The New Year is off and running - halfway through January already - and the lovely Chris pointed out to me yesterday that I had not published a post since October. He's right of course, and while I was thinking "Easy for you to say", it did bring me up short and make me put finger to keyboard this morning.
You're probably thinking that I write a lot about food in this blog, and you're not wrong. Well, we live in Singapore after all, and food is one of the two favourite national pastimes, the other being shopping, as demonstrated by the queues outside designer shops and the world's highest handbags per capita ratio (I'm guessing about that statistic, but it's probably pretty close to the truth).
On the food front, let's start with last night's dinner. TLC and I were shopping near Orchard Road, browsing in Park Mall (one of Singapore's older malls, and very different from the new kids on the block, but full of really interesting furniture shops if you're interested in modern design) and decided to have dinner out. There was a food court, as with all shopping malls, but it was Friday night and we fancied something with tablecloths, so we looked around and came across that rarest of eateries, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. Given my previous experience of Chinese vegetarian food, I was dubious, and a couple of thoughts sprang to mind - it's a normal Chinese restaurant, but run by a vegetarian; it serves vegetarian food alongside the chicken feet; it serves vegetables - but I was wrong. In fact, the Classic Lao Di Fang Vegetarian Restaurant, to give it its full name, was a revelation. Nothing on the menu was made from meat or fish, although most things looked as if they were.
We had three different dim sum to start. The dumplings were delicious but the pretend pork in the barbecue pork buns was disappointing. We also had vegetarian Peking duck, which was an interesting experience. As we were munching, a thought flitted through my head, as thoughts are wont to do. Why is it still called "Peking duck" and not "Beijing duck"?
Among other delights on the menu were:
At the other end of the food spectrum was New Year in France. France is about as vegetarian friendly as China, I reckon, but we did have a wonderful New Year's Eve dinner with friends in a restaurant called Gayda. New Year's Eve is a big thing in France, with most people organising a great big dinner at home with friends. The meal typically features oysters, as did the New Year's Eve menu at Gayda. Bizarrely, given my horror of all things slimy on the food front, I'm pretty partial to oysters, but two of our guests were not, so I phoned up in advance to ask if they could have something else. The staff are lovely, and told me it would be no problem. One of our guests was French, and so not at all fazed when the replacement for the oysters turned out to be duck tartare! Our other friend decided to pass on that course, but the duck tartare got picked up by the rest of the table (apart from me) who pronounced it utterly delicieux. The meal was fabulous, in fact, as was the whole evening. Dinner was followed by dancing and when our taxi arrived at 1 am, we were the first to leave. I must be getting old.........
You're probably thinking that I write a lot about food in this blog, and you're not wrong. Well, we live in Singapore after all, and food is one of the two favourite national pastimes, the other being shopping, as demonstrated by the queues outside designer shops and the world's highest handbags per capita ratio (I'm guessing about that statistic, but it's probably pretty close to the truth).
On the food front, let's start with last night's dinner. TLC and I were shopping near Orchard Road, browsing in Park Mall (one of Singapore's older malls, and very different from the new kids on the block, but full of really interesting furniture shops if you're interested in modern design) and decided to have dinner out. There was a food court, as with all shopping malls, but it was Friday night and we fancied something with tablecloths, so we looked around and came across that rarest of eateries, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. Given my previous experience of Chinese vegetarian food, I was dubious, and a couple of thoughts sprang to mind - it's a normal Chinese restaurant, but run by a vegetarian; it serves vegetarian food alongside the chicken feet; it serves vegetables - but I was wrong. In fact, the Classic Lao Di Fang Vegetarian Restaurant, to give it its full name, was a revelation. Nothing on the menu was made from meat or fish, although most things looked as if they were.
We had three different dim sum to start. The dumplings were delicious but the pretend pork in the barbecue pork buns was disappointing. We also had vegetarian Peking duck, which was an interesting experience. As we were munching, a thought flitted through my head, as thoughts are wont to do. Why is it still called "Peking duck" and not "Beijing duck"?
Among other delights on the menu were:
- Vegetarian fish soup
- Marmite with spare ribs (honestly)
- Shark's fin and crabmeat
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| The scene of the slime crime |
1 comment:
Sexy cinematic scenes, you just knew I'd have a view on this didn't you...
the lingerie that Radha Mitchell wears in The Code to seduce Banderas is (in my view) very very sexy stuff ...
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