Werner's Oven

Werner's Oven is a cosy German restaurant in the middle of Siglap that has quite the following

As far as German food goes, this place was good. Much better than Brotzeit or Paulaners in my opinion. 

Started with the Fritierter Camembert Käse

- Breaded cheese served with cranberry sauce ($9.80)

A huge slab of cheese, definitely an appetizer for sharing amongst friends

When one goes to a German restaurant, the must orders are beer and sausages, so thats exactly what we did. The sausage came served with sauerkraut and potato salad. Pretty decent.

($21.50)

The grilled chicken (served with fries and salad) was tender and tasty.

Though nothing really special in my honest opinion. But really cheap though!

($13.50)

The ubiquitous Pork Knuckle! Only order this dish if you are sharing (or if you are a really huge fan of pork). The pork knuckle here was good, tender meat with the most delicious mashed potatoes. 

Very good value for money too at $21.50

The winning dish of that night in my opinion was the Ox-tail stew

Rich in flavor with that intense depth and ox tail so tender its falling off the bones. Dip your bread into the stew and you are set. Mmmm

($21.50)

Werner's Oven

6 Upper East Coast Road, #01-01/02/03

64423897

Tung Lok Seafood Restaurant

Having received a voucher for Tunglok, my family decided to heed down to the branch at East Coast Park for dinner. Tung Lok is one of the well-known places for seafood in Singapore, up there with the Jumbos, Long Beaches and Seafood Paradises. For some reason, I am always under the impression that Tung Lok is more classy and upscale than the rest. 

The Tung Lok at ECP was big, think of a giant dining hall filled with tables. I think it could be a little too cramped when the tables get filled up? But perhaps the hustle and clanging of chopsticks is what a chinese dinner is all about.

Started off with half a peking duck

The skin was passable, thin and crispy but not the best duck I have had. 

I think the Peking Duck at Imperial Treasure Peking duck has set my expectations for duck way high

Our vegetable course: Broccoli with Scallops

Pretty mild-tasting in my opinion. Could do with more seasoning

Salted egg yolk prawns.

When the dish was first delivered to our table, the golden brown color of the prawns and the thought of salted egg yolk melting in my mouth got me wayyy excited.

Alas, like the vegetable dish, the taste was quite mild. Not as robust and salty as I would have liked.

Other dishes we had which were all pretty average to me.

The chili crab was probably the biggest disappointment of the night.

To me, this dish is all about the sauce. It has to be thick, sweet yet spicy and with that gooey egg running throughout. As you can see, the amount of egg to sauce was too little and the sauce was too runny.

On the other hand, the white pepper crab was excellent!

Stir-fried with leeks and white pepper, each bite provided the much needed kick. 

Overall, I felt that the food was maybe too mild and elegant for me. I like my food more flavorful and exciting and I think only the white pepper crab really did it. For seafood, I would heed over to Seafood Paradise anytime.

Tung Lok Seafood Resturant

1000 East Coast Parkway

2F Marina Cove Singapore

6246 0555

Sangokai Japanese Restaurant

Sangokai is located in Upper Thomson Road, alongside a whole stretch of different eateries. 

At first glance, this place looked potentially disappointing (i.e. practically empty on a Sat evening)

but Sangokai was really surprisingly delicious!

Unagi roll served slightly warm.

Sweet plump eel, tempura prawn and crab meat. Always a winning combi.

Baked Scallop was awesome!

Reasonably priced (6 for $13), squeeze some lemon juice, slurp up the entire thing.

Savor the salty roe + cheese mixed with that wonderful umami shellfish taste.

Fresh and sweet :)

The curry baked rice was the restaurant's recommended dish

While the portion might not be big, the sheer amount of cheese and curry made eating the entire dish abit tough but great for sharing!

Potatoes, sweet potatoes (!) and chunks of beef mixed with curry, rice and cheese.

Comfort food and really quite good.

Perhaps there were too little customers that night but the service during my visit was fantastic.

Attentive and cheerful without being too "in-your-face"

An ongoing promotion: pay with nets/cash and get 15% off your total bill. 

Pretty good deal!

Sangokai Japanese Restaurant

203 Upper Thomson Road

62517009

Oriole

Located at  Pan Pacific service apartment, Oriole is famous is a cozy little dining establishment that is famous for its coffee.

The interior is sufficiently homely with dim lighting; dining in here transports you to another place. Somewhere far from the blinding lights of the other dining outlets at 313 that hits you the moment you step out.

As mentioned, Oriole is famous its coffee; with the owner having won several accolades for his caffeine creations. An honor that I think he rightly deserves because I really do love the coffee here.

The piccolo latte ($5.5) is probably the best version I have had in Singapore. Full-bodied with a wonder aroma,it really hits me at all the right places. I highly recommend ordering some joe when you come here.

Food-wise unfortunately, I feel that standards at Oriole have dropped further since the last I came.
For a place with such a crowd and such great coffee, the food is really disappointingly average.

The capellini crabmeat ($24) with great chunks of crabmeat tasted just fine. Nothing really outstanding.

The special of that day was the grilled barracuda with raisin cous-cous, shrimps and mussels ($28) was bitterly disappointed. What arrived was just the fish, none of the sides mentioned.
When questioned, the waitress simply replied that there was a printing error on the menu. There was no offers of a change in dish/making up for their mistake. We eventually had to ask them for a discount because come on, this was not being very fair to customers right?

Service was also very very slow. We waited almost 30 minutes for our food. 


Overall, I think all of us felt pretty much disappointed with Oriole and personally, I dont think I am coming back for a long long time. Maybe only for coffee.

Oriole

96 Somerset Road

#01-01 Pan Pacific Serviced Suite

6238 8348

Tony Romas

Tony Romas is one of those old-school American establishments that comes to your mind when you want to bring your family out for a "western meal".

When I was young, we would go to Tony Roma's/Kenny Rogers/ Country Manna 

Decided to pop in one day due to a massive craving for ribs.

The restaurant doesnt look like it has changed in the past 20 years. Comfortably dim complete with neon signs featuring beer brands and those old-fashioned stained glass.

The clientele still remains the same - mostly families. A very cozy, laid-back atmosphere.

Surprisingly, this place was very popular and we had to queue for almost half an hour to get a table.

The starters platter. 

Famous onion loaf, buffalo wings, celery with dip and the spinach dip. Complete with salsa and bleu cheese dressing. 

The view from the top.

The signature onion loaf was nicely cooked, sweet and crispy but nothing really spectacular.

The buffalo wings were not bad as well but I think my favorite part of this dish was dipping the celery into the bleu cheese dressing. Now that was great haha

We also ordered the St Louis rib sampler which comes in 4 flavor: Original, Carolina Honeys™, Blue Ridge Smokies™ and Tony Roma’s Red Hots™.

Now try as hard as we could, we couldnt really tell the difference between the 4 flavors. 

The ribs were pretty good, meat falling off the bone and nicely marinated.

Each rib platter comes with your choice of 2 sides. The fries were great (esp with the bleu cheese dressing from the platter lol) but the coleslaw had a tad too much herbs for our liking.

Being an American joint, the servings were HUGE. Can you believe that the ribs above are meant for 1?

The both of us could not even make our way through half of each dish. 

Thankfully the staff there were kind enough to doggy back our leftovers for us. 

Advice: Share.

I like Tony Roma's for its unpretentious atmosphere, great ribs and the childhood memories it brings :)

Tony Roma's

442 Orchard Road, #01-04/05 Orchard Hotel Shopping Arcade

 6738 8600

Nantsuttei (Black Ramen)

Went to try the much talked about "Black Ramen" at Nantsuttei at the new Parco wing @ Millenia Walk some time back.

Nantsuttei is situated in the cluster of Japanese restaurants at this new wing, all of which look awesomely exciting. I want to try every single one of these places. Anyway, who better to try Ramen with than the people whom I travel to Japan with (Japan gang) where we ate some of the best ramen ever.

The soup gets it blackish color from the black garlic oil. In fact the pool of oil covers the bowl of ramen like a large oil spill.  If you leave your spoon in the soup for 10 minutes or so, you will be able to spoon up a thin solid layer of oil. Not exactly the most appetizing sight in the world.

The black oil does give the soup a very fragrant smell though so do dig in fast before the oil starts to coagulate. 

As far as Ramens go, the ramen from Nantsuttei is decent. The soup is slightly sweet, a tad too salty while the charsiew can be more tender. While I would not mind eating here again, I feel that the ramen here still pales in comparison to my favorite ramen fix in Singapore : Santouka and Tampopo

Queue is pretty long though so do come by early.

Nantsuttei 

#03-02 Millenia Walk

9 Raffles Boulevard,

Singapore 039596

Popped by Octa Hotel for dessert.

Such a quaint little cafe complete with wicker chairs, lace curtains and a too-expensive gift shop.

Very very very Japanese, I really like the ambience. 

So we got a variety of desserts to share.

The cheese cake

Chocolate cake with cream

The blueberry tart with cream

Some weirdly ice cream dessert with a foam concoction 

While I like the place, desserts here were disappointing. 

Overpriced as portions were tiny and taste-wise, items like the cheesecake and chocolate cake were decent at best while the others failed to register at all. 

I might come back for a nice cup of tea/coffee because of the decor but will probably give the food items here a miss.

Octa Hotel

9 Raffles Boulevard 

#01-39 Parco Marina Bay

Singapore 031596

Charlie's Corner

Located at one of the most secluded corners in Singapore - Changi Village, Charlie's Corner is a no-frills western food cafe found next to the big hawker centre there.

First impression: Truly no-frills, even the bills there are handwritten. However, Charlie's Corner has an impressive selection of beers. Aside from the standard local beers + popular brands, Charlie's Corner houses at least 20 other beers from all over the world, some of which I have never even heard about.

This place is known for their Fish n Chips and we decided to go with just that.

Very basic fish n chips, with fries, breaded dory and a dollop of tartar sauce. Honestly, I felt this dish was underwhelming. I prefer my fish to be of the crispy sort and this breaded version just fell flat, the fries were decent but nothing extraordinary. 

Portion was decent but given the setting, $12.90 for this plate seemed a tad bit pricey for me. 

I do enjoy the atmosphere, laidback and quiet; a great place to chill out with friends over a nice exotic beer. Other items on the menu do look good though and judging by my neighbors at the other tables, I will be back the next time to try the chilli dogs and wings.

Charlie's Corner

2 Changi Village Road

#01-08 Changi Village Market and Hawker Centre

6542 0867