Dining at Dian Xiao Er

Rating: ★★★★

Went for dinner with my family at Dian Xiao Er @AMK Hub yesterday, and it was packed with people. A rather ineffective queue system though. We started queuing for a table for 5+1, not knowing exactly how long it would take. "Not too long," was what I heard them tell everyone. There was no number, so we had to stand in the line at the exact same location throughout the wait. That's how they differentiate who came first. Finally, we got our seats after standing for 45 mins. We could however order first, so food actually arrived shortly after we'd taken our seats.

Overall, queuing up for seats was the bottleneck for me. I guess we were unlucky too because we had a large group right before us. 15 of them. Two groups of 3 who came after us were seated first. It appeared that they would give seats according to the party size whenever a table had cleared up, reasonably. It was very strange then, because when we saw traffic OUT, there was no guarantee of traffic IN. When we were finally seated after another 10-15 mins, the 15 sat down at a large rectangular table in the corner. We took a separate smaller rectangular table towards the middle of the space. The party of 7 behind us took a separate round table. ie. For the past 10-15 mins, at least, we can be sure that the smaller rectangular table and the round table were already empty, since we did not see any more traffic coming out of the restaurant during this period, and tables were separate so we need not depend on the 15 to get our seats, vice versa. Furthermore, we stood for 10-15 mins more, at least, because the waitresses were just trying to settle seats for the larger party, or so it seemed.

I'm not sure of the situation at other Dian Xiao Er branches. This was also my first time to one of them. But I did think that the food wasn't bad, ratings as follow.
Favorites: the wintermelon soup, which had a light and natural sweetness from scallops; Poached Spinach with Century and Salted Egg, quite a unique taste.
Quite good: Prawn Ball with Mayo Sauce; Duck Roasted with Ten Wonder Herb.
Not recommended: Mongolian Spare Ribs, I personally thought it had a weird taste.
Some pictures available on their web.

I might go there again for lunch. :) HUNNGRRRRYYY!

Jackson Square's Kopitiam

updated tasty ratings (Apr 15):
ECONOMY RICE STALL Rating: ★★
NOODLE SOUP STALL Rating: ★
(yes, I started to eat at this stall again. so far no other bad incidences)
CHICKEN RICE STALL Rating: ★★
(closed down!?)
ROTI PRATA STALL Rating:
(still haven't try yet)
FRUIT & DRINKS STALL Rating: ★★
(their pineapples usually quite juicy and sweet. despite watermelon juice being too plain, the starfruit juice is good)
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EEEK!! MY GAWD! I was happily eating my fish beehoon soup today @lunch until I realized some weird looking thing in my spoon.. WOORRRRRRRRM!!! Eeeeeeeeeee~ And I thought it tasted not bad the first time, so I ordered it again today. So gross that I lost my appetite. Here is the evidence:


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This kopitiam (cafe) was opened just recently, downstairs of my office complex. Convenient location for people working @Jackson Square, Toa Payoh. There are 5 stalls: 1) 菜饭 economy rice stall 2) noodle soup stall (the one that sells $4 fish beehoon soup) 3) chicken rice stall 4) roti prata stall 5) fruit & drinks stall. So I guess I'm never eating the noodle soup there again. Have a slight noodle soup phobia now.

GG, just look at the color!! Plus, the first time I bought this, it was like 2/3 of this size. Same price. Kaya + butter toast was $1.20 for 2 slices. A mini cup of ginger tea (those instant packets) is $1. I have yet tried the other 2 stalls, but I heard the Indian stall charges insanely as well.

THE ONLY GOOD VALUE: the chicken rice stall is good! GREAT service/attitude and cheap!! Only $2.50 for a plate of chicken rice and a small bowl of soup (refillable)!! The first time I ate there (off peak hour ard 3pm), the towkay even came to refill my bowl with HOT soup!!

Back in Singapore: Day 1-3 Quick Updates

Day 1: Airport + Cargo Center (Wed, 8/27)
i hurried to the baggage claim area and skimmed through the row of spectators at the viewing glass. i saw my family.. but where's my hunny!? there!! a tall dark dude with a bear-like hairstyle just appeared beside baba. i beamed. :D we spent our next few hours together, settling the paperwork for chibi. my special post-flight snack (durian and mango cheong fun) went stale because of that. :'(

Day 2: Home visits + Comex (Thu, 8/28)
this is the beginning of our dating/family rep farming (actually this began on airport night) fiesta. breakfast with my parents near my house, "short" visit to wx's house, followed by the computer exhibition (comex) and dinner with baba at suntec city. hunny will be advising my new-to-be-custom-built desktop!! :p

Day 3: Science Center + short Bugis trip (Fri, 8/29)
i saw hunny's sister today but was too shy to talk! :x she took us into science center.. (whispers, for free)

we spent 3.5 hours at the science center!! (whispers, that's basically for kids) tried on several mini games, two of which test your memory. the first one is a typical color memory game: 4 colors (red, blue, green yellow); repeat chain in the same order as instructed, each time the chain increases by 1. one of the ogre dailies in blade's edge mountains is a direct copy of this. the longest chain i can remember is 7. hee hunny is 6. :p the other is a alpha memory game: a long seemingly random string of alphabets GPOSBVCRMTVCSIANASAOBKDBS. how much of this can you remember? there is a good way to remember it (for singaporeans). i'm the leeter one here of course. (whispers, hee hunny is epic fail :p) other games include this quiz testing how unique you are among science center visitors. hunny's uniqueness was higher than mine T_T

then we went to bugis and stopped by sim lim square's food court to eat 牛肉饭+小笼汤包! hunny says it's lvl 2.5-3 food. i think not bad!

Rating: ★★

speaking of food, i am already hungry!! D: nasi lemak for tomorrow's breakfast, but hunny cannot come with me. sad :(

P.S: 2 more books sold on amazon! whee! and new socks to go with my new shoes :D

SweetWater Beer Tasting

Rating: ★★★★

Visited a small beer brewery this evening.. they have a beer tasting/tours session every Wed, Thu, and Fri starting at 5:30pm. Pay $8 and get a "SweetWater" glass + 6 "beer" tickets! Didn't tour the brewery BUT drank 3 almost-glassful of beer, 3 different brews. 1st glass: Blue. Light ale with a hint of blueberries, 4.9% alcohol. 2nd glass: 420. West coast style pale ale, 5.9%. 3rd glass: Roadtrip. A summer only brew, 5.4%. I only drank 3 glasses and couldn't drink anymore. My head was feeling absolutely bloated after the second. Needed to pay attention to my footsteps so I walk like normal. Came home with my sweetwater glass and 3 beer tickets. Sigh, I know I'm not a good drinker. :(

Front view. See the crowd?

Back view. The brewery basically has a lot of those big containers you see here.

Pay $8 to get a stamp on your hand, collect your beer glass and tickets!
Oh, and your ID pls.

Grab your beers!! :D

xiao guo (2nd) and baba (4th).. mm the difference between the driver and the passenger.

End. :)

World's Best Fish Tacos: Taqueria del Sol

Rating: ★★★★★

I've never been a fan of mexican cuisine. Growing up in Singapore, my knowledge of mexican food was: beans, burrito, Taco Bell. Maybe more if I was from a richer family. In any case, I hate beans. So bleh.

However, I admit there are good mexican food in this world after all. Taqueria del Sol. Fish tacos. No beans. Yum yum. If you ever come visit Atlanta, you must try this! Even my mama, who never enjoys any food other than her own cooked food, enjoys it. And my baba, who hates to wait, is happily willing to stand in the long line and wait. And they never take too long to serve. Great service, great food.

Heard that it's world's 3rd best.
Soft taco shell. Fresh fried fish. Mayonnaise. Jalapeño peppers.
You'll never get sick eating it. :)