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!

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!

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!

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!