Beer at Tawandang - Smells Like A Fart!

Located in a cul-de-sac at Dempsey, Tawandang German Brewery claims to serve both German and Thai food. They brew their own beer (3 kinds: wheat, dunkel and i forget the other) and the place is quite huge, done kind of in the style of Brewerkz. Service is mediocre, as usual there seemed to be too many staff who didn't really know what they were doing.

Another reason to get behind our Increase Productivity Campaign.

Frankly, the menu did not impress me. The food looked suspiciously like plain old Chinese fare, except for the one or two quotidien Thai dishes of fishcake (above) and mango salad. The so-called German fare was even more pedestrian - I've seen more interesting bratwurst at the Austrian roadside stand in Chinatown. You just can't toss a few sausages on your menu, serve up some beer and call yourself a "German" brewery.


To give them some credit, the wheat beer was quite alright, I would recommend it over the Dunkel. However, watch out when you are drinking it though, it smells funnily like......a fart!

Traditional Chinese Medicine

I got sick 2 weeks ago, the same old virus that attacked my gut (made me puke) and gave me flu-like symptoms (cough, cold, sore throat). No fever. I went to the Western doctor (aka GP) to get medication to stop my nausea, vomiting and what-not. It worked as long as eradicating my symptoms went....but a week later, my dry scratchy cough was still bothering me. So I went to the Chinese sinseh (traditional chinese medicine practitioner). The first time, I took the bottled medicine (pre-cooked) which brought ALL the worst symptoms back - day one was my nose dripping non-stop; day two my whole body started to ache; day three i started coughing non-stop, the phlegm that was congealed in my lungs started coming unglued. Completely disgusting.

Second visit to sinseh led me to the home-cooked prescription. I was to boil the entire prescription and drink it religiously. The medicine consists of a ton of leaves, roots, seeds and things I cannot even recognise much less spell. I soaked this for half an hour in water and brought it to a boil. After simmering for 15 minutes, I strained the liquid from the gunk.

Absolutely disgusting and smells as bad as it looks.

But $58 and 4 days of drinking this later, I am glad to say I feel a lot better. All symptoms gone except the putrid phlegm trying to make its way out of me.

Food Critique: Everything With Fries

Ham & cheese sandwich; (Above) Daniel's cheeseburger

We patronised Everything With Fries (458 Joo Chiat Road) on Saturday around lunch time. I wasn't expecting much because (1) I don't like ANYthing with fries and (2) I don't like to wait for my food unless I am certain I am going to be very pleased with it.

First time I tried to eat there (dinner time on a weekend) the queue snaked all the way out to the sidewalk, and after getting a look at the limited menu, I decided I was not going to wait half an hour for burgers and fries.

This time, Daniel and I were shown to a table right away. We inched between the diners on the left and the counter/cake display on the right into a smaller annex that resembled a half-finished IKEA showroom. The walls of the entire restaurant are whitewashed, the floor is cement and the furnishings are....you guessed it -- standard variety IKEA. The dozen or so staff running around were young and presumably "hip" enough to adorn the place which seemed to target the young and yuppified crowd, although the sheer drabness of the "no frills" concept left me in great discomfort, especially when it took more than 20 minutes for our food to arrive, leaving me with nothing to look at but the curious concoctions my neighbours were having, the used volumes of children's books and assorted general fiction on the IKEA bookcase, and of course Daniel at work.

The place was supposedly owned by a (bunch of?) lawyer(s) but I can't verify this as my only lawyer friend (ex- she went in-house) made off with my ex-fiance after we had broken up and decided not to speak with me ever again, likely because she suffered from a deficiency in shame and personal integrity. (NB: NUS matriculation year 1998 for those who are curious)
Our waitress was young, articulate, and seemed to have more interest in serving the customers than the other wait staff combined. I figured she was one of the bosses. We didn't order the "egg soup" because we didn't trust food made of two nouns that didn't belong together.
Daniel's burger got a thumbs up, the meat patty was tender and not over charred. My sandwich was drenched in mozzarella cheese. It was okay but I would have liked more stuffing between my bread (am not a bread person). They had a few variety of fries, I got the curry fries which looked and tasted reminiscent of the spicy fries at Botak Jones while Daniel got the sour cream and onion ones which were quite good. Then again you can't go much wrong with sour cream/onion powder. You can choose skinny or wedgy fries.
Water was diligently offered and refilled. Overall we couldn't complain about the food, although I had to remind our waitress that we hadn't yet gotten our food when I saw people who came later than us getting served first.
Bottomline: price-wise you get value for money although it's not so cheap you would recommend it to everyone. For the waiting time, I would go to Botak Jones because his kopitiam outlets are way more interesting than the ambience here which reminds me distinctly of a semi furnished 3-room HDB flat.

Hungry Ghosts & Hungry People

Tobi, Daniel and I went to Little India to buy garlic, onions and lemons (don't ask me why).

It is the (7th lunar) month of the Hungry Ghosts. During this month, the Festival of the Ghosts includes giving offerings and praying with the giant incense sticks....

..and Chinese Opera to entertain the Ghosts when they are on their One Month Roam Earth Free Pass.

He is rehearsing.

On with shopping...

No basil leaves, but free parsley. Tobi: yuck.

On to lunch.

Oops, I forgot to take pictures before we ate up the food.

This is Nepalese food.

Tobi didn't like the parsley in the chicken.

Order the mixed vegetables cooked Gurkha style.

I am not a Nepalese cuisine expert but the restaurant was cosy (and simple), food authentic and made me feel like eating it on some high mountain top.

51 Chander Road