Friday, 20 September 2013

Mad for Garlic @ Suntec


This is a super up to date post. I'm typing this post while waiting for my husband finish the meal. We passed by this restaurant few weeks ago, and finally have the chance to try it today. Mostly they're selling italian food like pizza, pasta, etc. Most of the food contents garlic, obviously.
hidden place, located behind Din Tai Fung

Today we ordered a pizza called Garlic Snowing Pizza and a Lobster Cream Pasta. I still remember exactly the dishes name because right now i'm looking at the menu. Lol. 

Ok let's start with the pizza, since this come first. It is a thin crust pizza with minimalist topping. Just cheese, some prawn, pinneapple, and fried garlic. When the waiter served it, he asked whether we can some cheese or not. And we say yes. Then he gratin a cheese looks like cheddar on top of the pizza, now i know why it's called 'snowing'. The cheese meant to be the snow. The taste? It's quite yummy, unusual. New taste. But the down part is the fried garlic, some a bit hard and it's stick on my teeth.
garlic snowing pizza
Garlic Snowing Pizza

yumm...

Second dish is Lobster Creamy Pasta. They put fish roe on it, this ingredients brings the pasta into a different level. Portion of the lobster meat also very generous. One minus thing is this dish a bit tasteless to my taste buds. I requested for chili sauce, but they don't provide it.
Lobster Creamy Pasta

Last is dessert time! There's always space for dessert in my tummy. We had Garlic Berry with Ice Cream. Sounds so interesting, right? It is one scoop of vanilla ice cream with berry sauce which has some garlic bits. Yes, there's garlic on my dessert. I don't know how do they do with the garlic until it has no smell at all. It blends nicely with the berry flavour. Very unique dessert that I've never eat before. Eventhough I don't like vanilla ice cream I can finish it.
Garlic & Berry with Ice Cream

Our Meals

wall full of wines

Mad About Garlic
No 3 Temasek Boulevard
#02-300/301
Suntec City Mall Singapore
Nearest MRT : Esplanade (circle line, yellow color)

Thursday, 19 September 2013

Bali Gateway - part 3

Hello, I'm back again... I will end this Bali thingy on this post.

So the next day, we shift hotel to W Retreat & Spa. My brother has a friend who work there, so I contacted her and she gave us free upgrade of the room. Yaaaay! We only booked the cheapest room, which is the garden view. But we got upgraded to the ocean view room. And we got some 'honeymoon present', DIY cocktail, and some stones on the bed and a giant lip pillow, dunno for what...

It was a bit tricky to find this hotel. The entrance is just a small alley. Nobody knows that inside this alley there is a huge property. There were 3 different road, first one is the bamboo road, and then small rocks road and the last is the wooden road. Such a long journey just to go inside. When you already reach the hotel, you just will open your mouth and say wow, this is cool...

They served different drinks at the lobby everyday. And the most important thing is FREE WIFI everywhere.. So I quickly checked-in on my path... LOL, not everyday I can stayed in this kind of hotel.

Once we go inside the room, also we open our mouth widely again and say inside our head, OMG the room is so cool... The bathroom is open concept, with 2 sinks, for her and for him. The best thing is the ocean view, once we open the patio door, quickly we take picture and upload to instagram...

view from our room
bathroom

bath tub with family of squeaky duck

mini bar

the bed

tv is hidden behind that sliding panels, with bose speakers and ipod docks

special present for newlyweds couple, DIY cocktail with candy stirrer


they re-arrange the bed, i like the original arrangement though

better photo from my instagram

mandatory photo spot, checked

I haven't finish yet... The best part during the stay at W is of course the breakfast!! This is a food blog by the way, so the food review will be more dominant... Firstly, when you enter the breakfast place, you have to choose your own cup. There is a wall full of cups, all different designs and sizes. Just choose random lah, it's just a cup anyway... After that you will be offered with coffee or tea like usual, but the unusual thing is the don;t give you just a cup of tea, but a pot of tea! The pot is cute also, but forgot to take picture. Once you settled with your drink, they will handed you with the menu, yes you can choose whatever you want from the menu and they will make it just for you! Of course there's still some buffet options, but not as many as at Ayana. Just a few selections of typical western style breakfast like bread, cereals, fruits, etc. Ignore the buffet, focus on the a la carte menu, because it's wayyy more interesting. You can have steak, foie gras, waffles, pancakes, porridge and so on.. Let's see the pictures so you can understand it better...

wall full with cups. i wanted to choose the big one on the right, but to shy to ask

scrambled egg

waffle and pancakes


fresh honey from the honeycomb

nice display of breads

more breads

my fave breakfast, hash brown with bacon and smoked salmon

foie gras with sunny side

mushroom steak for breakfast, why not

That's our breakfast for 3 days, we ordered almost everything on the menu, even I also ordered the vegetarian menu, which comes out not very nice, but have to eat it anyway, don't waste food!

And for dinner, we visited several place around Seminyak area. There are too many restaurant but not enough time and space on the stomach.. So we only visited some of it :

1. Naughty Nuri's @ Batu Belig
Naughty Nuri's pork ribs, not as nice as people said. Tony Roma's still better. Nuri's one, they don't marinated it long enough, the taste is only on the outside

Naughty Nuri's Fried Duck. The duck is tender and crispy. Recommended!


 2. Ryoshi Sushi, nice sushi with affordable price.

maki sushi, forgot the name, taste normal nothing special

pork katsu, bit too oily but taste as nice as tonkichi


tofu, not nice. too dry

matcha ice cream, my fave

3. Hu'u, near W.
We got hungry in one afternoon, so we just walk from the hotel to random eateries nearby. They sell hi-end indonesian food. The food price almost the same as the drink price. And they didn't provide any ice water. We refused to pay idr18k for a mineral water which we can buy outside for only 2k/bottle. Once a cheapo always a cheapo...

some soto maybe

iga bakar or something, taste very nice
4. Flapjacks
We were still too full, but I die die want to try flapjacks. So we only ordered one sundae and share it.
really nice waffle, must try with empty stomach next time
5. Bubba Gump
Mandatory eating place at Kuta area. The price is bit expensive, but it's worth it. The food is super nice and the atmosphere of the place also different. To save up, just order one appetizer and one main course and then share (cheapo again). The portion is huge you know..
appetizer, this one cost about idr 170k (S$18), this garlic bread is damn nice

mains, grilled fish with potatos which looks like hair
mandatory camwhore location
already pay so expensive must utilized all the photo spots

with the mascot

free prawn crackers
We also went to Ultimo, but didn't manage to take any photo because of the poor lighting. And the food there was ok only. Peppenero still better for italian food.

OK, i will end this post with photos of me camwhoring at Kuta Beach...
act like candid shot but failed

another failed candid shot
Bye... thanx for reading my journey at Bali..

Bali Gateway - part 2

During our 5-days stay at Bali, we rent a car. Just the car without driver. The rental will fetch you at the airport, just tell them what time you will be landing. For the direction, we totally depends on Google Maps from our phone. And it did a good job, even sometimes google maps didn't show us the shortest route. Rent a car is way cheaper than cabbing. The rental fee is also very affordable, around idr 175k/day (S$20 with current rate). We only buy the petrol idr 100k (S$11) for 5 days. We didn't go to far far away places like ubud, kintamani or bedugul. Just around Jimbaran-Kuta-Seminyak. But the traffic wasn't that good. Because there was a major road construction, so it was some traffic jam in certain area.

During our stay at Ayana, we managed to dine at Peppenero and Menega Cafe (Jimbaran Bay Seafood). Peppenero is an italian restaurant (google it for more details), it serves a decent food with super affordable price without any tax and service charge plus free wifi! The phone signal at Ayana is lousy, we cannot get any internet connection there, they don't provide free wifi :(, thet charged around 200k/day for the wifi, i know, crazy right?! At Peppenero, i kinda forgot what did we ordered last time, it was some pasta from their special menu which taste really good.. Some black stuffed pasta with tomato sauce.

black stuffed pasta with tomato sauce, forgot the name
romantic candle light table setting


our dessert, some dark chocolate crepe. taste very nice...
We did some research for where to eat around there, and it shows that the most recommended seafood dinner at Jimbaran is either Lia Cafe or Menega Cafe, apparently Lia Cafe was under renovation. So we went to Menega Cafe. We wanted to order the live fish, but the price is a bit expensive, around 250-300k/piece (S$33), so we went to ordered the frozen one which is only 75k/piece (S$8). Yes we're cheapo. The fish was ok, not that bad also not that special. You get what you pay!
seafood platter for one, but we shared

platter and cheapo fish
dinner by the sea

Overall it was a very decent stay at Ayana. We wanted to try the spa, but once we saw the price list we changed our mind. They charged around idr 2 million/couple (S$220). Ok, nevermind.

Our room has a nice terrace, the door is connected to a mini golf field. But i don't have any photo of the room. I like the bathroom also, it's very huge with a nice bath tub. They also provide some aroma theraphy so you can lit it and relax in the bath tub.

Ok, it's the end of part 2. Will talk about W hotel on another post...

Wednesday, 18 September 2013

Bali Gateway - part 1

Finally, my very first blog post after 9 months since I've created this blog.. One of my new year resolution this year (that only left 3 months now) is to have a blog. At least I'm doing it now! It's better late than never, right?!

So, I'm gonna start with our gateway after our wedding on December last year. It can be as our 'mini' honeymoon. It's been a long time since the last time I've been to Bali, if I'm not wrong it was around 2009. Bali has changed a lot since then. Lots of new cool hotels and cafes has open. Bali now is more like a worldwide tourist destination. Some of the tourist even thought that Bali in individual country, not belong to Indonesia...

This post gonna be a photo-heavy one, pictures talk better than words anyway. We stayed in Bali for 6 days 5 nights. We stayed at 2 hotels. Obviously we chose the most happening hotels. We stayed at Ayana Resort and Spa for 2 nights and at W Retreat, Seminyak for 3 nights. For me, I like Ayana more than W. Both has its own characteristic, but I feel like Ayana is more ethnic and nature-friendly, on the other hand W is very hip and chic and super modern. My hubby likes W better. I did review for both hotels at tripadvisor if you want to find out more details about these 2 hotels. What we do mostly are just eat, sleep and eat again and sleep and eat...
Me upon arriving at Ayana, they give a frangipani wrath. I felt like I'm somehow important person. LOL


view from the breakfast place




they have live gamelan instrument playing


some local food selection


 The buffet breakfast at Ayana is THE BEST!! I think it will takes about 3-4 days to be able to try all the food that they provided. They even provide a fresh fruit station, some rare fruit like mangosteen, rambutan, salak (snake fruit, the english name sounds so eew). And also freshly cut young coconut. The mango is the best, it's ripe an sweet and they cut it like turtle shell, just like what my mom did when I was young.
bread selection




freshly squished juice and the young coconut


rock bar at night




expensive view of the sunsets


one of the 3 swimming pools


another swimming pool


pinkish sky during sunsets. we went to the Rock Bar just to see this view


food we ordered at the Rock Bar, pricey but taste good


me, camwhore amateur


view from the lobby


Rock Bar from top


us, camwhore with the xmas tree
This post is quite long already, I will continue on part 2... Thanx for reading my blog!