Chili’s Restaurant

Chili’s remains as one of Singapore’s more popular Texas-Mexican restaurant. A visit to Chili’s on a Monday evening and it was still pretty crowded as usual.

Jalapeno Chicken Quesadillas

We tried one of their latest creations – Jalapeno Chicken Quesadillas, with onions, peppers, jalapeno seasoning and Jack cheese, served with sour cream, house-made pico de gallo and ranch dressing. The Jalapeno Chicken Quesadillas was labelled as “Wild” and that led us to expect something spicy. Our expectations fell short and we were sorely disappointed. The chicken pieces were rather bland and tasteless. The cheese didn’t add much saltiness either. In fact, the only flavour came from the peppers and jalapeno, which gave a typical bell pepper spiciness. Sadly, we also realized that the portion of Mexican rice and beans were also missing. These were one of the usual accompaniments in the original Quesadillas which we tried previously.

Grilled Baby Back Ribs - Shiner Bock BBQ Sauce

A new flavour offered for Chili’s Grilled Baby Back Ribs is the Shiner Bock BBQ Sauce – sweet and tangy BBQ sauce made from Shiner Bock Beer. We have never tried Shiner Bock Beer, but we definitely did not detect any trace of beer in the grilled baby back ribs. Regardless of that, the ribs was well marinated with BBQ sauce. The BBQ sauce was adequately balanced in terms of richness, tangy-ness and sweetness such that it wasn’t too overwhelming.   The meat was very tender and could be easily removed from the bones.

Chili’s Restaurant
#02-23, Tanglin Mall
163 Tanglin Road

Blue Garden Korean BBQ Buffet Restaurant

Side Dishes

Side Dishes

Assortment of Grilled Porks

Blue Garden offers a wide variety of side dishes to our initial delight. However, the quality and taste of all the side dishes were far from impressive. The warm dishes included Korean leek pancakes, kimchi fried rice, spicy rice cake, boiled squid, boiled pork belly, stewed chicken with potatoes and vermicelli and inari. The leek pancake tasted very starchy despite being loaded with leeks. The kimchi fried rice tasted very bland and seemingly lacking in the typical sticky chewiness of pearl like Korean rice. The rice cakes were solid hard and lacking in flavour too. The inari was definitely inferior as the rice lacked the essential vinegar flavouring. Fried items like salted chicken wings, assorted vegetables and a strange deep-fried dough coated with coarse sugar were also served. The nicest cold dish were the bean sprouts and the spring onions. The kimchi and the chilli flavoured vegetables (leeks, spring onions, cucumbers, radish) were boring. Abalone porridge was also on the list but we decided to give it a missed, judging from the standards of the other dishes. There were Korean ice cream popsicles but we were required to pay for them.

The barbeque items were much better than the cooked food and cold dishes.There were a number of meat served: pork belly, marinated pork, pork collar, bulgogi (pork), wine infused pork belly, bulgogi (chicken), prawns and many other different cuts of beef.  The pork belly lacked flavour and the beef belly was overly loaded with fats. The wine infused pork belly tasted slightly better, with a slight tinge of alcohol. We liked the marinated pork and bulgogi the most. In general, we felt that Blue Garden Korean BBQ Buffet Resturant was nowhere comparable to the other BBQ restaurants which we had tried thus far – SSikkek, 2D1N Soju Bang and Ju Shin Jung. No doubt the environment was more conducive at this hotel restaurant, with a smaller crowd and more appealing display of food, the food was lackluster and much less value for money (S$29).

Blue Garden Korean BBQ Buffet Restaurant
#01-07, Link Hotel
50 Tiong Bahru Road

Ssikkek Korean Grill BBQ

Ssikkek Korean Brill BBQ

Barbeque Grill

Ssikkek offers quite a wide range of 5 kinds of beef, 3 kinds of pork, chicken, sausage and prawns. There were also many cooked food items in the buffet which includes fried rice, deep fried chicken, Korean kimchi pancake, vermicelli, amongst other typical Banchan (Korean side dishes). The cooked dishes were rather cold despite being placed on the food warmers and we had to re-fry most of these items on our own bbq grill. The soup came in three flavours: kimchi, seaweed and miso. Ssikkek was very generous with the ingredients in the kimchi and seaweed soup. On the list of items was also cold kimchi soup which we could either have it as it is or with the addition of korean noodles to make cold soba. However, the cold kimchi soup was way too salty. The gochujang (Korean chilli paste) that went with the barbequed meat was not spicy enough too. Desserts were sweet rice soup and watermelon. The rice soup tasted seemingly like barley water. Ice cubes were also provided should one find the rice soup too sweet.

(clockwise from top left) Deep fried chicken and assorted vegetables; Kimchi Soup, Cold Kimchi Soup with Noodles; Seaweed Soup

There was a wide range of condiments such as sesame oil, sesame salt, garlic, onions, soya sauce for us to use in the grills. One could attempt to whip up a variety of dishes according to your taste buds. Besides barbequing the meat, we had prawns barbequed on a bed of sesame sea salt. Our innovative minds also resulted in us creating stews by wrapping the meat together with the garlic, onions and sesame oil in the aluminium foil.

Barbequed Meat and Fried Rice

Food Ph.D's Stew

Service was efficient. The aluminum foil was frequently changed without us having to request for new ones. The place is well ventilated and more spacious than 2D1N Soju Bang. At a price of $24.60 for weekday dinner which is a couple of bucks more expensive than 2D1N Soju Bang, the wider variety of food and the shorter queue at SSikkek gives 2D1N Soju Bang a good run for their money.

SSikkek Korean Grill BBQ
#01-01/02, Novena Ville
275 Thomson Road

2D1N Soju Bang

2D1N Soju Bang

Barbeque Buffet

Barbeque Spread

At 2D1N Soju Bang for their Barbeque Buffet! The meat selection was rather wide – beef: loin, ribeye etc; pork: collar, ribs, loin, belly, sausages and bacon; as well as chicken and prawns. The meat were generally well-marinated and very tender. The prawns were fresh and succulent. Other free flow food choices include kim chi, sweet corn, different kinds of salad, soup, rice, noodles, watermelon. Once the alminium foil turned a bit charred, the staff would come over to change the foil and transfer our food over.

At $22 per pax, 2D1N Soju Bang’s buffet is really a good deal!

2D1N Soju Bang
44/46 Tanjong Pagar Road

Penang Food Trail – Hammer Bay Ikan Bakar Special

Hammer Bay Ikan Bakar Special at Jalan Bayan Bay, Sebelah Kondo Gold Coast is a favourite haunt within the Malay community in Penang. This is where you can find authentic Malay barbecue seafood.

三味鱼

Ikan Bakar

Fried Calamari

三味鱼 was pretty good. The sauce was lacking in spiciness, more on the sweet side. The fish could be a little more tender though; perhaps the deep frying caused the fish to be slightly hard. The fried calamari wasn’t too oily. It was pretty addictive, once you start, you can’t stop. The batter wasn’t too thick, so we could still enjoy the chewiness of the squid.

The highlight of this meal was the Ikan Bakar, which literally means “burnt fish”. In this case, we opted for the stingray, which was marinated with sambal chili, and then grilled on a banana leave. The stingray meat was tender and had a mildly burnt/barbecued taste. The chili was the best! The sambal belachan was packed with spices; it was so flavourful and the spiciness gave an extra kick to the entire stingray. We could just enjoy plain rice with chili – that is how great the sambal chili was.

The Ikan Bakar was a nice conclusion to our first night in Penang.