Passionflower - A bit of a vent

I had a friend's birthday on the weekend with dinner at Encasa. I'm not going to bother blogging about Encasa since I've been there so many times and have had the same banquet countless times already. Lets just say, the food was fantastic and we had a wonderful time there.

Since dinner was at Encasa, most of us had parked around Central station. The plan was to find a place to sit down for drinks or dessert whilst a few of our designated drivers sobered up. There wasn't many places around that area that wasn't a pub. The best option we had was Passionflower at Capitol Theatre. We actually haven't been to Passionflower for 2 years. The last time we went, they insisted on charging us a Sunday surcharge......on a Saturday night! The incident basically left us boycotting the place. However, we're going to a different branch and we really didn't have many other options to choose from. Plus, I also believe in giving businesses a second chance.

Sitting down, we umm and ahh over the menu before deciding on what we want. A few of the sundaes looked fantastic, except we didn't really like the flavour of ice cream combos they had. As we placed the order, I asked to switch one of the scoops of ice cream for a different flavour. The answer was a flat out NO. Apparently, the the combinations are there "for our enjoyment and cannot be changed". This is also printed in tiny writing on the last page of the menu.

But excuse me? the flavour combinations offered is NOT going to contribute to my enjoyment. For my enjoyment, I would like the combinations changed. I'm not asking for a mish mash sundae. I just wanted to change one scoop of ice cream to a different flavour. I was told I'm not allowed to change the combination of ice cream, but I can ADD a scoop of the flavour I wanted.....at an additional price. Hello?? Did you not say that you can't change the combinations because its for "our enjoyment"? But for a PRICE, I CAN change the combination by adding a new flavour. Nice.

The only other option is I DIY my own sundae and order 2-3 scoops and pay for the flavours I want. Except this works out much more expensive than ordering what is off their menu and I don't get all the condiments I wanted. I decided to stuff the ice cream all together and just get a drink. I was quite turned off by this stage and decided that I'm not even going to bother taking photos.

I had ordered a Passionfruit and Strawberry drink whilst my friend ordered a Passionfruit, Strawberry and MANGO drink. My drink comes out first, it actually looks quite pretty. Chunks of fresh strawberries floating at the top and some dark orange puree is in the bottom of my glass. Then my friend's drink comes out. Her Passionfruit, strawberry and mango drink was almost clear in colour. Slightly tinged with yellow and flecked with fresh passionfruit seeds and chunks of fresh strawberry. I immediately see a problem with this. My passionfruit drink has no fresh passionfruit pulp and is a deep orange, whilst my friend's passionfruit and mango drink has the pulp, but is almost clear. There must've been a mix up with the drinks so we call the waitress over to clarify. We asked her what drink my friend had, and she said Mango. So I questioned her why her mango drink has passionfruit, and my passionfruit drink doesn't. She looks confused as anything and runs back to the kitchen. From our seat, we can see a lot of huddled discussion and arm waving.

She eventually comes back and just says that they have given us the right drinks and quickly runs off. The way I see it, they made the wrong drinks and gave them to the wrong people and couldn't be bothered fixing it. My one was most probably mango and strawberry only (which explains the deep orange colour), whilst my friend had my passionfruit and strawberry one (Which is why it wasn't orange!). And to make it worse, the waitress actually came back and confirmed our drink order with us before making it!!

It was such a disappointing experience for us, especially after such a wonderful night at Encasa. Honestly, with rules and customer service like that, it'll do nothing but drive business away. I think it'll be quite a while before I go back to Passionflower. They had their second chance and they blew it. Atleast they didn't try to charge us a Sunday surcharge on a Saturday this time....

Am I being unreasonable?

Harry's Singapore Chilli Crab...NOT.

Before I start, let me say that I went to Harry's a week ago. And it took me a week to write to post. Not because I didn't have time, but I needed a week to calm down and let the fury within me die down a bit. Anyone of my friends on facebook would've experience the wrath of my fury on Saturday night and I didn't want to unleash that to the rest of the world just yet.

I was so SO looking forward to going to Harry's Singapore Chilli crab ever since I found out about it a few years ago. Its around the corner from Spice I am and I've always wanted to go, but have always been tempted by thai more. When Amz said she was organising her birthday party there I did a little cheer inside me. Especially since PP had visited Harry's a few times and always said it was good and would invite me the next time.

We arrive at the restaurant and we're seated at a table for 10 even though there's 8 of us. Usually I wouldn't complain, but they didn't have a lazy susan on the table. Meaning we had to practically climb onto the table to get anything on the other side. This is also why I there's not many photos as it was impossible to get decent photos from the other side of the table.

Most of the people weren't huge crab eaters and only wanted 1-2 pieces to taste what Singapore chilli crab tastes like. We ordered 2 mud crabs at $64/kg. This is after I had to convince the waiter that no, we don't need 4 crabs. We want TWO crabs. TWO. NOT FOUR.

We ordered a few other dishes as well so the non-crab eaters didn't starve.

San Choy Bao - $5.20 each

This was.....disappointing. A good san choy bao should be dry and crunchy with a lovely breath of wok aroma. This was soggy and sloppy. The fried vermicelli noodles they added had turned to mush. They also put the filling onto a very wet piece of lettuce which basically watered down the whole dish and causing a huge mess when eating.

Chicken and vege with cashew nuts

We had a few other dishes that came out before this. Salt and pepper calamari was nice, but nothing to write home about. This however, is something to write home about. In blood. This was.......wrong. The vegetables, carrots and celery, was bitter. It also had a tough chewy texture which is usually the result of using old leftover veggies that have been sitting in the fridge for too long. The carrots weren't peeled and had a dark skin on it which further confirms my "bottom of the veggie bin" theory. This dish wasn't touched much. And if it wasn't $20 for this, I wouldn't have forced myself to eat it. I would actually rate this dish BELOW food court food which has been sitting in the bain marie for too long. BELOW.

"Singapore Chilli crab"

OK, this was the only decent photo of the crab I could get from my side of the table. Compare that "Singapore Chilli Crab" with the Singapore Chilli Crab I had in Singapore:


1. Notice the lack of sauce in Harry's
2. Harry's sauce contains NO tomato sauce

Not only was the sauce NOT Singapore Chilli crab sauce, it was OVERLY salted. There was 2 taste in the sauce. Salt and chilli. This was a huge disappointment, especially since we had invited people hoping they get to try authentic Singapore style chilli crab.

We had ordered 2 serves of Roti because they told me they had sold out of the Man tou that you use to dip into the Singapore Chilli Crab. And honestly, what place that serves real Singapore Chilli crab will sell out of Mantou at 7:30pm on a Saturday night?

The waiter convinced us to order the roti instead, which we did. $5 for 4 serves. Or rather, $5 for 2 pieces of roti cut in half. And it wasn't even fresh made roti. The roti, although crispy, was dense and compact. The exact same texture of the frozen roti we buy from the asian grocery store.

Ontop of this, we had ordered 5 bowls of boiled rice (As they only serve them per bowl) at $2.80 a bowl, thinking we wanted something to soak up all the sauce with.

1. there was no sauce.
2. they only gave us 3 bowls.

When I asked for the other 2 bowls, the waiter said he had already given me 5.

Me: "Errrrr.....no. You gave me 3 bowls."
Him: "No, I already gave you 5 bowls."
Me: "No. You gave me 3 bowls. 1. 2. 3." *pointing at the only bowls on the table

He gives me a look as if I had hidden the other 2 bowls. I was so close to screaming that he only gave me 3 bowls and I didn't shove the other 2 bowls down my top. My boobs really do look like that!

I was so angry by this stage I didn't even want dessert. ESPECIALLY when I saw that they were charging $9 for a fried ice cream. I basically had the mentality I didn't want to let them earn another dollar off me.

My friends went ahead and ordered fried ice creams and chocolate cake. The order was, 5 fried ice creams. 3 with caramel 2 with chocolate. What came out was 3.5 caramel and 1.5 chocolate. Yeh. They had put caramel onto the 4th order. And instead of going "oops! lets make another one or atleast scrape the caramel off", they proceeded to pour chocolate ONTOP of the caramel which resulted in topping overdose.

Then there was the ice cream. Or what we though was ice cream. It looked like a banana fritter, but when you cut into it, the whole thing collapses and starts oozing white stuff. The batter itself was incredibly doughy and chewy, almost like stale chinese fried dough sticks.


And just to make the night worse, the people eating the fried ice cream started digging up corn kernels.

Corn...in a fried ice cream!?

Chocolate cake

Our friend had ordered a chocolate cake, was starting to think he was the only one to get out unscathed. That is until he realised the $10 slice of chocolate cake he ordered was from Coles! It still has the ridges from where they peeled the baking paper away from the cake.

By the end of the night, most of the table was a ball of raging fury from being so openly ripped off. For 2 crabs, 4 main meals, 5 bowls of rice, roti, soft drink and dessert, we paid $420.50. And that is exactly what we paid. $420.50. No more, no less. I then wrote on the receipt that "THE ICE CREAM IS CRAP!!!" and handed it back to the waitress. I probably would've written a much harsher note had there been room on the receipt.

I can't remember the last time I have ever walked away from a restaurant feeling so angry and ripped off. If you think this post is harsh, you should've seen how I was saturday night and will understand why I didn't blog straight away.

How it has such a "good" reputation I don't understand. I guess being endorsed by The Veronicas might have something to do with that. And the wall of photos with celebrities visiting will probably contribute to that. But I can tell you, none of the celebrities were asian and must never have had an authentic Singapore Chilli crab. Because if they have, they would not endorse this place.

I will NEVER, EVER go back to this place. EVER.

MasterChef Prediction?

There's been sooooooo much talk as to who will win MasterChef the last few days I thought I'd give my own 2c. There's quite a few people that I know who wants Poh to win. From their point of view, she's a great cook and creative with her dishes. From my point of view, she's playing the asian card well. A lot of the asian dishes she cooks that impresses the judges does not impress me at all.

Why? Half of them are very standard Asian dishes presented nicely. I.e. her "funky century egg" with congee is you stock standard century egg and pork congee every asian household knows how to make. You walk into any yumcha place and they also serve this. Yet the judges were blown away by the dish simply because they've never tried century egg before and automatically labelled it as "inventive", "daring", "creative" and a fantastic dish. I can bet any money that if you took that dish and gave it to an Asian person, the reaction would be "Oh, that was nice". Not "OMG THIS IS THE BEST FRIGGIN THING I'VE EVER EATEN! HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THIS IDEA?!".

Another example, her "mochi" dessert with ginger milk pudding. The "mochi" is actually something we make at home every few weeks. Its something you can find at yum cha. Its also something you can buy frozen at the grocery store and found on every corner in Hong Kong. The same goes with the ginger milk pudding. Its a poor version of the dessert that is found everywhere in HK.

If she had cooked an asian dish and I went "Oh hang, that's actually a really good idea! Why didn't I think of it" then I'll give her points for creativity. But so far, a lot of the dishes are very typical asian dishes. The only reason she's got such a raving from the judges is because its something that a non-asian will order at a restaurant, or its home cooking that you won't find at a restaurant. And I think that's a real unfair advantage that she has over the other contestants.

So by default, I want Julie to win. Actually, I wanted Chris to win, but since he's out, by default I want Julie to win. But I think Poh will probably win. *SiGh*

Finally we're getting somewhere!

We've been sooooooooooooooo lazy about our Europe Trip. With less than 1.5 months til we leave, we've barely booked anything except our plane ticket and tour! So me and Moishii got together on the weekend and spent the whole day planning our trip.

Maybe because we've been on holidays so many times, and we know how disasterous it always is. Or maybe we're just getting old. But searching for accommodation in Paris took us almost 3 hours! THREE HOURS! We used to pick up a book, look for the cheapest price and just went with it. This time, we went on 10 different websites, looked at over 50 hotels, cross checked the website with other websites in terms of price, reviews, photos and location. And even then, we umm'd and ahh'd over which place we wanted to book. In the end, we basically went "Screw it! Just book XYZ. I don't care how much it costs or where it is anymore! JUST BOOK IT!".

Ahhhh.....our famous last words. "Just book it". How much trouble has these 3 words caused us EVERY TIME! Lets see what happens this time. Especially considering the notes we made on our "shortlisted" accommodation. Of course there's the usual notes, price, location, free internet, breakfast included etc etc. But with most hotels offering similar facilities, it all drilled down to the following:

"Reception looks like a porn set"
"Room has pole for pole dancing"
"Dining room has chairs that looks like it'll poke an eye out"
"Hotel has weird metal wall thing we should get a photo with"

I won't tell you what hotel we booked, but porn set and dangerous chairs featured heavily in our decision.

By the end of the 3 hours, we were both exhausted! We don't know why, but it was tiring! I guess we try to think too much and plan too much. There's no point really. No matter what we plan, how many back up plans we've got, shit still happens! Things will get cancelled, we'll get ripped off, stranded somewhere, freaked out by weirdos, things exploding in our face. I guess we realised this when we were faced with trying to find accommodation in Madrid.

Moishii had sent me a link to some Palace in Madrid ages ago. We were faced with 2 choices. Book his PALACE, or spend another 3 hours researching Madrid. I honestly couldn't care by this stage, so the Palace was booked! Woohoo! 2 down and...how many more to go? *Sigh*

Atleast we're making progress! hehehe Now, should we go to Ibiza or not??? It'll be our new Mykonos, but our schedule is really really tight. Hmmmmmmmm.....

If anyone has been to Ibiza or knows of a good cheap accommodation in Barcelona please let me knowwwwwwwwwwww!! Thankies! :D

So someone stole my photo...

I was browsing the net tonight, when I stumbled across Melissa Leong's food blog. Browsing through her posts, what did I see but my own photo, posted on her site... without my permission. Don't believe me? Here is her post:

http://fooderati.blogspot.com/2008/05/tsukasa.html

Here is a screenshot of her post:


Here is my post:

http://sormuijai.blogspot.com/2007/03/musashi.html

Here is the photo that I blogged:


Here's the photo I uploaded onto Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sormuijai/437451277/

Look similar? Very similar, except she had edited my photo to blur out some of the background. And she had used the photo for a completely different restaurant. This photo was taken at Musashi, using it for a review for a different restaurant is a bit misleading, no??

Apparently the review was also published in the 3D World magazine, so I have been in contact with the editors to ensure they stop using my image now and in the future.

This is not the first case of one of my photos being stolen, which is the reason why I had to start watermarking all my photos (long story). However, I've literally uploaded hundreds and thousands of photos, do I, or SHOULD I, go back and watermark everything?

Some of my friends have commented that the watermarking actually ruins the photos. Yes, I agree. But that's the least I can do to protect my own work? Yes this a small blog that is a personal project, but it doesn't mean that I don't cherish my own work. Maybe that's why the photo was taken? Because it is a small blog with few reader? And one thing my friend noticed, why are most of her photos watermarked, but not my one??

Honestly, I love taking photos, and I love looking back on all these photos. I hope others can enjoy it as well, but to a certain extent. I have been contacted many times through Flickr and even privately about the use of my photos on websites and other media, which is something that should have been done in this case. You know, I would have even been happy had she linked it back to my blog/flickr page like what a lot of other people do.

I have contacted Melissa to ask her to remove my photo from her site, lets hope there are no other instances of copyright breaching. Incase you haven't noticed, both my blog and flickr is copyrighted?

SoRMuiJAi current mood: Not happy Jan.

Homemade BBQ Pork (CHAR SIU!)

Its been a good 6 or so years since my parents have sold the restaurant. And for the last few months, I've really been missing our "restaurant life". I've also started my own recipes book (Yes I know I don't follow recipes). But its not really a recipe book of stuff I usually cook, its a compilation of recipes our family cooks. Specifically the comfort food my mum dishes out, and our secret recipes for some dishes we used to serve in the restaurant.

I know some dishes will never ever taste the same as they did when we cooked in the restaurant. Partly because we can't get the same ingredients again unless we buy wholesale, we're also more conscious of using MSG, oil, salt etc. But its also because the food always taste better in our memories. And unless I go back in time, I'm going to have to settle for my inferior replicas of our favourite dishes.

One of my favourite memories would be BBQ Pork (Char Siu) day. Every Saturday, my parents would make up a few kilos of BBQ Pork which we use in many of our dishes. And every now and then, my parents will call us about 30mins before the BBQ Pork is ready, to come to the restaurant for lunch. So we'd hop into the car and drive 10mins to the restaurant and sit there waiting for the final basting on the BBQ Pork.

When the pork finally comes out of the oven, dripping with the sweet caramelised basting, we'd elbow each other out of the way to get the pork with a pair of scissors each. Why? We were both after the best bits. What's the best bits? It would be the end bits where the meat, where the honey has caramelised it until the was slightly charred and crunchy. Armed with a pair of scissors each, we would pick up every chunk of BBQ pork, and snip the ends off onto our plate of steaming hot rice. We'd load up our plates with the best bits of BBQ pork, drizzle over a little of the juice that we caught in the pan during the roasting process and add a little soy. We load up the plate with plain boiled vegetables so we could taste the juicy BBQ pork.

The restaurant is gone, and my brother is living overseas. We also don't have a gas oven anymore to give it that extra charred flavour. But when I was visiting Singapore and I made BBQ Pork with my nephews and niece, I taught them what was the "best bit". Suddenly, I had someone to fight with me over the best end bits. Food always taste better when you need to fight for it. ;) With that memory in mind, I decided it was time to actually try out the recipes I've been collecting. First up, BBQ Pork:



It certainly doesn't look like what we used to serve in the restaurant. Mind you, I didn't add any colouring at all, which is what all restaurants used. Plus, my one was baked in an oven rather than dangled over flames like we used to. But I think its an alright effort for my real first attempt. I would definitely make it more charred next time, but I kind of forgot about my pork and didn't want to grill it anymore in case I overcooked it. But in fact, it was perfectly cooked and sooooooo tender and juicy! Marinating it for 24hrs really did the trick ;) I can't wait to try it again!

I'm going to smell his sweat!

For the past few years, everytime the Good Food and Wine show is on, I've been overseas. This year however, I'll be in Sydney when it is on. I got an email yesterday for presale tickets (No it wasn't an april fools joke) and they have a special special guest this year. GORDON RAMSAY!!! I assume he's here to film "Hell's Kitchen" Australian version for the new restaurant he's going to build in Melbourne?? I went into a frenzied panic trying to get the best seats to his 30min cooking demo. I pulled a few tricky moves and managed to score FRONT ROW SEATS! Literally! ROW A!! WOOHOO!! I couldn't stop giggling like a happy school girl getting tickets to her favourite pop idol's concert! I would be even happier if it was Jamie Oliver, but hey, FRONT ROW TICKETS! I'll be close enough to smell his sweat! hahaha My DSLR is going to come in handy!