Bosses, Vivocity

Today was not an ordinary Monday.

What usually entails is confinement to my desk, where I furiously reduce my email inbox to an acceptable level of chaos. However I am now in between jobs (= free days off). Today I woke up in the morning and instead of rushing my ass to the train station, I decided to do laundry and had a leisurely breakfast. Then I read the news and played maybe 382 frustrating rounds of Bejeweled (that shit is addictive).

Then I was bored.

Thank goodness I had lunch with my honey bearkins Ron to look forward to! We decided to go to Bosses. Upon seating we were presented with this appetizer of what seemed to be some sort of crispy battered fish skin thing. We happily tucked in. It was pretty good, but later we found that it was not complimentary (darnit) and felt slightly cheated of $3.80. Oh well!

1. Noodles. We ordered this stewed beef la mien dish, hoping it was the same one that he had eaten the last time he was here. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

What it was, though, was chunks of stewed beef and potato in a sweet-ish broth and plenty of thick chewy noodles served in a giant bowl. Was okay-tasting but we both thought it could have been a bit spicier. I would have preferred a leaner cut of beef in my noodles too. Honestly not a very memorable order.

2. Fried carrot (turnip!) cake. This was wrapped in an omelette, which made it pretty unique. Served with dried shrimp chilli oil.

This was yummy, but maybe because of the liberal amounts of chilli oil applied to each bite.

3. Siew Mai (it was named something like the Superior Queen Mother of all Siew Mais I think). I enjoyed this because there was a whole shrimp sitting atop of each serving and it was very tasty.

I would order a whole basket for myself the next time I visit hehe.
4. Chicken feet (phoenix claw?) I don't eat feet, but Ron happily devoured this.

5. Signature Custard Bun. This didn't disappoint - the custard egg yolk filling was good! It kind of spilled all over our plates so please be careful you don't spray your fellow diners while launching into it.

We should have made them serve this last so that it was nice and WARM and gooey. Definitely also a repeat order in the future!

All in all it was a good lunch. Wasn't terribly heavy (on the stomach and pockets). Not sure if they have discount tie-ups with any credit cards, but they should if they don't!

HGW Link : http://www.hungrygowhere.com/bosses_vivocity/

Melt the World Cafe, Mandarin Oriental

Was at Melt the World Cafe with a grand total of 31 people (!) for a company's treat. Been hearing a lot about this place, so I was pleasantly surprised when the news came down that we're going there for a celebratory feast (and it's free too!). Though my cold stark exterior insists that buffets are not really my thing because everybody leaves the buffet feeling damaged, destroyed, and terrible about themselves, buffets are the perfect cure for the indecisive, and the your-plate-always-looks-yummier-than-mine diner (...me). Besides, nobody complains when they have such a gastronomical selection to choose from 8-)

First thing that caught my eye when I was surfing this place online was the cheese platter - one can never have too much cheese! While it was an interesting selection of cheese besides the usual cheddar and edam, many of the cheeses I felt were leaning towards overfermentation / blue cheesaization. Many of them were slightly purgent, which is strange especially when it also exudes nutty flavours @.@ I guess I still prefer gouda, which they didn't have. Gahhh. It comes with crackers and an assortment of nuts next to it.

Sashimi was reasonably fresh, with just salmon, maguro and hamachi to pick from. The colour on the salmon looks pretty good, although it was a bit too soft to the bite, but that's what you get when you leave it out unchilled.

That nice big roggenbrot was tempting me to defile it, gahhh. Too bad it was display only. I guess if everybody took a slice outta every piece of bread the display would look pretty pathetic D: There was another rye bread on the cutting board though, which was pretteh good with the chive cream cheese that was next to it. There were other spreads, with a selection of hams including prosciutto on melons.

Ah, and what self-deserving buffet would be complete without a raw bar! The oysters were reasonably awesome, and were next to a selection of asian chillis, red/green tobasco and lemons. There were also mussels, scallops, prawns and crab claws, although I found the crab claws overly frozen and powdery to my liking.

I find the raw bar to be the best place to get your money's worth :D The lobsters on the other side of the raw bar were pretteh dang awesome too. While also overly frozen like the crab claw, lobster meat generally gets hard instead of powdery when it's cold, so it was fine. I picked one which surprisingly had a huge hunk of lobster roe in it :DDDD

Moving on to the cooked food area, there was sooo much going on. Next to these awesome kebabs and tandoori was some chicken and beef roast, pasta and noodles.

Continuing the indian spread was naan, chicken and fish curry and an assortment of vegetable curries with acha. A good friend of mine convinced me to mix 4 achas with curry and eat it with the naan. With my experience and achas and curries I should have known better @.@ My mouth literally black-holed itself from the sourness.

Besides this there was also cream sauce sausages, seafood, roasted vegetables, pork knuckles, chicken roast, pumpkin soup (incredibly lacklustre), and a spread of assorted thai foods as well, which were surprisingly good. And the chinese roast pork was TO DIE FOR. Good lord.

The dessert area I think alotta people agree was where it got even awesomer. There was an assortment of nonya cakes, puddings in shot glasses, and cakes! Unfortunately it was around this time where Stomache No. 1 refused to cooperate anymore by rejecting further more input.



Bread and butter pudding was ok, but I guess after seeing Nigella Lawson's caramel croissant pudding, this was lacklustre :D Then again a sack of diamonds would be lacklustre next to her croissant and butter pudding, daymn.

And to top everything off was a chocolate fountain with fruits next to some waffles and ice cream. The waffles were surprisingly crisp and sweet, and nutella + pistachio ice cream on the waffle was heavenly :D

So ends the massive sinning of 31 people.

HGW Link : http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/melt_the_world_cafe/