Sweating grease.
It was a pretty quiet day at the office so a colleague and I decided to hop over to Jurong Country Club for a relaxed lunch.
Looking through the menu I realized they had slashed it down big time and unfortunately all remotely healthy dishes like the ‘Beef Udon‘ I had here before had disappeared. What was left were the usual hawker all stars like ‘Nasi Lemak‘ and such. Seeing there was no way to stick to my “diet” around here I ordered the ‘Fried Hong Kong Style Hor Fun‘ that I like a lot but never order not to become my chubby self from the past again but honestly, what choice did I have?
It was a huge portion and tasted quite nice for the first couple of spoons I shoveled down. The noodles were lovely sticky because of the charred soya sauce and the vegetables and sprouts still had a firm bite. At first I left the beef slices aside as I reckoned them to be tenderized. Positively surprised that they weren’t and because they actually were fairly tasty as well I finished most of them up together with the noodles. It was good, nothing special but good but after I had cleaned up my plate I felt pretty bad and guilty and super greasy at that. It’s always good to eat something ridiculously calorie intense in between but this one maybe just was a wee bit too much.
There was some sort of golfing event going on and the staff seemed to be a bit overwhelmed and confused by the crowd. First they brought my colleague’s food long after I had finished mine before then bringing me a second portion of the hor fun I obviously never ordered. Still a scenic view over the golf course from here and a nice change from the usual places we go but knowing now there’s nothing here to find for a light lunch it might be the last time for a long while before I’ll come back to ‘Golfer’s Terrace’.
Golfer’s Terrace
Jurong Country Club
9 Science Center Road
Singapore 609078
Tel: +65 6568 5111
http://www.jcc.org.sg/
I was on a weekend trip to Hong Kong with three of my friends and as it happens, during our first night we visited a couple of establishments specializing in liquids. This caused us all a rather mediocre feeling the next “morning” but I had the perfect cure lined up for us which I wanted to try since I found out about it. ‘Kau Kee 九記牛腩’ in Central is specialized in ‘Brisket Noodle‘ and always had a fairly long queue waiting in front when I passed by before. Thankfully people don’t take too much time eating at such unpretentious (thanks for the word Andi) places and so it didn’t take us more than twenty minutes to get a table. A friend told me that the portions here were rather small so we ordered two bowls per man. I also tried to order the signature ‘Brisket only in Special Soup‘ for us to share but the waitress practically forbid us to get it because of its’ “lack of authenticity” which later just turned out to be its’ lack of availability.
For the second round I ordered ‘Beef Slices with Rice Noodles‘ which was quite different and rather boring compared to the first bowl. Now obviously they used the same tasty broth but it was missing the extra bit from the e-fu noodles and the rice noodles were so soft that I got really jealous of my friend’s mee pok version. The beef itself was fatty, difficult to bite and therefore the size of the slices just made it odd to chew so I left most of it sitting in the bowl eating around it.
We were actually planning on a sandwich lunch but one of my colleagues wasn’t feeling to brilliant and thought a hot noodle soup would do the trick and so we ended up going to ‘Liu San’, a Taiwanese restaurant at Bukit Timah Plaza I wanted to check out for some time now.
I was going on a business trip to Manila and would normally look for some local food options when traveling but since there was no Filipino restaurant anywhere to be found in or just around the hotel, I tried ‘UMU’ the Japanese restaurant in the lobby. I started with a slap of ‘Maguro Sashimi‘ (tuna) which was soft, tasted fantastically pure and drizzled with calamansi juice just became something else. A good start.
I don’t know why but I really like ‘Ebi Sushi‘ (cooked prawn), no specifically extraordinary taste but the perfect texture makes me order these nearly every time I’m in a Japanese restaurant and the ones at ‘UMU’ where some of the best I have ever had. They were clean, huge with a great bite and stuck to the rice perfectly. I loved them.
I wanted to keep it a tad healthier so I resisted my desire to order the ‘Agedashi Tofu‘ and ordered the ‘Hiyayakko‘, a cold tofu dish, instead. It was a lot but the beancurd tasted nicely milky and mixed with the chopped scallions, grated ginger and dipped into tempura sauce it honestly was really really nice.
Next was a fat slice of ‘Otoro‘ (fatty tuna belly). The rose meat melted between the otherwise rather hard and extremely chunky white bits which were really difficult to chew down all followed by an equally weird undefinable piece of chunky fat underneath. Taste wise good but texture, oh my.
This was followed by a nice selection of small dishes like fried fish cubes, a selection of good quality sushi and sashimi, sweet crab legs, maguro soup (tuna), a wonderfully surprising ‘Agedashi Eal‘ and some sweet and creamy ‘Uni Handrolls‘ (sea urchin).
My favorite dish of the night was a lightly seared ‘Beef Sushi‘. It had such a strong beefy flavor and even though cut fairly thick didn’t require any chewing at all. No teeth needed. Simply amazing.
Get Your Grub On! 