Ah Bong Kitchen - Italian Food In a Coffeeshop - 56 Eng Hoon Street

Today, we go on an adventure to Eng Hoon Street.  We are looking for Ah Bong Kitchen.  Ah Bong? What a name.  Let's go.  The address is 56 Eng Hoon Street, but where was this place?

We had to walk around the entire block to find it.  Well, we didn't realise the place would be in a coffeeshop facing the junction.  Still, it was good fun exploring.  This part of Singapore is very interesting, very quaint.

Ah Bong's kitchen is owned by a young chap (mid 30s), who decided to pursue his passion.  He specializes in Italian food.  While his menu is limited, it is definitely enough for lunch.  Here was the menu for the day.   Notice the Creme brulee was sold out.

A simple sign - Ah Bong's Italian.

There is the owner of Ah Bong himself, crew cut, taking our orders.  He would painstakingly cook our pastas too. Very hardworking and passionate, to say the least.   Understand that he previously held a cushy corporate job.  But cooking was far more interesting for him!

The store is located in this quaint coffeeshop.  Quite an experience to have pasta in this setting.

In the evenings, this beer store is open.  Not now though.  Somewhat a pity.  I think Ah Bong's pastas would go well with beer.  Just make them a bit more spicy.

Snapshot of the menu of the Two Face outlet.

We had to make do with coke and coffee from the uncles here.

Here comes the food.  We ordered everything off the menu, except the Creme brulee (sold out! pity!).

This was the Ah Bong's Pot Pie - $7.  Puff pastry on top.

My boy liked this.  First, eat the pastry.  Then start eating the stew, which contained good servings of meat and potatoes.  Tasty.

Ah Bong's Pot Pie!

Next, we got the Chorizo Bolognaise (Spanish Sausage, smokey tomato sauce) - $6.

A hearty portion.  Generous amounts of meat.  The Tomato sauce was indeed smokey, tasted a bit unusual.  As a result, my kids didn't really like this.

Another look at the Pot Pie, before we move on to the other dishes.

The Aglio Olio for $6.  Vegetarian, generous portions of Zucchini and very good taste, though a tad too oily for my liking.

Yumz.

I poke my fork into the Agio Olio.

Chef J's Comfort Pasta - $5.  Onion jam, bacon.  Sorry, but this didn't work for me.  It was too salty for my liking, though I think some may find the taste interesting.

The plates were cool.

Mac & Cheese - Smokey bacon, shitake, cheese - $5.  This was a winner.  True comfort food, with a slight twist.  Traditional Mac and Cheese tends to be more dry.  This version was more moist (even saucy!).
Kids loved it.  I can't think of anything wrong with this.  Definitely not as salty as the Comfort pasta.

Good stuff!

A few pictures of the junction as I stand outside the coffee shop.  See the Eng Hoon street sign.

The coffeeshop, from outside.   Ah Bong's store was farthest away from where i was standing.

Verdict
Worth a visit, if not for the Mac & Cheese, then the Agio Olio.

On reflection, it did feel a bit out of place to have high quality pasta at a traditional coffee shop like this one. I think the idea is cool - who says you can only have good pastas in fancy restaurants?  The downside was that the accompanying drinks did not live up with the quality of the pasta.  Imagine, I had pasta with Kopi-O. It just didn't gel well.

There was already a pub-like join operating out of the coffeeshop, but it wasn't open when we were there for lunch.  A spicier version of the Agio Olio with a beer would have been perfect.

Cheers!

Note: This is not a sponsored advertorial.  We paid for our food as per menu prices.

Back to my FOOD landing page.

Le Meridian Kuala Lumpur - Starwood Group hotel (Room, breakfast, pool area, tea break)

Stayed at the Le Meridien, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) for a working visit.  

The Le Meridian is conveniently located just beside the KL Sentral Station.  This makes the hotel very easy to get to, from KLIA, via the KLIA Express.  

In this first video, I show you the room that I was staying in, as well as the pool area. 

In this video, check out the breakfast buffet offerings.


In this slideshow, I put together some photographs of the tea break area and the tea break items available on a typical conference day.  It was quite amazing - like an upmarket airport lounge.  They even had popcorn and traditional Malaysian Potong Ice-cream.


Some pictures of the pool area.  The pool is shared with Hilton.

Not many people here, on a weekday.  The hotel was quite full, largely for conference delegates.

Bright sunshine.  Pity I had no time to laze by the poolside.

There was a waterslide, but it looked close.

Poolside menu.

Thanks for reading!

Flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Today, I will be flying to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a short working visit.  Kuala Lumpur is the capital city of Malaysia.  

Flight video:

I am here at the departure area of, Changi Airport Terminal 2.  I saw this Tiger Airways plane and decided to take a couple of shots.  Tiger Airways is a low-cost carrier, owned by Singapore Airlines.

The aero-bridge wasn't connected to the plane.  Not sure whether the plane was going anywhere soon.  

Now I was at the departure gate.  This would be the plane that would bring us to KL this evening.   It certainly looked bigger than a 737.

Loading the catering.  Well, the flight is only 45 minutes.  I don't think we get anything to eat in Economy class.  Business class pax probably get some light snack.

A Scoot aircraft taxi-ing.  Check out the Lufthansa A380 at the other terminal (Terminal 3).

Goodbye Scoot.

Time to board.  The aircraft was an Airbus A330-300.

Two aircraft gates were opened, for business class and economy class.  I think this plane has a 2 cabin configuration.

Here I am at my seat, which was almost at the back of the plane.  The In-flight entertainment system looked fairly new.

These were economy seats at the very last row of the plane.  This plane was in a 2-4-2 configuration in the Economy cabin.

More seats.

The Safety info - Airbus A330-300.

In the air.  We just took off.  Very soon, we would be descending.

This was all I got for this flight.  They also served Tea or Coffee.

Landing at KLIA was smooth.  The plane was at the satellite terminal.  We had to take the Aero-train to the main terminal.  Not difficult.

This was the train carriage in front of mine.

Thanks for viewing!

Itacho Sushi - Lunch

Had lunch at Itacho Sushi, Star Vista, with the family on a Saturday.  The place was rather crowded, we had to wait almost 20 minutes to get seated.  As the sushi pieces were all made to order, the food also took a while to arrive.  Overall, food was good.

This is a slideshow of what we ate.



Thanks for viewing!

Voyager of the Seas 12-12-12

Where were you on 12-12-12 or 12th Dec 2012?

We were on a cruise ship!  This was a video taken from our stateroom TV.  The Captain (a Norwegian) was being interviewed by the Cruise Director (a British).  A very informative session on navigation.



Thanks for watching.

Spices Cafe (Concorde Hotel Singapore) - Harvest of the Seas Buffet - Place for Crab and Lobster

Concorde Hotel (100 Orchard Road) Singapore.

On this evening, we had the buffet dinner at Cafe Spices, called Harvest of the Seas buffet.  It was a Saturday evening.  This is a short video.


This is how the cafe looks like.  A fairly elegant setting.

This venue was not very big, compared to some other more famous buffets in town.  You can see the coffee machines on the right.  They are self-serve, for buffet guests.  However, the machines only had coffee and expresso, no latte.

A photo of the lobby area of this hotel.  This hotel is by no means new, however, it looked fairly well maintained.

The Harvest of the Seas buffet.  Cost was $50++ for adults (Weekends), $20 for children (ages 3-12). Each diner (including children) gets one complimentary serving of Baked half lobster or Braised baby abalone.  The buffet starts at 6:30pm and ends at 10pm.

The entrance to Spices Cafe.

On top of the lobster or abalone, you can also have crabs.  These are unlimited, served a la carte.  This is a great place if you love crab

The lobster.  Each diner gets one half lobster.  They will serve in a large plate.

This was for me!  Tasted really good.  Large chunks of lobster meat.

A closer look.

This was the section for salads.  I noticed that they were hardly touched.  The diners here were almost exclusively local and they were here for the seafood.

Nobody touched the cheeses either.  Some took bread though.

This station was for the raw stuff - sashimi, oysters ad the like.   Plentiful and always replenished

The desserts on a bed of ice.  Looked good.  However, I didn't find the desserts very good.

Here was what I had for desserts.

It was a very pleasant dinner.  The food suited the local (Singaporean) palate.  The seafood was definitely a big hit.

Verdict
This is the buffet to come if you like seafood (lobster, crab).  The seafood was outstanding.  Looking around at the other tables, everybody was tucking into the seafood.  The rest of the cooked food was average.