A mixed bag of western food

You will find a huge variety of western style food at Lenas, a spin off of Ministry of Food. Their enormous menus consist of a permutation of meat, pasta, pizza, rice and baked rice. We ordered the Supremo pizza which was pretty decent but everything else was just meh. I guess it is quite difficult for grilled meat to go wrong with cheese, but it isn’t easy to make it incredible either.

The pasta comes with 5 choices of sauce which I unfortunately cannot remember. The smoked duck spaghetti with spicy aglio olio sauce which was indeed spicy, was pretty good to me but scorned by my two friends because it was super oily. I didn’t try the grilled chicken with pilaf rice but my friend ordered it two nights in a row.

As for the desserts, we order the chocolate fondue because it was only $12.90. We would enjoy it even better if they gave more strawberries! The hot plate brownie with fried banana and hot fudge was a highly anticipated dish that fell flat. The brownie was too cake like and the fried banana tasted weird. We even dunked the brownie into the chocolate fondue just to finish up the dessert. lol

Lenas
NEX Mall #02-01/02/03

PS: I hope this post doesn’t sound too hasty. I’ve quite a few things going on at the moment but I hope to share more soon! 🙂

Our regular pizza hangout

Roasted Artichock & Spinach pizza and Pepperoni Supremo pizza

There are only two places we think of when we have cravings for pizza, and California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) is one of them. It’s easy to find a decent piece of pizza, but for it to be awesome in our books, generous amount of fresh ingredients and cheese must be used. The thickness and crunch of the dough is very important too.

The cream based Roasted Artichoke & Spinach with chicken pizza worked well in enhancing the unique taste of the artichoke. As for the Pepperoni Supremo pizza, it was the best pepperoni pizza we have tasted in Singapore so far. Nothing beats quality Italian sausages on a tomato based skinny pizza.

Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo Pasta & The Works

The Works pizza was an equally good pizza with italian sausage and pepperoni; it had more greens (onions, green peppers and olives) if you prefer a more varied taste. The Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo Pasta was alright but nothing remarkable as you would expect out of a pizza place.

Chocolate Souffle Cake

The Chocolate Souffle Cake à la mode was the bomb! We had to go back a week later to eat it again because it was that good. It wasn’t too sweet even though it was a combination of all our favourite things: chocolate, souffle, cake, vanilla ice cream & incredible homemade hot fudge!

Hot Fudge Brownie Sundae and Tiramisu

The Hot Fudge Brownie Sundae and Tiramisu were great too, but the Chocolate Souffle Cake trumped all. We would probably give the Warm Apple Pie Pizza a try the next time we are there.

The salads were not the highlight of the meal, but they were delightful too. I thought of NYC and Gossip Girl when I saw the Waldorf Chicken salad on the menu and it certainly tasted like how I would imagine it to be with the field greens, crandied walnut, Granny Smith apples, grapes and homemade Dijon balsamic vinaigrette. The Chinese Chicken Salad was quite an interesting eat with ingredients such as napa & red cabbage, lettuce and even fried wontons and sweet & sour dressing.

* This review is a combination of two trips to CPK.

California Pizza Kitchen
#01-42 Forum The Shopping Mall

For the skinny

The Famous Tiffin Punch

Decided to try Skinny Pizza at Raffles City shopping mall when I met up with my friends who used to interned with me at a media production (mad)house. We were quite enthusiastic when we ordered The Famous Tiffin Punch, but it wasn’t as great as we thought it would be. The only thing special about the $60 bombay sapphire gin, lychee liquer, pressed grapefruit, ginger and Mumm champage mix was that it was served in a tiffin carrier. Beyond that it tasted pretty much like an average cocktail.

The pizzas were quite delightful though. The wild mushroom truffle pizza and squid ink pizza had their unique taste on the crispy crust, but the portions were too small. A meal just isn’t satisfying when it doesn’t fill up our stomach. Y’know I am quite puzzled why the waitress told us that it is 1.5 person portion per pizza.

Now for my dish, I ordered the old-fashion american sliders because I knew the pizzas weren’t going to be enough for me. I know I shouldn’t expect much out of them because it is a pizza place but I was pretty unhappy with the sliders. Did I make all the wrong food choices that day that they turn out to be at their worst state?
1) The well done beef was too dry, tough and plain.
2) The sautéed mushrooms and onions is probably the worst out of the five choices.. It didn’t add much taste to the beef and there were too many raw onions for my liking
3) The fries were greasy and if you know me well enough, you would know that I’m not health conscious. It takes quite a bit of oil to bother me

http://www.skinnypizza.com.sg/
252 North Bridge Road #B1-63/64 Raffles City Shopping Centre Singapore 179103

Garlic Connoisseurs at Mad For Garlic

Mad for Garlic is an Italian restaurant from Korea that looks like the set of a horror flick – dim lighting, chandeliers made of wine glass and strings of garlic at every nook and cranny. Known for its menu of garlic infused cuisine, they serve garlic in every possible way. It was a fun place to eat; I imagined that we were on a mission to ward off Dracula with our garlic breathe in my overly imaginative mind.

Caesar Salad and Dracula Killer

We had two starters. The humongous Caesar Salad ($11.90) was our safe choice while the Dracula Killer ($9.90) was a let’s-try-this-it-looks-interesting dish. Thankfully, the olive oil, melted cheese and fried garlic complemented the bread well in both texture and taste!

From top left in clockwise: Suicide Rice, Garlicholic Rice, Red Devil and Garlic Snowing Pizza

Suicide Rice was the most spicy fried rice (rated 3 chilli) in the menu. Topped with fried garlic and diced octopus and squid, it is a dish that we, chilli fanatics, got a kick off. The Garlicholic Rice may look similar but it was packed with a different kind of spiciness. It had more capsicum spice that worked well with the shrimp and asparagus. I have to say they were pretty fun to eat because they taste quite different from the typical chinese style fried rice.

I didn’t have a bite of my friend’s Red Devil (rated 3 chillis too), but I think he was happy with the generous serving of fresh shrimp, clam and seafood of his spicy pasta. Last but certainly not the least is their famous Garlic Snowing Pizza that we polished off really quickly. The sweet garlic with shrimp and pineapple was excellent though it feels more like a dessert instead of an entrée due to its sweet taste.

All in all, we had a fun time at Mad For Garlic. The unique dishes live up to their cute names and we won’t mind going back again. By the way, there’s 1-for-1 entrée if you sign up as a member on their website.

http://www.madforgarlic.com.sg/
3 Temasek Boulevard #01-039, Suntec City Mall. Singapore 038983