Drinks with a view – ain’t too shabby

I love Ann Siang Hill. It’s dotted with cool little bars and shops, and the architecture takes you back to a time when Singapore wasn’t the bustling city it is today, and everything went just that little bit slower. We visited Screening Room last night for a drink on the rooftop bar. It’s been overcast all week in Singapore which has meant that we’ve had a break from the el scorcho weather from the past two weeks.

The rooftop bar is a fantastic space – reminds me of the rooftop bar at East Village in Darlinghurst, just much, much nicer, and with an airy view of the Singapore skyline, and on a Wednesday night, a perfect place to have a quiet drink after work. And apparently you can book the rooftop at Screening Room out, as long as you can guarantee $5000 behind the bar. Not too difficult in this town, when drinks average around $10-$15.

The drinks aren’t anything to write home about, but it’s happy hour till 8pm, which I’m not going to complain about.

Whatever you do, though, go there for the drinks and space, rather than the food. We ordered a food platter, which was a sample of everything they had. None of which was terribly good. The thing that killed it for me was a dip for the crudites which I thought was a mint yoghurt sauce until I tasted what I can only describe as chicken liver pate … sauce. It was all wrong wrong wrong.

Screening Room is at 12 Ann Siang Road Tel: 6221-1694

Brrbrbrbrbrrrr…need my morning coffee…

But does anyone around here know of where to get a decent coffee ? After being relatively spoilt by being able to get a good coffee from almost any corner cafe in Sydney en route to work, the coffee here just seems…well…crap, for want of a better word. After four months here, I’ve yet to find somewhere that can make a coffee that I can actually say I like.

Is it the milk ? All the milk here seems to taste like it’s had sugar added to it, yet I also need to now add sugar to my coffee now just so it has some flavour.

Perhaps it’s just that your local Spinelli staff member, whilst very friendly and helpful, just ain’t no barista…

I hope I’m not still clinging on to memories of Sydney and I shouldn’t compare the two cities. Maybe I’ll have to contend with a hot cup of teh halia for my morning caffeine hit. In the meantime, I live in hope that I’ll stumble upon that perfect cup of coffee sometime soon.

Oh for a simple breakfast

It’s amazing how a difference of just 3 blocks can dramatically change the breakfast options you have.

When I was working closer to Chinatown, little coffee shops abounded with offers of simple good food – freshly fried beehoon noodles with srumptious sambal, gooey sweet sticky peanut butter spread on to thickly cut and freshly toasted bread, or my personal favourite, nasi lemak with a squid curry and an egg with crispy sweet and salty fried anchovies- a throwback from my days working in KL.

So my new role has me right next door to Lau Pa Sat – “the Festival Market” – the hawker centre that had locals in an uproar when it was even suggested that the prime location, in the middle of the business district, on which it stood be replaced by commercial office space.

I was a little confused at the variety of food that you could get at 8.30am – I did a few sneaky rounds around the tables to see what other people were eating and was amazed that you can get Indian dosai for breakfast ! Anyway, I ended up with fried glass noodles, with fried beehoon noodles and some vegetables and my confusion led to me having the oddest and most dissatifying breakfast I have had since i tried to eat a bowl of muesli for breakfast.

But I’m not giving up ! I’m going back there for lunch today so that the Festival Market can redeem itself in my eyes…

One of my most favourite things in the world

Pork.

You can pretty much serve pork to me any way and I’ll eat it with gusto. Roast it, so you get crispy, crunchy crackling, stewed pork belly so that it melts in your mouth, grill it with hoi sin sauce, give it to me as ham, or as everyone’s favourite (religious persuasion excepted) BACON.

I went to The Butcher in Holland Village yesterday en route to visiting a friend to watch the Bledisloe Cup (please note here that I used it as a good excuse to pop in to say hi, rather than actually going to watch the game, but I’m glad the All Blacks won, for Luke’s sake). I like The Butcher over the Swiss Butcher, not only because a) The Butcher is near where our friends live and so gives us an excuse to buy meat whilst visiting them (or vice versa), and b) because it’s good old fasioned Aussie meat. Makes me feel all homely and comfortable buying meat that I know grew up breathing the same air in the same country that I did (morbid, I know).

So I get the butcher to cut me a generous piece of pork loin, bone out. It comes to me all juicy and fat, and is currently seasoned with finely chopped rosemary, crushed fennel seeds, salt and pepper, and roasting happily in the oven with potatoes and onion roasted in balsamic vinegar. Can’t wait for dinner-time !

Pigs can fly

I’m not the most decisive person in the world. Sure, I like a lot of things, like a fabulous pair of shoes, a good laugh and great friends. But if there’s one thing I can be sure of that I love (apart from Danny, of course), it’s food. And that means everything about it. Buying it, watching it grow, cooking it, and especially, eating it.

And so begins my journal of food. It’s nothing too deep, I just want to take you through my experiences of food, through my eyes (and belly)…