Cafe Review: Group Therapy

The Duxton area has become this incubator for cool coffee houses such as the Plain and the Pigeonhole and more recently- Group Therapy. Loving the way things are developing there. I've been to this area a couple on times on my indie weekend escapades and recently did a staycation at the New Majestic Hotel not too far around the corner. I adore the shophouses and that old school charm the area exudes. It doesn't feel quite CBD-ish as you wander down the one way streets or chill out at one of these cafes rain watching. Sigh. It's like an oasis of calm amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. This was exactly what i did today after an intensive hockey game under the crazy December sun (in the morning). Dragged this achy ass out to meet W for some much required girlfriend therapy. 

Typically i would have the boy drive me to the location of my choice but was convinced by W to visit Duxton on a car-less day. Thankfully, good weather permits (managed to avoid the rain) as W and i made our way to Group Therapy (how apt). I didn't know of its existence till W suggested visiting Duxton after doing a quick research on the area.  

Group Therapy is located above Etna and it boasts a spacious interior- High ceilings, comfy sofas (albeit a little too close to the diner next to us). There is another section which i didn't managed to capture. 

GT does an all-day-breakfast <3<3<3!! though the selection is quite small. I saw granola with yogurt and another dish together with Poached eggs with smoked salmon and hollandaise sauce. No prize for my choice of dish! They also have other light bites like panini sandwiches, chicken ham pie, salads etc. There is also some simple main courses like a meat stew. W wasn't hungry so I only got to taste the Poached Egg. 

Fluffy toasted white bread. Crispy and nice on the outside. Very similar to that of WH. Nicely poached and runny egg yolks. Salty smoked salmon which were slowly cooked by the warmth of the eggs that rested nicely on them. And that hollandaise sauce is so cheesy and creamy! I like that it's not too sour but the heaviness of the cream became a little too much halfway into the meal.

Oozy golden goodness seeping into the white cottony sponge. YUMS.

Doesn't it look lovely? <3

Choice of beverage- Kopparberg Pear and Apple Cider. Was too excited to see this. Didn't bothered with browsing through the rest of the ciders and we missed out on Brother's Toffee Apple Cider (which i think is the best apple cider ever). And as usual, stomach failed me. Couldn't even down another bottle of Brother's. :( To think i wanted to try the cakes at a nearby patisserie. Oh wells, another time!

Cute holders for cutlery and sugar

W testing out the GF1 functions on me. I didn't know there a 'soft skin' function that apparently airbrushes features! I reckon this tool is gonna come in handy! :)


Group Therapy apparently does private functions too. Bookmarked for brunch party. Shall try the other dishes such as the waffles and panini (Oven baked Turkey slices with cranberry sounds awesome!). They open for brunch on Sundays from 9am. Do head down.


Group Therapy

49 Duxton Road #02-01 (Above Etna)

Tel: 6222 2554

Tue to Thu: 11am – 6pm
Fri: 11am – 11pm
Sat: 11am – 11pm
Sun: 9am – 6pm
Closed on Mondays 

GT website

Restaurant Review: Omakase Maeda

Had a look through my photo albums and realized that i have albums after albums on food! It's amazing how much food i have eaten (or food that i made my friends eat). It has always been a bad habit of mine to over-order. I am the typical eye-greedy girl, a term coined by my friends for me, I always think that my appetite is bigger than it actually is but i guess i'm just delusional. :P And because of that, i think i have caused my close friends and the boy to put on a few inches on their waistline. As for me, i am blessed with an abnormally astronomical metabolism and overactive stomach that churns and burns food like no normal human being. Sorry folks.

Anyway, it is probably gonna take me a long while to transform the albums into delectable bites on my blog. Maybe i should just make it into a photo blog for food and let the pictures speak for themselves.

So, sometime a couple of months back we headed to Maeda for our monthsary dinner. First saw it on CNNGo which introduced a couple of authentic restaurants in Singapore. Its location in the gastronomical east provided an additional incentive to visit. The east has the best food in Sg. Prove me wrong otherwise.

Maeda is a simple and minimalist Japanese restaurant and quite popular with Japanese businessmen. The exterior is very nondescript and i wouldn't have noticed it if i didn't know of its existence. The food is Osaka fare (though i seriously can't differentiate the subtle differences between the different regions. As long as it's jap and tasty, that's good enough for me. :))

On to the food. We ordered the omakase aka kaiseki- a degustation menu put together by Chef Hiraoki.  There are 3 sets of different prices. We went with the 2 more expensive sets.

1st up, tasty appetiser of fresh plump Canadian oyster in ponzu dressing and chopped clam/ squid meat in a creamy wasabi-ish dressing.

Touted as a sake bar more than a food place, the selection of sake is pretty extensive. We settled for the calpis soju though because i only take sweet alcoholic drinks.

Our sashimi platter included maguro, salmon, saba, toro and otoro, botan ebi as well as uni! Love that creamy texture. Yums. Fish was fresh, definitely not as good as what we had in Tsukiji but oh wells.

A plump and chewy whole clove of Japanese garlic with a mild green chilli smothered in creamy mentaiko sauce looks too blah for me so i made the boy eat it. Guess he doesn't quite like chili after all.

This was what happened to the botan ebi head after we had the sashimi. Everything battered and fried tastes good. I however am not a shell person, more meat for me!

Tempura Anago- salt-water eel. Fun fact: Unagi is fresh water eel and usually barbecued. Anago has a very soft texture and sweet taste usually. Had that at Tsukiji and it was AWESOME. It was cottony and powdery and literally melted in my mouth. This was a far cry from that and it was really bland.

Tempura crab leg was a huge disappointment. Perhaps i was still reminiscing the huge fresh snow crabs in Hokkaido (see below).

I think this is saba but i'm not sure. Not a fish fan as you can tell. Typical fish. I never understood why would people order this.

Grilled wagyu beef and foie gras. My lovelies! The beef was nicely grilled. Would like the foie gras to be a little more crisp on the outside. Anyway I would gladly die a fat and obese girl with clogged up arteries just to eat this everyday. Ok maybe once a week.

And this must be the WORST DISH EVER. Some sea conk- which is a shellfish. Tasted really fishy and rubbery. Hated it.

A simple thin udon dish to conclude the set. It looks really simple but the broth is oh-so-sweet and flavorful. The texture of the udon is more like slightly crunchy soba.

And this is the highlight of dinner (served at the very end). Grilled sliced wagyu beef with pan seared foie gras and little mushrooms. Such a delight. This is the only way foie gras should be cooked really. 

Hiding my fat face from the world. Too much eating.

Total bill came up to about 300ish. I wouldn't pay this much for a meal like that. There were more misses than hits.  Don't think the ingredients are worth that much because they weren't that fresh. Not many cooking techniques to boast about as well. Go only if you have never experienced an authentic Japanese omakase before and have the cash to spare. 

Maeda
467 Joo Chiat Road
Tel: 6345 0745
Tue-Sun: 6pm- 11pm

Cafe Review: Hidden Finds- L'Etoile

One of my favorite weekend activity is to go hunting for indie shops/restaurants with the boy. It started sometime early in 2011, partly because like all couples in Sg, we ran out of things to do and places to go. Plus we can't be traveling all the time even though our friends think we travel quite extensively (i digress).

Anyway back to the subject on our weekend adventures, I was rather apprehensive about starting a blog to introduce all the little finds that we have discovered. The reason? Most of the time these cafes are not run like chain businesses. They do not have the capacity or ability to handle big crowds. When they get overwhelmed, service drops, people stay away and the business closes down. I've seen one too many good eating places close down because of that. It's sad. The other selfish reason is that I don't like my favorite cafes to be crowded. I want to sit there, enjoy my cuppa, watch the world go by SLOWLY and not be rushed into finishing my food and leaving.

You would think that with the proliferation of coffee-shops in would be able to meet the demands of the consumer but you're so wrong. While i have the luxury of having brunch or tea on a weekday, most of the working crowd will swamp these places on weekends. And boy! The chatter in some shops can wake the dead, make a deaf person hear again or cause a normal one to go deaf.

I honestly don't know what changed my mind. I'm still half decided on revealing the name/locations of the cafes I review even though i'm sure my tech savvy readers would be able to figure them out on their own. But i think some of these cafes could really do with more business so i'm gonna do my part to help them grow.

The food 

Luckily for me, my first visit to L'Etoile on a sunday was a quiet and pleasant one. I suppose people don't wake that early on weekdays for brunch (i got there at 930am no thanks to the growling tummy). The place is airy and cool with high ceilings on the 2nd floor. Ample space between tables (though that may change when they try to cope with the crowd). I like that the natural light seems to fill up the place. Smart and elegant use of white lace curtains that filters the strong rays and it feels so very French. All that's missing is probably the water heaters and a gramophone.

I ordered the big breakfast (as shown below) and the boy had the French crepes with butter and sugar. The breakfast was only $9.90 and the crepes were $5. Amazingly cheap but the portions are really small (even for me). Guess i've been spoiled by Jones and Wild Honey. Good thing is that for greedy people like me, you can try more of their brunch offerings. One good thing that L'Etoile got going is that they do not offer an extensive range of brunch items. I think there were 7 items? By keeping to what they do best, it maintains the standard. Plus it also helps indecisive eaters like me decide faster. Kudos to that!

I love the toast even though it's just simple white toasted bread with salted butter. That is good enough for me because that's already like brioche! Brings back fond childhood memories of me wolfing down stacks of butter toasted bread. The texture of the little hashbrowns was interesting, it's almost as though they were layered potato slices. The crepes are typically French, made of buckwheat, it's chewy and slightly spongey. It's a tad too cloyingly sweet so 1 piece was just about right provided you have savory food to go along with it. They also do eggs ben, heard it's not bad. It's on a bagel instead of the usual muffin so i suspect that it'd be quite tough to bite into.  All in all, it was quite a nice breakfast place. Limited photos because i brought the camera out without the memory card. :(

Shall bookmark this for my bdae brunch party, if i ever got down to organizing one.

L'Etoile
160 Owen Road
Tel: 6289 2872
Tue- Sun, 9am - 8pm
Brunch only served on weekends!

Ms SkinnyFat

Hello my dear,

Welcome to the Ms Skinnyfat blog, where your appetite for life would be whetted by the delicious food and exotic escapades around the world.

I'm often asked why the name "Ms Skinnyfat". To sum it up, the description is metaphorical. It expresses my outlook on life: I'm a fun sized girl with a huge appetite for life and i want to experience and eat as much as i can (only if it's worth my calories), while i can. Life is too short for all the shoulda woulda coulda. 

But of course, the fear of growing fat from all that feasting is real. My advice is, if you wanna eat, then you better work that lazy ass. You're gonna need a lot of that if you keep reading my blog so you better start now.

Expect brutally honest reviews over here. I wouldn't let you waste your calories.

Laters,

C.

Ms Skinnyfat website sees more than 15,000 unique visitors and 60,000 page views each month. She is also the winner of the Singapore Blog Awards Best Food Blog 2015. For inquiries, feel free to contact her.