The Butcher's Kitchen at Suntec

The Butcher's Kitchen is located on the second floor of Suntec City Mall.  The place was previously occupied by an Italian restaurant, but it had since closed down.  The Butcher's Kitchen is part retail, part restaurant.  There is a small retail section where customers can buy their meat products.  Well, as the name implies, they are proud of their meat offers.

We decided to share a vegetarian pizza, and then each of us would get a burger each.  We also ordered our drinks.  My choice was a cappuccino, but a waitress informed me later that the coffee machine was out of order so there would be no coffee!

Vegetarian Pizza, $18.00++

The vegetarian pizza was not bad.  Thin, crispy crust, topped with tomatoes, capsicum, mushrooms, and other stuff.  And of course, cheese was absolutely a must.  The portion was kind of big, actually enough for two guys to share for a meal.

Burger Dog with Pork, $10,00++

My burger dog with pork was less satisfactory.  Does anyone know why it is called burger dog?  Anyway, the portion was big, but the patty was way way too salty.  It felt like one big teaspoon of salt had been added to the patty.

Service-wise, it was quite ok in general.  I must sing my praise for one of the waiters there.  He was in his late teens to early twenties.  He brought us the burgers, and then asked us whether we would like to have chili sauce and ketchup.  Soon he brought us the chili sauce and ketchup on my request.  I left the two bottles on the table as I was still eating my pizza.  By the time I wanted to pour some ketchup onto my plate, I found the sauce just refused to come out.  After a few tries, I decided to just settle with chili sauce, and left the ketchup aside.  Surprisingly, that waiter came to our table, and helped me get the ketchup out onto my plate.  I didn't know how he managed to notice this while he was busy all the time.

Overall, the dining experience was decent.  Probably ordering some meat dishes will give us more fulfilling experience. 

Hup Kah Noodle House at Fernvale

Hup Kah noodle house is located at the Kopitiam next to Fernvale LRT station, opposite Seletar Mall.  There are some newspaper clippings showing recommendations for this stall from some foodies.  There is always a small queue at this stall during lunch.  This stall partners with UberEats as well, so sometimes even though the queue is short, but the wait time is long, as they have to fulfill the UberEats orders as well.  During my day of visit, it happened that they had a UberEats order, so the wait was a bit long.  The stall is manned by, I guess, a mum and son team.  The son takes care of taking orders and payments, while mum does all the hard work of cooking.  They also have a tablet at the stall, taking UberEats orders.

Sarawak Kolo Mee, $5

The most famous dish of the stall is the Sarawak kolo mee.  Char Siew and deep fried wanton are the toppings, and some lettuce as side.  The noodle is the Sarawak kolo mee.  It is different from the normal noodles such as egg noodles, or the prawn noodle type of noodles.  It is thicker, and much firmer.  I like the texture this noodle offers. 

Portion-wise, for a guy like me, the $5 portion is still a bit small.  I felt hungry after just an hour or so.  For ladies, probably the $4 version is enough.   

Tontei at NEX

Tontei is located on B1 of NEX at Serangoon.  It has been there for a while but I only gave them a visit recently.

The interior has a bamboo theme.  Everywhere you set your eyes on, it is bamboo.  The place is quite crammed.  Table to table distance is small, difficult to have a private conversation.

This place is said to be famous for shabu shabu.  What is shabu shabu?  Basically it is a Japanese style hotpot.  You use your chopsticks to pick up a piece of thinly sliced meat, may it be pork, beef or whatever, dip it into the hot pot and then move it left once, say shabu; move it right once, say shabu, then the meat is done and perfect for eating, thus it is called shabu shabu.  Haha...ok, the say 'shabu' while dipping the meat part was invented by me, not sure whether it is really true.

Premium Beef

Pork Collar

I ordered the super value Shabu Shabu set at $15.90++.  You can choose your soup base and two types of meat out of 4.  I chose the tonkutsu broth (pork soup), and pork collar & premium beef for the meat.

The wait was a bit long, our food came only after quite a long while.  Then the candle fire for the hot pot was kind of weak.  Both mine and my friends' went out after 10 minutes or so,  we had to ask for new fire power.  For my friend, his new candle fire went out again before his soup started boiling, so had to get a new one again.  This is an area for improvement.  The wait for food, and the wait for the soup to boil were long.  You got to be a really patient patron.

Super Value Shabu Shabu Set, $15.90++

Ok, back to the food.  Frankly speaking, I didn't have high expectations of tonkutsu soup base, but surprisingly it was very good.  Sweet and clear, and most importantly, not the very salty type.  They provided two types of sauces, one is plum-based, a little bit sour, very appetizing.  Both the pork collar and the premium beef were good.  Well, not really very "premium", for $15.90, how "premium" could you expect?  But I think they were at least decent.

Overall, I think the food was not bad, the staff were friendly, but I think there was quite a shortage of manpower in the restaurant, which leads to quite some delays.  And the candle they use for the hot pot is not very powerful.