Don't Waste Your Life

I had just landed from the airport and having eaten a really unsatisfying "Continental" breakfast on board the flight and the most expensive egg sandwich I had ever eaten (it cost A$8 at the airport cafe while waiting for Hannah.. I only bought it because I was hungry from the unsatisfying breakfast), we decided to head for lunch after checking in at the hostel.

Zhen has always been mentioning to me this yummy crepe place which seems to be her 'coping strategy' from hectic work schedules, so it was fitting that my first Melbournian meal would be turn out to be French buckwheat crepes.

The crepe here are not the soft-ish kind kind we tend to get back home, which I suspect has more flour and egg components. The ones here are made from buckwheat flour, which give the crepe a crispier consistency. And my gosh, it also smells darned good. We had 2 savoury crepes and shared a dessert crepe.

She ordered a ratatouille crepe, which was essentially a crepe with cheese and vegetable stew. I've never been a fan of tomatoes which really form the tangy base of the stew, so I didn't enjoy this one too much.



I liked mine much better. Don't ask me why, but I've recently become a big fan of smoked salmon. The flavour and the umami factor is just amazing, whether you eat it raw with a good potato salad, or cooked like in my crepe here.


Omg. Just look at that gorgeous sunrise egg-yolk leaking nicely out of my crepe. And just that little bit of smoked salmon poking its smile out at me from inside the crepe, almost as if to entice me to slurp it all up with the delicious egg yolk. I'm glad the waiter recommended me this egg and salmon crepe. I had initially wanted egg, ham and smoked salmon in my crepe to which she exclaimed in horror: "That's ridiculous! You either take meat or you take the fish. Not both together. It doesn't make sense." Hahaa. And so I obeyed her orders like a good Singaporean.






Dessert crepe. This was a Jaffa crepe with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Jaffa just means chocolate with orange, according to the now-naturalised Australian girl. Syrupped oranges, sweet, sour and bitter. Chocolate sauce, sweet and bitter. Crepe, hot and rough-textured. Ice-cream, sweet, cold and smooth. WHAM. Both Zhen and I couldn't help it but let out an uncontrolled pleasured 'ahhhhhhhhhhh......' What else can one ask for in life? (I think a good friend is still better :p )


Iced cafe. Nothing to shout about. I am on the lookout for the elusive perfect cafe. Watch this spot!

139 Nelson Place
Williamstown VIC 3016

(03) 9397 2300

• Lunch Mon-Fri 12.00-3.00pm
• Dinner Mon-Fri 6.00pm-10pm
• Saturday 12.00-5.00pm, 6.00-10.00pm
• Sunday 9.30am-9.30pm

Being Bishan-er working in Bukit Timah, I finally had a chance to go to Tampines 1 today! Didn't look around too much, but mainly spent most of the time dinnering with Jerm at Bakerzin!

This is my first time at Bakerzin actually eating food. I have had cake there before (Lavenda Chocolate cake) and coffee (their coffee was damned good e last time I tried a few years back), but I've never had food.

I think the pictures will speak for themselves first.

Wonderful, unlimited bread. Much better than Cartel bread. The cranberries were wonderfully tangy and sweet. And the ciabatta goes SO well with the soup. Perfect combination.

Jerm lusting after the pennes. I meant penne. Aiya, the pasta la. What you thinking about!?

My spaghetti with poached egg and ham. And best of all, Hazelnut Butter!! I've never tasted anything like it before, but it was certainly good stuff!! The Hazelnut Butter added another dimension to the flavour of the pasta besides just the usual olive oil, salt and garlic, but I think the ham and the egg were a little bland.

Beautifully done baked chicken wings. Seriously, the best I've eaten. I want to learn to make this. It tastes wonderfully Asian-flavoured, but yet not the oily fried chicken that we Asians are so used to.

Gorgeous warm chocolate cake with berries, orange confit and vanilla ice-cream. Gorgeous, just gorgeous. Orgasmic. Poke into the cake and the warm liquid chocolate inside flows/ gushes out. You tell me, is that orgasmic or what??

I must say, Bakerzin has done a really good job expanding from a cafe specialising in cakes to a full-fledged restaurant. It's set meal prices, offer of classier range of breads like the cranberry bread, quality coffee has helped it to tread the fine line between the more expensive restaurant and one a typical professional/ executive would go to for dinner on a Friday night after a long week.

Food's a wonderful tweak from the usual pastas and entrees we get at other places and it makes eating there a unique experience, but still the flavours match well. And the freshness and quality of ingredients is definitely there. I would so go again. Plenty of chances.

Thanks Jerm for dinner!! :)

When Trans Centre had our 30th anniversary, I won a $50 voucher to Al Forno (East Coast) which is an Italian restaurant specialising in adult entertainment. Haaaahaa. No la. It's just that Edgar says the name sounds like a combination of Fornication and Porno. Cool. I shall try it out and see if the food is really orgasmically good.

And since Ginnette was kind enough to use her Marina Square vouchers to exchange for some Muji stuff for me, I decided to be nice to use my voucher to buy her dinner. :)

Company is more important than food, so here's a photo of the person who refused to be photographed.

In any case, I think the food was pretty good. We ordered a Pizza Primavera, Squid Ink linguine and Saute di Vongole (clams in white wine sauce).

Of the 3, I personally enjoyed the pizza a lot. The dough was chewy, freshly baked and I think the cheese was really tasty. I loved the super savoury Parma Ham too! Woots!

The clams. Omg. I think there must've been like a thousand clams in there. But I loved the garlicky buttery taste of the sauce. I might've gotten half-drunk from it. Clammy clammy clammy clammy clams.
Remnants of our squid ink pasta. :) Gorgeous stuff. Remnants is my favourite word.

Thankies Gin for dinner! :)
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Random thoughts.





Peace out.

I went for my very first cooking class today!! Omg. I was so excited.. and the cooking class certainly didn't disappoint. It was exciting watching a top-rate chef before my eyes chopping, boiling, stirring.. and creating dishes that aren't difficult for me to do at home! Woo! I don't have pictures of the place, just of the food ok?


I must say, I never liked tomato. It's always too sour for me, but this was one soup that I really lapped it all up. The tomato and the scent of the cumin went perfectly well, to the point that you can't really taste the boundaries between the tomato and the cumin. As in, they are fused together and not 2 distinct flavours. You get what I mean?


Yum. I love how the chef drizzled lemon juice and olive oil over the chicken. And how the spices and the sourness of the juice takes away the oily-ness of the skin. And the herbed rice was superb as well. Just simple rice with spring onions and parsley and some butter mixed into it and steamed in a pot. I never knew it could taste so different.


This, for me, was the dish of the day. I have never eaten such tender lamb, with absolutely no lamb smell at all. I took the liberty of getting 4 racks of lamb. Haaa. I loved how the pomegranate sauce and green chilli gave the lamb a kind of a twang to balance its heavy meatiness. And the potatoes were gorgeously fried in butter as well.


While many angmoh desserts tend to have lots of cream in it, this was a very cool and refreshing dessert. The soup is essentially orange juice cooked with some sugar and spices, before being poured on top of the cubed melons and chilled. It was served with some mascarpone ice-cream as well.


The ice-cream was made just when the class started. It was essentially mascarpone cheese (the cheese used in tiramisu), cream, sugar syrup and some lime and orange zest (basically just lime and orange skin). For me, the winner for this dessert lies in the tiny bit of zest. It makes a world of difference and reduces the jelat-ness of the cheese miraculously. I think some more zest would have been nice tho.

Oh and I must write about the poor chef's assistant today. He couldn't seem to do anything right. From the start, he cut the melon cubes too big and had to re-cut them. Sian diao. Dropped pans. Sian diao. Kena scolded for not washing the chicken thighs. Sian diao. Tried to help and then the chef said 'I don't need you to help me with this.' 'You were one step too fast.' 'I do everything for a reason.' Poor guy. The more he got scolded I think the more nervous he got. I guess chefs are anal. And I kind of got to watch a real-life Hell's Kitchen right in front of me. Weee.

Different people have different things that bring back their memories. For some, it is music, a familiar song, others it is when they pass by a familiar place, or a familiar smell. For me, food always brings back memories. Some of you guys have read my previous kueh entries. Sometimes, I really think food has so much meaning in it, it's really much more than filling our tummies.

And so this morning, because my parents went out early, I had to settle my Saturday morning breakfast on my own. Which happens a lot nowadays anyway, I don't think I've eaten so many meals alone for quite a while. And so I strolled down the row of coffesshops downstairs, thinking of how i'd love to eat 'the-perfect-Saturday-morning-breakfast' today. Somehow, bak chor mee or the usual fried bee hoon with luncheon meat didn't occur to me as 'the-perfect-Saturday-morning-breakfast'. Hmm. And so I strolled some more. Until I passed by a stall that sells.. LOR MEE!!

Immediately, without a shadow of a doubt, I knew that was going to be my 'PSMB' (Perfect Saturday Morning Breakfast). I continued walking to the other coffeeshops only because I wanted to see how many Lor Mee stalls there were in the area. I had already set my mind.

And so I settled down at one of the coffeeshops, had my Lor Mee, no garlic, no vinegar, and a little bit of chilli. And now I'm fully satisfied. Damn shiok.

The thing I couldn't understand is, how on earth did Lor Mee come into my mind and fit so perfectly into my image of PSMB?? I couldn't understand.

And so, I went on one of my usual reflection sessions. And I'm happy to have the answer. :)

You see, my parents, when they first got married, lived in a small rental flat that they rented for about $140 per month. They had me only after 5 years of marriage and by then they had already moved out of that small rental flat. But you know what? There was a small coffeeshop downstairs at their place (which is still there btw), selling the best... LOR MEE!

And so as I grew up, once in a while when my parents decided they wanted a good Saturday morning breakfast to kickstart their weekend, they would bring us to this Lor Mee stall. And I would be really happy, because I always had this image that going out for breakfast on a weekend morning was a 'Happy Family' kind of thing. We still go there once in a long while for breakfast on Saturday mornings. :)

Lor Mee, now I know, smells of heritage to me. It reminds me of my parent's impoverished past, it reminds me of their love for me, it reminds me of what it means to be family, it reminds me of simple pleasures.

So Lor Mee, is my 'Perfect-Saturday-Morning-Breakfast'.