried rice, too oily.

Generally average quality. Save for their crabs, i think they are not in my top 3 list of good seafood restaurants.

Jumbo Seafood

East Coast Parkway, where all the other seafood restaurants are located

Cafeteria Il Lido

This is a new establishment by the fine dining Il Lido Group to break into the cafeteria market. As the name suggests, food served is cafeteria style with the usuals like pastas, pizzas, meat, poultry, seafood, drinks and desserts at affordable prices.

Their menu is available on their website for viewing

Honey Chicken

Mushroom steak

Fig Pie

Generally the food is nothing to rave about. Portions are inconsistent, as with many other cafes, whereby poultry dishes are often bigger-sized than meat dishes. The steak done-ness here is pretty accurate, i ordered a medium-rare, and it came just so. The fig-pie is just bread-and-butter pudding with few pieces of fig slices and orange peel. Not worth ordering. In addition, as Astons is just nearby, and the quality of this 2 places are pretty much similar, but Astons' prices are cheaper, its no wonder why Astons always have a long queue and Cafeteria Il Lido are seldom full.

Cafeteria Il Lido
B1 Suntec City Mall

Hanabi & Shots

Decided to combine 2 posts into 1, and comment lesser in order to save time, because there are too many photos. First up is another Japanese Ala carte Buffet which is getting so popular and common nowadays.

Hanabi

Chawanmushi - pretty normal

Mixed Sashimi

The star of the night, and the main reason why we came here for dinner. The choices we had were salmon, tuna, yellowtail and sea bream. In addition, they also had octopus and cuttlefish. In total, we had about 7 rounds of sashimi, more than enough to cover the buffet price! My only grouch was that the slices were too thin, and the portions inconsistent.

Spider maki - didnt try this, heard it was so-so

Tempura prawns- average, but it came pretty hot

Breaded Cream Dory - so-so too

Teppan Chicken - meat pretty firm, abit oily though

Teriyaki mackerel - didnt try this, but friend liked it

Soba in soup - a warm ending after all the cold sashimi

After dinner, proceeded to check out a new cafe at Tanjong Pagar at the recommendation of a friend, but she forgot to tell me that their specialty is coffee, and i had to work early the next morning!

As the name might suggest, its actually opened by a photographer, thus having an arty-farty feel to it. Save for the Fri night crowd, it is a pretty serene place to be in, and just read a book or magazine, or just chill out with friends over coffee or sake (yes, they DO have many kinds of sake!)

Cafe latte in a clean-cut cup

Since i DO want to sleep that night, the only sensible thing was NOT to drink coffee, and thus, this beer ended on my table.

Its a German lime beer(but i don't taste any lime in it) that is pretty light, and tastes abit like fruit beer cum alcoholic soda to me. A nice choice for ladies, that is. But once again, i probably should come back for their coffee 1 day. I just have to remember the magazines. :)

Hanabi Japanese Restaurant

1st floor, Odeon Towers

63386626

Shots cafe

8 Ann Siang Road (at the junction of Club St)