Ending the celebrations at Sage

It was hard to find a date everyone in the family could make it for my birthday dinner, but we finally found it before September officially ended.

Based on a recommendation from an ex-colleague who usually celebrates her extra-special occasions at Sage, and many good reviews online, I decided to have dinner there.

Since there were 7 of us, we could try almost every main course on the menu. We opted for 1 set dinner since dad wanted the lamb and ordered ala carte for the rest.

For appetisers:
Foie gras
Mushroom soup
Caesar salad that came with the set dinner

Reviews all seem to rave about the foie gras at Sage so we had 2 portions of it. I may be prejudiced, but I prefer the foie gras at Osia.

The mushroom soup was really really good although the eggy thing that came with it was a little strange.

The caesar salad with smoked salmon, walnuts and apples was really refreshing. I enjoyed that!

For main course:
cod
duck confit
black angus beef (portion for 2)
lamb shank
aglio olio (Edmund requested for mushrooms and smoked salmon instead of their usual seafood aglio olio)

While the food was good, it wasn't fantastic enough for me to want to eat there again.

For dessert:
Peanut butter panna cotta with raspberry sherbert (came with the set dinner)
Lavender bread and butter pudding with coconut sherbert (birthday complimentary)


I really enjoyed the panna cotta and bread and butter pudding by itself but I didn't see how the taste of the 2 sherberts complimented each dessert at all!

In my opinion, I'd rather eat at Osia.

(Btw, the best bread and butter pudding with coconut ice cream I've had is at Margarita's at Faber Avenue. Unfortunately, they don't serve the bread and butter pudding anymore. You can still try the coconut ice cream with their other desserts though!)

Bangkok

We went to Bangkok with the excuse that we were celebrating our 1st year wedding anniversary. We took quite awhile deciding on the date, the airline and the hotel, and if you ask me, I might have changed all 3 decisions on hindsight.


We ended up going the weekend the red shirts decided to have their peaceful protest. Thank God it was really peaceful but that also meant the shops in the area were all closed that evening, and for some strange reason, the hotel reception adviced us not to go to the Suan Lum bazaar that wasn't anywhere near the protest site. Nonetheless, it was quite cool to see the sea of red shirts from the train we were in. (Just imagine all the shopping centres along Orchard Road closed and the whole road just packed with people dressed in red instead of motor vehicles.)

This was my 1st time taking a budget flight out of Singapore. Faith & Boon Yeow calls Jetstar 'LATESTAR' and it sure lived up to it's nickname. Our 9.20pm flight home ended up a 1.10am flight. No more LATESTAR for me if I can help it.


Another 1st for me was taking the train from Bangkok airport right to the doorstep of the hotel. Previously, I've always taken a taxi. But with the notorious traffic jams and the fact that we had a lot of time on our hands (we landed at 9am), we decided to take the train. I would highly recommend this mode of transportation if your hotel is within walking distance from a BTS station. We took the airport rail (15 baht) to Phaya Thai station and then took the BTS 1 stop to Ratchethewi to Asia Hotel (15 baht). All this in under 1 hour.

Asia Hotel was great for it's proximity to the BTS. It's one of the few hotels in Bangkok that is linked directly to the station. The hotel is terribly old but I was banging on getting a newly renovated room. While we got upgraded to a premier room which was huge and probably really classy in the 1980s, it was too run down for my liking in 2010! ;p But at the end of the day, it was just as well that we didn't pick a hotel near the peaceful protest area which many well-known and popular hotels are situated!


Biggest purchase for me: Wacoal underwear
Biggest purchase for Edmund: a pair of spectables with transition lens


Due to the protest, we had less opportunity to shop... a blessing in disguise for Edmund! haha!

At Osia with cousin Grace

I was asking Grace for restaurant recommendations since she’s in the F&B industry (sort of) and she brought up Osia at Resorts World.

It’s been awhile since the 2 of us caught up outside of an extended family gathering, so we decided to catch up at Osia!

We made it just in time to have the pre-dinner set menu at $38++. For every course, there were 4 choices.

For appetizers:
We had the carpaccio and burnt potato broth. Both were great! I enjoyed the tender angus beef bits in the broth.


For mains:
We had the sea bass and duck. Both were very yummy! Grace asked for extra sauce for the duck.


For dessert:
We had the valrhona hot chocolate soup (over-rated) with black pepper ice cream and macademia nut tart with a berry sherbert (loved it!).


The portions were just nice for me (which are probably too tiny for guys). Grace suggested the foie gras on top of our set and it was exquisite! The winter melon (i think) complimented the foie gras so well. It wasn’t over-powering like some other foie gras I’ve tried.


Thank you Grace for the wonderful dinner! I so enjoyed hanging out with you over good food! I can finally say I’ve been to Resorts World even if I didn’t explore it much! I can't wait to go back to Osia to try out other items on the menu!


On the way out, we were each given 2 paper Resort World lanterns!

Travelling ahead of us

Edmund got us invited to Andy & Yumin's place at Simei for dinner because we wanted to see their new temporary place!

We attended pre-marital classes together. They got married in June 2009 and are expecting their 1st-born in Dec 2010! (We got married in Sep 2009 and are not expecting anytime in 2010! ;p)

Andy and Yu Min were so sweet and thoughtful to bless us with a wedding anniversary present (Kathryn Scott's 'We still believe' CD) and a little birthday present for me!

1st year wedding anniversary

How the year has flown by! God has been so good to us and Edmund has been very good to me! If you are wondering if he still writes me a card every month, HE DOES!

My anniversary present from Edmund:


This time last year, we were in church getting married.

This year, we also spent it in church! Edmund had to preach while I was on backup vocal duty.

After 2nd service, we had a Thai lunch together.


While I got to go home to rest, Edmund had to go back to church all the way till it was time for dinner at Chikuwa Tei at 9 Mohamed Sultan.

Chikuwa Tei is well-known for it’s chirashi don and cod fish hot pot. I was still feeling very full from lunch, so 2 of us ended up sharing a $39 set meant for 1. Unfortunately it wasn't fantastic. I must go back there to try their 2 specialties.

Just in time for our 1st year anniversary were the words of advice and blessings that were written to us at our wedding. Jasmine got them bound up in booklets and decorated them really prettily for us to read through! Even though we only got our hands on them 1 year later, it’s fun to be going through them now!

Overeating in the name of my birthday

The highlight of my birthday was getting to hang out with Edmund and friends eating WAY TOO MUCH!

Pig-out 1: Yamada Restaurant & Sushi Bar at The Sail @ Marina Bay
The cut of salmon sashimi was so generous and fresh. I got a complimentary scoop of my favourite sesame ice cream because it was my birthday!


After that, Edmund and I explored the area, walked around Customs House and into The Fullerton Bay Hotel.


Pig-out 2: Margarita’s at Faber Avenue
I had my favourite catfish dish (only available at Faber) and got a complimentary brownie with a scoop of coconut ice cream!


Pig-out 3: At home
Jasmine, Faith & Yeow came over to chat over Long Flat Moscato wine, Port Salut with Sky Flakes crackers, Awfully Chocolate rum and cherry cake and bak kwa! Haha! They only left at 12.30am cos we kept talking and talking!

Teochew Gals at Ma Maison

What was meant to be a catch up with my teochew gal friends ended up also as an early mini birthday celebration at Ma Maison at The Central.

A lot of people rave about Ma Maison. Because their restaurants are small, there always seems to be a queue. Forget about trying to make a reservation for a Fri/Sat/Sun only 1 or 2 days before. I kiasu-ly made the reservation for 4 of us 2 weeks before!

This is my 2nd time to Ma Maison, and I still don’t find the food memorable. The escargot, tonkatsu set and paella was nice, but I didn’t appreciate the hamburger steak or the beef stroganoff with omu rice. The brownie was quite awful (dry, accompanied by low-class ice cream)!


The girls gave me a really pretty card made by Ivy, surprised me with Taka vouchers (Irene asked me over msn what is a good voucher to buy for a friend and I totally didn’t suspect that it was for me!) and gave me a dinner treat.


The night flew by and I’m looking forward to the next time we catch up... especially now when I'm not in the same church and CPU as them!!!