Marina’s Bloggariffic

It was a little ironic El Sheikh was given a lower rating compared to rival cafe according to a review website. But I really enjoyed my dinner at El Sheikh. It was very good food indeed. So much more superior than the rival cafe which I probably wont ever go again.

The place

El Sheikh is situated in the beautiful and historical area of Kampung Glam. Before reaching El Sheikh, Nicole, Mintea and I had a blast of a time exploring the Malay Heritage Center, playing with the props there before reaching the place. Just as we reached there, we met up with DK who just arrived at the same time as we did.

The cafe already looks charming from the outside with the rustic two story shophouse where it was housed. Inside, it looked very cosy and rather condusive with its homely arabic styled decor all around.

The service

There were only the four of us there when we entered. We were greeted by the staff and were lead to our seats where we were given our menus. As it was my first time in having Lebanese food and I was not sure what to eat. We asked for recommendations from the staff.

Finally we made up out minds and ordered the Sheikh Mezze as an appetizer and Shawarma Plate, Mixed Kebab Grill, Riyash Ganam Lamb Chops and El Sheikh Beef.

Suddenly, a huge lively crowd of about 15 people suddenly came in. Things got a little helter skelter with the confusion of where to place them and ordering of food. When the food came, it got mixed up with the other group and they got served first. The staff looked frazzled when they realised their mistake but they remained as composed as they could.

The food

First, we had the appetizer - the Sheikh Mezze which consisted of a generous portion of a mix of most of the cold appetizers. Everything was so rich and flavourful that till now, at this point of writing, I’m still craving for it.

This is hummus, a famous dish made of blended chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice and sesame paste. I like the texture of the hummus and its rustic taste.

This is Motabbel and is an instant favorite for me. Its like the Hummus but it uses baked eggplants instead of Chickpeas giving you a unique taste of sweet, rich and smooth paste. Its really delicious!

We also had Tabouli which I thought was pretty good. It had a good mix of ingredients with no one ingredient overpowering the other. Although I think it would be better if the parsley were chopped more finely.

This is the Mosaka’ah. It was mainly minced meat in tomato sauce but I liked it a lot.

We were also given a plate of Cheese Rolls which looked very much like curry puffs but had a cheese filling as well as Falafel which is smashed chickpeas shaped into a small cake.

We ate them all together with pita bread. And all in all, it was quite filling! It actually made us rather full at the end of the appetizers.

But we still had our main course to go!

This is Mintea’s Mixed Kebab Grill. It had a portion of each grilled meat so that want to have a taste of each. Nice!

This is Nicole’s Shawarma Plate which is marinated chicken which is shredded into small pieces, eaten with rice. Nicole seemed to enjoy it very much.

This is DK’s Shish Kebab which is marinated beef, cooked over charcoal. It was a strong taste without being overpowering. I saw DK really enjoying his meal.

And this is my lamb chops. I don’t usually eat lamb but this were good. It was probably marinated overnight as it did not have the overly lamby taste and it was tender. Shari Lewis would probably be angry at me :P

And it was all washed down with :

Mango Ayran - a type of yogurt

Mint tea served in a beautiful pot.

And Bavarian Beer! Yes! I drank beer! Ok fine. It was a non alcoholic type. But it was quite underwhelming as my beer tasted more like zapple than anything else :P

Regardless, all in all, I enjoyed myself heaps there! And I really cannot wait to eat there again! Want to go to El Sheikh with me?

OM NOM NOM NOM!

Related link :

• El Sheikh Restaurant

You may also be interested in :

• Eating Tulang
• Taj Samudra - Indian Buffet
• Egyptian Cooking Workshop
• Siam Kitchen
• Korean BBQ Chicken

One of my favourite things to eat is Fried Chicken. It might not be the healthiest food to eat, but the moment Juli asked me out for Fried Chicken, I could not say no!

The place

Arnold’s is located on the 2nd floor of City Plaza - which is quite recognizable by its very retro sign at the top of the yellow and orange building.

We went up to the second floor where there were already a few people who were queuing up for their food.

The place looked looked nothing extra-ordinary. There was no decoration to speak of, with simple orange plastic chairs and tables. Nevertheless it was full of diners enjoying their meal. This was a popular place!

The service

We queued up for a bit and upon reaching the counter, we took a look at the menu before finally deciding on the 2 person combo meal. We made an order to the enthusiastic crew at the counter.

After waiting for a few minutes for a table to be cleared, we eventually had a table. The food took another few minutes later.

The food

We had the side dishes first. The side dishes were pretty good. I’ve always liked coleslaw and this one was no exception.

As I’m not big on fries, we managed to change it with mashed potato. Juli thought that the mashed potato was very good. The consistency was thick and tasted robust with the flavourful gravy.

I’m not fond of fried potatoes, but the criss-cross fries were pretty good being crispy and hot.

I did not touch the fried buns, so I’m not sure how this tastes like. Its just me … The idea of eating bread fried in oil is a little scary to me.

But the highlight of the dinner was definitely the fried chicken!

Its not exactly fast food restaurant here, having to wait for at least 10 minutes for your food to arrive. But when it does arrive, you would have been glad that you waited!

My chicken was wonderful! Its came out hot and delightfully crispy. The meat was tender and you could taste how amazingly fresh it was. Oh my gosh!

My only qualm is that our meal isn’t exactly cheap having to spend about $10 each, especially when the presentation of the food could be be much nicer.

Regardless, Arnold’s was one of the best fried chicken that I ever had.

Here is a quick video response at the end of our dinner :

Arnolds Fried Chicken from rinaz on Vimeo

Do you like fried chicken? Whats the best fried chicken that you’ve had?

Related links :

• Official Website
• Other reviews by Yebber.com
• Click here to see a bigger view of the menu with price

You may also be interested in :

• BBQ Chicken at Cineleisure
• What is Ayam Penyet?

Bon Jour! Salut! I had zee most lovely time last Thursday night, being with friends over coffee. What better way to spend zee time together? Oui?

I was initially surprised to receive the invitation by EastWestPR but after hearing the Carte Noire commercial on 938live for some weeks, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to attend the event along with my friends, Mintea, Chillycraps and NTT who were all coffee lovers themselves.

I just realised at how multi-racial this picture is

Thus, last Thursday, I attended the Carte Noir press event at the beautiful Old School building at Mount Sophia. Carte Noir is a leading coffee brand in France. Which explains why I’m wearing a beret - for that French feel :-P

Old School is such a beautiful place. I could not help but to admire how charming it looked with its bold black lines over white washes. If NTT had not mentioned that the place used to be the Methodist Girl’s School, I really could not have guessed it. Now it houses many Art and Design institution. I should really come here again to see the place in more detail.

At the registration counter we saw Aaron as well as Sabrina and after registering, we headed inside where I saw Chillycraps and Mintea already sitting down on a bench which seemed rather curious to me. Why sit there, when there are proper tables and chairs to sit on?

Chillycraps : Thats because we are at a school and we should sit on a bench like students!

In any case, the Managing Director of Kraft Foods, officially started the event with a short speech and the fashion show featuring the Paris-trained Cambodian designer, Romyda Keth started.

It was a little hard for me to see the fashion show though, with the guests and the photographers standing up, taking pictures of the models that we could not get a clear view. Regardless, looking at her dress collections from the website is beautiful, elegant and most definitely wearable.

After the fashion show, each of us were given a cup of Carte Noire coffee for a taste test. Personally for me, I thought that the taste was very light, almost airy like. I preferred my coffee strong but I can imagine how this coffee will be very popular with the masses because of the light taste.

Mr Paris Arnold, the Managing Director for Kraft joins us for a chat session, where he seems genuinely interested in knowing more about us bloggers. I think that companies are starting to open up to bloggers which I think is great as it is a direct way of getting feedback from the very people who consume their products.

Sabrina started asking Paris, why a fashion show for a coffee launch. And with enthusiasm he replied :

“The French embodies style and sophistication and a fashion show brings that to our coffee to reflect that especially with a Paris trained designer”

Ah!

Later on, we proceeded to enter a room where we saw our favourite barista! Danny Pang! Danny was there to do a demonstration on how to create coffee as well as how to make coffee art. He makes it look so easy to make that perfect blend of coffee and with his extremely sexy, manly voice, I could just go on to listening to him for hours!

Later on we went to our seats to have our own go at creating coffee art. At first it was quite daunting as I’ve never done anything like this before and I had the feeling that my coffee art is going to turn out bad.

But I gave it a try anyways and swirled the milk foam and it turns out that the outcome wasn’t bad - it was quite decent actually considering that it was my first time. Maybe I’m a coffee genius without knowing it! :-P

Its not perfect but its not bad right? This makes me want to learn more about coffee :-)

Here is a short video on the coffee demonstration :

Making Coffee Art from rinaz on Vimeo

We had so much fun talking about coffee that before we knew it, it was already 8pm! A whole hour after the event has ended. Time really does goes by really quickly when one is having fun :-)

And at the end of the day, we were given a door gift consisting of Carte Noire Coffee as well as their beautiful gold trimmed cup and saucer for us to continue enjoying a cup of coffee-love :-)

Do you drink coffee? How do you like your coffee?

Related links :

• Carte Noire Press Release
• Romyda Keth collections
• Danny Pang’s blog entry
• Chillycrap’s blog entry
• Mintea’s blog entry

Sidenote : While on the topic, I won a Coffee Card thanks to Nicole’s contest! I couldn’t possibly drink 11 cuppas so let me know if you want to go to Geek Terminal with me :-)

Recently, my family and I went to the Ayer Rajah Food center for some local food delights. One of the food that we ordered was the Sop Tulang - cow bone marrow cooked in savoury sweet tomato sauce.

Its not the healthiest thing to eat, and you risk having your mouth stained in red sauce, but its oh so good to eat!

Eating Tulang from rinaz on Vimeo

Have you ever eaten Tulang before? How was your experience like?

Related link :

• Sup Tulang demystified

Sidenote : This is what my new namecard would look like. What do you think?

My first attempt at food porn isn’t going very well. The mouth doesn’t match the video because the frame rate dropped while recording.

Anyway, I’ve aquired two boxes of Meiji Meltykiss and here is the unboxing :D

Unboxing the chocolate from rinaz on Vimeo

And no, I’m not doing a retake because I am too lazy.

I’ve always enjoyed eating Indian food. So when Daphne suggested a ping outing to Taj Samudra last Sunday, I just could not pass it off.

The Place

Getting here was quite a cinch as I’m familiar with the area - it was in the same main road as my favourite Indian Restaurants like Ananda Bhavan and Komala Villas. With the restaurant being close to Mustafa Center, makes it very easy to spot - especially with its distinctive orange signboard.

But being on a Sunday, the area was extremely crowded and the roads can be quite scary with the vehicles squeezing and honking. Trying to get parking can be quite of a challenge - I had to risk parking illegally next to the already fully occupied motorcycle lot.

I entered the restaurant and I liked the cosy environment. On the walls were some interesting looking decorative tiles and there were some attractive hanging chandeliers. There were modern glass tables and chairs. The entire combination made the place appear quite classy.

Unfortunately for us, the air-conditioning was not working on that day and we had to suffer in the heat.

The Service

The entire affair was pretty much a self service as it was a buffet. There were two tables with food that you could help yourself to unlimited amounts of food.

The staff were pretty friendly and full of smiles when we were dining there. However, they need to be more attentive. Ironicgamer had to wait for 30mins for his drink to arrive and I noticed that the staff tends not to notice Malique and Chillycrap’s request. Personally for me, I did not have any problems and the staff were very attentive to me perhaps because, I am a charming woman *coughs*

The Food

Woo! Can you imagine that you can have unlimited Indian food for about $12? This was most impressive to me. Here are just some of the foods that I had. I’m not very familiar with the names, my apologies if I got the names wrong :

Briyani Rice - Wonderfully flavourful and fluffy rice

Mixed Vegetable

I guess this is the special vegetable?

Daal - I prefer if it was thicker, but this was good too

Rasam

Mysore mutton

Masala Chicken

Sweet and sour fish - I like this one a lot! Tasty!

Papadam

Payasam

Thats a lot of food for $12 right? Where else in Singapore can you get this much food at that price? My only qualm is with most of the food is that its a tad salty for my taste and I’ve had better Indian food than this. The rest of the group seemed to like it very much though.

Here is a quick video of what pingsters think of the restaurant :

Taj Samudra Indian Restaurant from rinaz on Vimeo

In a nutshell

Very affordable Indian Food Buffet

Taj Samudra Restaurant
117 Syed Alwi Road
Singapore 207685

Blog posts

• Arzhou
• Daphne
• Chillycraps
• Uray

Sidenote : My voice is still raspy in the video as I’m still recovering from my sore throat. Wenderella claims that I infected her! But it cant be me!

Last Saturday, I was at the Braddell Heights Community Center for an Egyptian Food Workshop.

Prior to this, I participated in a quiz, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I won a pass for this workshop some days later. Its been a while since I’ve been to a cooking workshop. Probably the last one that I’ve been to was when I was 14 back in my Home Economics Class :P

Nevertheless, it was quite an interesting session, not only for me, but also for my senses - my eyes teared up from the spices used, my nose smelled the flavourful scents and my eyes saw the colourful ingredients.

Till at last the food was cooked, and we all got a taste. And I love it! The food that I had was really tasty!

On this plate, clockwise direction is Hudaar Salatah (Salad), Ruz Shariah (Rice), Nie Fi Nie (Potato and Mutton) and Frakh Bil Fond (Chicken). I love them all. Absolutely delicious! Can I have more? :)

Here is a short clip of the workshop :

Egyptian Food Workshop from rinaz on Vimeo

Have you ever had Egyptian food before? What do you think of it?

Links

• Click here to get the recipe
• One PA Website

Other Community Center posts :

• Shall we dance?
• Spanish Cultural and Language Workshop
• Vocal Coach Workshop
• Community Clicks Photography Workshop
• Re-opening of Taman Jurong Community Center