Celebratory Dinner @ Da Paolo Pizza Bar

Last friday was the day the Sparkling Fireworks (yes, that's the name of my project group.  Don't judge) had our marketing presentation. The idea was to have it like "The Noose" and we had a ball of a time preparing for it! Just look at this!! hahaha!

Anyway, we planned for a celebratory dinner over at Da Paolo Pizza Bar, located within Chip Bee Garden at Holland Village, thanks to Angel's recommendation. She was raving about the truffle pizza so much that we knew we had to try it! Anyway, click here to check out their facebook page (:

We chose an alfresco seating as the weather was pretty good. The interior furnishing was simply gorgeous. Of fur ceilings and wine cellar walls, Da Paolo offered a classy environment, simply great for a Friday night out with friends (: Take a look at the pictures and you will understand. Probably what I liked most about the place was the lack of crowd (and noise). We had a great time chillaxing and talking, without having to scream across the table, unlike some popular restaurants.

The food were simply delicious! Especially the mushroom dishes! Please please order the Portobello mushroom salad as well as the truffle pizza. They are just yum-tums!

So here's the Portobello mushroom salad, served with rockets and topped with capsicum (i think! didn't get to eat it), feta cheese and balsamic vinegar. The mushroom at the bottom was stuffed with tomato, then grilled. The combination of the taste of tomato with Portobello mushroom is simply heavenly. All the others were so in love with this dish as well! Definitely worth trying!

Next up, we had some cold cuts- parma ham! (: Just look at how thinly cut these ham slices are! They tasted really yummy, especially with the baguette slices (which was slightly stiff by the time I got to eat it).

And, here we have the truffle pizza! The mushrooms smelt and tasted really good! The combination of mushrooms and cheese was lovely! Another of my favourite dish! Please please order this when you visit Da Paolo.

Lastly, we had some smoked salmon with spinach pizza. The smoked salmon was delicious on its own, but somehow I thought that the taste didn't blend quite well with the cheese and the spinach. But well, it could also be that I had to many cheesy dishes by then, it was quite difficult to properly taste this. Not a must-try for me!

We also had buffalo wings for dinner, but I didn't eat any (as I was so full already) and by then it was kind of dark to shoot any photographs, so no reviews for me! A meal like this came up to $20/head (after GST and service charge) for 6 people! Pretty worth it huh!a

Ok! This marks the end of my post! If you do visit Da Paolo's Pizza Bar sometime, tell me what's good and what's not! I will definitely pop by one day after school for another round (:

How to get there

Drop at Holland Village MRT along the Circle Line and exit at the 1st exit you see within the train station. You will find yourself at the back of Chip Bee Gardens. Just walk through the car park and into the small lane. Walk uphill along the stretch of restaurants and about 2 mins later, you will see Da Paolo Pizza Bar.

Fosters English Rose Cafe (:

Thanks to a bunch of gluttony group mates (not that I mind, really!), I got to try high tea at Fosters English Rose Cafe. Along the stretch with Starbucks and right beside Amici, its a quaint cafe tucked in a little corner of Holland Village. With cosy furnishing and no crowd, it was a pleasant high tea experience.

We had three dishes for our lunch-cum-tea session.

First up, we had Calamari (priced at $11.00).

 The calamari were well-fried, not too oily. It was simply yummy~!

Next up, we had their Devonshire Cream Tea Set (priced at $11.00).

This set comes with a pot of tea, 2 scones, one fruit cake, 2 sandwiches as well as jam, cream and butter. The scones were delicious! Flaky on the outset yet soft on the inside. It was nicely buttery and went very well with the jam and cream provided. Definitely the best scones I have tasted yet! As for the fruit cake and sandwiches, they tasted pretty much normal. I don't think its quite worth the money to have the fruit cake and sandwiches. 

Here's a little tip: you can choose to change the fruit cake and sandwiches to scones as well. The tea set will then come with a total of 4 scones.

Lastly, we had a Steak and Mushroom Pie (priced at $18.50).

Besides the scones, this was my other personal favourite of the meal. If you break open the pie crust, you will see a mini beef stew (with mushrooms). The stew nicely brought out the smell and taste of the beef, which was tender and soft. The mash potato that came with the set was crispy on the outside, yet soft on the inside. And, it went very well with the beef stew! Well, I thought that the stew was slightly on the salty side, but its not too bad.

Overall, the food quality at Foster's is above average, but is slightly pricey. The service is a little bit slow (considering the cafe was rather empty at our time of visit). I will probably go back for more (:

attas project meeting

this post is long overdue.

last sunday,  i had the most attas (i.e.: high class) project meeting, ever, in my life. it was lunch at epicurious, where all of us had breakfast (: yep, just like wild honey, epicurious serves all-day-breakfast, which has rather good reviews. and so, shirlyn and i decided to just hop by for a meal, together with all our project mates (: for such meals, the more the merrier right (: 

getting to epicurious @ robertson quay was a chore! it was not that accessible without a car (but then again, everywhere's accessible with a car!), and there were little directions from the epicurious website. ended up, i relied on Shirlyn to get the directions to get there. oh ya, she relied on gothere.sg. HAHAHA!

if you are getting there by public transport, take a train to Chinatown or Clarke Quay, then walk. yeah, i guess walking there is the tough part. i cant really give you the directions either, since there are little road signs or landmarks around. but anyway, if you want to try going from Clarke Quay, then walk towards liang court, when facing liang court, turn left and keep walking straight. you should be there in no time! one signature landmark to look out for would be the Allkaff Art Bridge. epicurious is right in front of the bridge yeah.

honestly, compared to rider's cafe, i think epicurious was a slight disappointment. its price range is pretty similar, most food items cost around $15. well, if you compare price to quality, i would definitely say that rider's cafe is a much better choice. the quality of food in rider's cafe was really good. well, of course, it could be the weekend-weekday thing. you know, since restaurants are always pretty quiet on weekdays, they tend to serve better food than weekends. but well, if you ever head down to epicurious, tell me what you think!

enough said. here are some pictures of our attas project meeting (:

did i tell you, we had vodka for lunch?? ok, i kid! this vodka bottle was used to store tap water. (: so yeah, we had a vodka bottle worth of tap water (: 

much was left to be desired from their service level. it could be because of where we sat, but it was so difficult to get the waiter's attention. and the food took so long to come. i know, good food is worth the wait right? but for this quality, i am not too sure if it was worth our (at least) 15mins wait. but anyway, the food still came in the end. so here are our food photos!

ok food review! here are what we ate that day!

supposedly one of the best dishes epicurious serves. yet, i was disappointed. the eggs were too cooked for my liking. i was expecting the yolk of the eggs to be slightly runny, but it was all hard. however, the blend of cheese, egg and mushroom was good. oh yes, there's a minor spelling mistake. this dish is called the baked eggs with TOAST soldiers!

cant review the above two dishes as I didn't manage to try them for myself.

just a vintage looking shot. anyway, they did not collect the money from us. i was half in mind of walking off with our cash but ah well, ended up walking to them to pass them them the money.

in all, brunch was good, thanks to the company. food... hmm. not so i guess. will probably give it just one more chance to prove itself wrong.

on a side note, i am gonna attempt making baked eggs tomorrow for the boy's breakfast! hope my poison will turn out good. maybe i will blog about it tmr (:

Mega Uber Fun (:

Just came back from Dry Run 1 a few days back, and was SOOO UBER MEGA TIREDDD!!! haha. but its really worth it, to see how things fall into place and how much other people were actually enjoying our games. even looking through the photos i took makes me feel soo... HAPPEEEEEE (:

yep, this blog post is solely dedicated to FOC DR1. and i want to honestly thank everyone for coming down to help, be it station mastering or to try out the games. YOU GUYS MADE THE DRY RUN WORK so kudos to all of you!

The Dry Run started off with Pool Games! here are just a few photos taken during Pool Games (:

POOL GAMES!

 

After which, we took a little break, lunched, and went onto our Dry Station Games!

DRY STATION GAMES

 

 

What's a camp without getting dirty?? (: Now, the OGLs are in for a dirty treat!

DIRTY AND WET GAMES

Day 2! After one whole day of fun in school, we all went down to Sentosa for another round of fun filled activities!

SENTOSA DRY GAMES

SENTOSA WET GAMES