Thursday, September 28, 2006

Dining in Los Angeles

Marina Del Rey, LA.

Last night's dinner was at Baja Cantina, on Washington Boulevard. It was recommended by the hotel staff. The restaurant has a nice ambience, and the food is good.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Cantina the Food & Wine Stop

This Italian restaurant is located on Greenleaf Road, off Sixth Avenue, nestled in the midst of a quiet residential neighbourhood. It seemed the most unlikely location for a restaurant, but also provided a peaceful and homely setting for dinner.

We were there for dinner this evening. I had mushroom soup and spinach fettucine vegetarian. And we ordered garlic bread for everyone. The mushroom soup was tasty. The garlic bread just nicely done. The main courses came out nice and hot, and in generous portions!

There is also a wine cellar - with tables inside! A waiter told us that those tables can be reserved, with the criteria that the customers buy one bottle of wine for their meal.

Overall, it was an extremely pleasant experience.

PS: The restaurant also has a website!

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Mustard

For lunch today, we drove to Race Course Road. There have been numerous new restaurants opened up there in the last couple of months.

We decided on Mustard (32 Race Course Road). Turns out, it was a good choice. They have a vegetarian selection. The food was tasty, and not overly oily. The roomali roti and the naan were lovely.

Review on STOMP's ST Foodies Club "Mustard has some lovely flavours"
(Note: the review is not specifically on vegetarian dishes)

Friday, September 15, 2006

Kinara (at Holland Village)

Last night, my DH and I invited another couple for dinner. We decided on Kinara at Holland Village, and found that it was this couple's introduction to Indian food... Especially Indian vegetarian food.

It was a DISASTER!!

We ordered pakora as starters... when the food came, there was no sign of the pakora! We cancelled it, as it was just something to eat before we got our dinner.

As we started digging into the food, I realised, to my horror, that the dishes were full of onion. Yes, there were more onions than anything else. For example, the okra dish was so full of onions we probably got something like 3 little pieces of okra each.

What's more, all the dishes looked absolutely soaked in oil!

Later, I got the chance to try the yellow dhal we ordered... eew! it tasted like eating melted butter with some dhal flavor!

In the end, there was food leftover, and though we were not exactly full, none of us wanted to eat any more.

And it is not like this is a cheap place! We could have gone to the other restaurant across the road for better food at slightly lower price. Please remind me not to go back there.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Munchie Monkey Café

A student-run café at the National University of Singapore, Munchie Monkey serves decent food at reasonable prices. The café is on the third floor of Yusoff Ishak House.

Its menu includes various soups, salads, pastas, pizzas, sandwiches, as well as starters like wedges and onion rings. I recently tried its cakes, and the chocolate truffle is wonderfully chocolatey!

Friday, August 04, 2006

Yunnan Garden Restaurant

Today, I went with my colleagues to Yunnan Garden Restaurant for lunch. This restaurant is located on the 5th floor of the IMM building.

As usual, whenever we go out for lunch, my colleagues have to make sure there is vegetarian food. They have been really good at that. This time, there were 21 of us, so we had 2 tables and the omnivores had the set lunch -> an 8-course meal that looked pretty good!

Me? Ah, I wasn't forgotten. The restaurant also catered a 6-course vegetarian menu for me. It was quite good! I had
  • soup with bamboo pith
  • tofu on a bed of greens
  • (goodness, I can't remember what I ate now!)
  • wrap of po-piah vegetables in lor-bak skin
  • ee-fu noodles
  • mango pudding

What is nice is that there wasn't too much of the mock-stuff!

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Rangooli

Rangooli is an Indian restaurant at Pasir Panjang Village. Though the place is small, the food is good and reasonably priced.

Earlier this year, it also started operating a stall at "Best Bites", a food center in Science Park I. That totally makes up for the crappy choices at lunch in Science Park I. Recently I noticed that Rangooli has also taken over operation of the "Western Food" stall next to it. It must be doing well - good for them! :-)

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Sakae Sushi

We met our cousin at the airport last weekend when she was on a 4-hour stop-over. We had lunch at Sakae Sushi...

Sakae Sushi now has a vegetarian menu! Generally, I would not be so inclined to go to Japanese food, as the vegetarian choices are not exactly so exciting. However, we thought we'd give it a try this time.

It was actually much more pleasant than I'd expected. The sushi belt had the same boring stuff, but the set meal was actually not too bad. There was also several other items on the menu which looked good but we did not try. The meal, though had lots of mushrooms - which my DH avoids, so I got to have most of the fungus.

Overall, I wouldn't mind going there again!

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Vari Nice: coffee-shop in Clementi

We were in Clementi last night, as I had to pick up a parcel from the post office. Before, the only vegetarian stall we could find open at 8pm is the one in the coffee shop beside NTUC. It always took an awfully long time for us to get our food, and, we felt, was overpriced!

Last night, we found that the coffee shop has been refurbished, and is now called Vari-Nice. How corny! It is now brighter and cleaner, and there is a new vegetarian stall. It was ok, not spectacular, but at least we know there is somewhere reasonable we can go when we're in that area at night!

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Kopitiam Food Courts

Kopitiam means, quite literally, "coffee shop". In Singapore, the Kopitiam Group is running a rapidly expanding chain of food courts. In the Kopitiam food courts I have been to, there is never a vegetarian stall where I can get something to eat. There is only one exception - the one at NUH.

I have sent an email enquiring why. Hopefully they will respond soon!

Monday, June 12, 2006

Vegetarian Restaurant in Paris!

I was surfing and chanced upon the website of "Victoire Supreme du Coeur". It is a vegetarian restaurant in Paris, near Les Halles! If I had found out about it much much earlier (like before I went to Paris), I would had tried it!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Travelling in Germany

When in France and Estonia, I had not too much problems with because
a) I know some French and
b) many Estonians speak English

However, being in Oberstdorf, Germany, was like being plonked onto an alien planet! We could sort of guess what some words meant just by reading them, like milch (milk)and eis (ice) but others just didn't make sense. Yet others have a totally different meaning to what I would have guessed, like pepperoni (chilli peppers).

Now, I had thought that German meals were just meat, meat and more meat. However, they did understand what vegetarianism was all about - the word is "vegetarisch". And they do respond correctly when we asked for "kein Fleisch" (no meat).

Of course there is always salad and bread. Many restaurants we went to also had a selection of vegetarian soups. It seems to be the Asparagus season, and the Spargelcremesuppe was good!

Apart from that, we also found out how to order a couple of simple warm dishes. At lunch one day, we had Gemüse mit BratKartoffeln, which is a mix of vegetables, with fried potatoes. Another day, we had some Schnitzel which turned out to be a vegetable patty served with rice. We also tried a cheese pasta, which tasted like very heavy mac-and-cheese.

Overall, though it wasn't a vegetarian's haven, it was not as unfriendly as I had anticipated it to be!

Thursday, May 11, 2006

We are vegetarians

As vegetarians, our dietary preference occassionally poses some trouble when going out for a meal.

Here, we will share our dining experiences - good and bad!