The 1.833/2 Year –> 4 Year Journey

Well, after a lot of procrastination and postponements by the makantrail team, I dragged Xeniel and a mutual friend to Astons to have late lunch on a lazy Friday afternoon. Xeniel is no longer an Astons virgin! He can safely say he tried Astons.

Astons is located in East Coast Road, just opposite Katong Mall. It is characterized by the insanely long queue which forms during lunch hours and dinner time. If you wish to eat at 7pm, be prepared to start queuing at 6pm as it takes roughly 1 hour to get a table.

Anyway, the 3 of us reached at 3pm so there wasn’t much of a queue. We managed to get a table in 15 mins. Xeniel and I both ordered the Sirloin Steak @ $10.50 while our friend ordered the New York Strip @ $13.50. The sides as you can from the pictures, are mashed potatoes, onion rings and baked potatoes.

Plain water costs $0.30 which we werent complaining since we didnt had to pay service charge at all. Nett price!

It took insanely long for the food to come, around 20mins, considering it was off peak period of 3pm plus they had an insanely large number of 8 waiters in the restaurant serving just 20+ tables? Maybe the cooks were slaughtering the cows in the kitchen.

Interior of Astons looks abit like Swenson’s with the stained glass lighting as seen in the picture.

Anyway, the sirloin steaks came first. The portion was kinda disappointing. I kinda expected a larger portion. However, the great taste of the sirloin steak made up for the small portion. On biting a piece, the grilled burnt taste of meat hits you. It was cooked to perfection and had that hot-from-grill taste. Now thats what I call I grilled sirloin steak. It was a little dry though, probably it was almost well done already instead of medium well. The mushroom sauce which came with it was not bad. Button mushrooms were visible in the sauce. My mashed potato was also good and the gravy was delicious and not diluted. My only complaint was the fries which were somewhat lukewarm and dehydrated.

Xeniel’s sides were disappointing. 5-6 pieces of onion rings and a over cooked baked potato. Hence I would suggest you guys not take the onion rings and baked potato sides if you do ever go there.

Then came the New York Strip. It was a very large portion, thicker and almost twice the size of my Sirloin Steak. Damn, I should have forked out a little more to get 7th Heaven. The meat was nicely cooked and was very tender. There was a layer of fat present around the meat, which made it extra delicious but yet artery clogging. The three of us felt our arteries filling up with the beef fats =(

However,as can be seen from the picture below, the beef is nicey cooked, with just a tinge of pink in the middle. Thats how beef should be cooked!

I would recommend you guys get the New York Strip if you guys do go there instead of the Sirloin Steak. For 3 bucks more, you get better beef. Overall, I’ll rate the dining experience 4/5 for Sirloin Steak, 5/5 For New York Strip and 3/5 for the service.

Oh yeah, there is a black pepper sauce you could request and it goes very well with your steak in case you don’t want the mushroom sauce they give.

Astons Specialities

119 East Coast Road

Opening hours 1100-2300hrs

Closed on Mondays

http://astonsspecialties.blogspot.com/

Till next time,

Eat the good stuff.

We’ve all heard the phrase on radio: Damn good food at a damn good price..

Botak Jones is set up by an angmoh who wanted to bring western food to the masses. Ironically, the western food stalls he set up are all in the west, giving a new meaning to WESTERN food.

Having some free time on our hands and an empty stomach, nerite, me and another friend decided to try out Botak Jones. Well, they have been around pretty long and I’m sure many people have heard of them. We decided to head to the clementi branch as it was nearest to where we were. After some direction asking we found the place. It was based in a coffee shop like the other branches and as usual almost everyone was there for Botak Jones.

The crowd was moderate and we found a seat after about 10 minutes of waiting. Ordering was done coffee shop style – order what you want, tell them where your seat is and they would bring it to you. After some discussion over what to eat and scrutinising the menu, we ordered the Botak Burger, Cajun Burger and Cajun Chicken.

Apparently customers werent finishing their fries, so instead of letting it go to waste, Botak Jones gave less fries. However, nerite spotted a notice at the cashier explaining their rational for less fries and informing that more fries will be given Free of charge on request. Being the greedy people that we are, we asked for extra fries =D (yay!)

Our orders came after about 15 minutes.

Cajun Chicken Burger

Cajun Chicken

Xeniel: As you can see the serving is bigger than than the usual western food you find around. The burger is really huge with that big chunk of chicken fillet and the generous amount of onions, tomatoes and lettuce they stack with the burger. Being a sucker for chicken breast, naturally I was delighted to see a big piece right in front of me (Mine! All mine! Muahahaha…). There was definitely that cajun-y taste in the first bite whatever cajun means. I can’t really describe it but it was kind of a smoky (and spicy?) taste. Pardon my retarded taste buds.

That aside, the meat was pretty tough to cut probably due to it being the breast meat. It was not as tender as I would expect and a tad too dry as well. Moving on the fries. It was probably a pretty new thing to have spices added to fries around here so everyone raved about them. Aside from the novelty, it was not overly fantastic but it definitely beats what you get elsewhere and they’re really addictive, trust me.

Overall, I would give it 3/5. It definitely beats the normal western food you find in coffee shops and is big on quantity but it ends there. The price is a little on the high side if you ask me but it fills the gap between your NYDC and the normal western fare you get in coffee shops.

Botak Burger

The signature Botak Burger, I didn’t have this so I can’t really comment but the last time I had this the patty was really dry and finishing a burger of this proportion when it sucks is really well, sucky.

Nerite: Well, I had the Botak Burger. I ordered it medium well with cheese. The botak burger is literally botak as it doesnt come with any addition toppings except patty, onions and tomatoes. That extra $1 for the cheese made the Botak burger a proper burger so unless you are lactose intolerant, I would recommend forking out your money for it.

The Botak Burger set @ $7+1 (cheese) looked good when it arrived. Fries were definitely a lot with a decent amount of coleslaw. The fries are seasoned with spices which are commonly used in ‘restaurants/coffee shops’ filling the void between upmarket dining and hawker fare. It tastes of chicken which reminded me of the MSG seasoning they probably added to the fries.

Dont ever try to attempt to eat the burger with your hands. The patty is too big for the burger to be held in your hands and eating it fast-food style.

The beef patty was just nice, not too dry as Xeniel had previously ate before. It was just nicely cooked and was soft to chew, sorta melts in your mouth =). The onions in the burger was a little too raw though..they should have grilled it on the grill for a minute or so… Didnt really like the raw onion taste.

The cheese on the patty was good authentic cheddar cheese which made the meal a very fulfilling one. Only thing I was disappointed in was the bun. The bun tasted yucky, kinda reminds me of those buns left overnight for a day. It was dry and was difficult to chew.

Overall, I rate it 4/5 on the account of the beef patty,the cheese and the decent amount of fries

Hi guys! I’m back with an update! I visited the Old Airport Food Centre with some of my pals over the weekend. It was home to many nice hawker fare after being around for so long. Here’s a fast peek of what we tried, comments will be coming up later

Hi All,

I’m nerite, the new resident blogger. Been a while since our last update, hope you guys will understand.

Anyway, in our weekend special, I bring you a review of a restaurant in Dempsey Road.

It’s Chang Korean Charcoal BBQ Restaurant at Blk 18C Dempsey Road.

When i first got there, it was packed. Cars parked outside this upmarket section of Singapore. Luckily, I made a reservation before hand. There were many Koreans queuing outside the restaurant waiting to get in.

There are traditional on-the-floor korean seating and normal table seatings. Private function rooms are also available. The place looks relatively new, with a white deco. All the waitress and waitresses are Koreans but they all seem to have that stoned look. Guess they were overwhelmed by the crowd of mainly foreigners.

Anyway, our group decided to get the assorted beef BBQ set for 3 @ $98. Yes i know it may seem expensive, but there were 5 of us and this is a upmarket restaurant. We also ordered the seafood bean curd soup , a staple in Korea, and a seafood pancake.

Our dinner ware was traditional Korean style with metal chopsticks and spoon. We opted for Korean tea which was refreshing and mild.

Our orders came pretty quickly and we were assigned a waitress who cooked the beef for us. There were marinated beef slices, beef tendons and beef ribs. All were cooked over a gas/charcoal stove. The charcoal gives the smoky flavour to the beef while the gas ensured that it wont take ages to be done.

Also accompanying our meal were traditional Korean appetizers of Kimchi and Preserved Vegetables. The kimchi they served was quite mild and didnt have the spice found in traditional kimchi I had in Korea. I guess they had to cater to the angmohs which i saw eating there too.

Our beef was served up on a serving plate and we had to use our traditional metal chopsticks to eat the beef. Traditional BBQ meat is eaten with the beef wrapped in a leafy vegetable with soya bean paste. Again, the soya been paste didnt have the ‘oomph’ of those in Korean. It wasn’t saltish or spicy enough. However, the beef pieces were cooked to perfection and were tender and retained that charcoal smoky flavour.

The seafood pancake was ok @ $20 . I could see shrimps inside with some cut chili however it wasnt that great. Another disappointment was the seafood bean curd soup, which was amazingly small considering it was priced @ $16. The broth lacked the soya bean taste and the seafood contained a miserable mussel.

However, credit has to be giving to the waitress who served us, who although showed no expression, cooked all the beef for us before leaving to serve another table. The food also arrived quickly, around 5 mins or so, considering that it was packed to the brim with people.

The 5 of us were still hungry so we ordered another extra serving of Rib Eye. Our waitress from earlier on was waiting on another table as such, the Lady Boss , clearly embarassed that our rib eye was not being cooked, came over to cook it for us. We made small talk with her and she gave her surname as Won. We asked if Chang was her name and she said that many customers call up address her as Mrs Chang. She informed that Chang means window in Korean. She was a very nice and humble host and had stayed in Singapore for 7 years.

After our meal, we asked for our bill and the Boss, her husband, came over and presented us with the bill. The hospitality from the bosses were nice and the service was excellent.

A pleasant surprise was also found in the toilet. It was nicely furnished, with a woody Zen feel. The toilet sink is unique too which reassembled a fish bowl as seen in the picture.

Oh ya, be prepared to walk out smelly of BBQ meat. Although there was aircon and ventilation fans, it wasnt sufficient to mask the odor of the smoke.

Overall, ambience was nice, the service was great and the food was ok but could be improved. Do make reservations or end up waiting like hell.

From what i know, UOB Infinity card members enjoy a discount however we didn’t have that card so i can’t tell you how much discount is given.

Till next time,

Eat the good stuff!