The first is actually the sea salt and caramel ice-cream from Azabu Sabo. I once took a picture of a scoop I ate last year, but I lost the file in the Great Crash of '07. I have never been satisfied with the service at Azabu Sabo though.
The second one I sampled and found to be not-bad was from this gelato from a stall at the basement of Liang Court, near Meidi-ya. My sister and tried the milk tea flavour and it's quite refreshing actually.
The next one was discovered on a supposedly window-shopping adventure to the Isetan basement with my mum and sister, where we ended up buying more sushi and ice cream and match-flavoured caramel corn. What sold us when we saw the matcha ice-cream was not the fact that it was on offer and ridiculously cheap for its serving-size and quality (around $1.90 a tub, after discount), but because we saw a woman who rushed to the freezer and stashed more than 10 tubs of it into her basket without giving much thought. It comes with creamy matcha-flavoured swirls!
The last one on my list, is, of course, the ice cream from island creamery. I didn't like the tiger beer one because it didn't pack much punch, but I seriously love the nutella ice-cream. (I also lost my pictures for this.)
But this isn't really the main objective of this post, which wasn't supposed to be ice-cream-centric at all.
Yesterday, my family went on an outing to the Peranakan Museum at the old Asian Civilisations site at Armenian Street. I saw ubiquitous kasuk maniks and kebayas, among other interesting stuff. What's really weird about going to a museum about your own community (somewhat) is the fact that you can pick out familiar faces from the age-old photographs around the exhibits. At least, they weren't familiar to me, but my dad saw his old kampung neighbours, my mum saw her gynae etc. etc., that sort of thing. It's the kind of museum that you want to bring your aged parents to, to see what kind of stories they can recall just by looking at various paraphernalia at the various exhibits. I'm just afraid that my grandmother is still sore about not being able find her older kebayas, blaming their mysterious disappearance on the maid who left ten years ago. (Why do everyone's grandmothers seem to have bad experiences with maids?)
The inclusion of my dad in the above photograph was deliberate.
Cute cat sculpture!
After that, we went for a buffet dinner at Grand Plaza Park. I prefer the spread here to the one at the Marriot, although both are quite good as well.
I think what I enjoy most at buffets are the countless food-plating opportunities. Unlike cooking at home or eating a la carte at a restaurant, I actually have, like, a zillion pieces of food at my disposal, and plenty of room for experimentation. My favourite is the salad bar because salad has that wonderful tossed-about insouciance. Salads are playful. Sushi is not. However, I didn't really take pictures of the my salads, although the miso dressing I opted to drizzle left me with dazzling impressions of its salad bar. Here are some of my better attempts:
I can't stand plates that have to be so ornate and gold-trimmy and patterned. I prefer my plates white and plain, although I wouldn't mind experimentation in terms of shape. Sushi is so difficult to plate, because they have evil inorganic shapes, much like lego bricks. Sashimi is not too bad, but smoked salmon, its western counterpart, is a better friend because it allows itself to be draped around other stuff on the plate. But enough rambling. I love salmon sashimi. Look at how the fat marbles and swirls around with the fresh orange meat!
This is my favourite. I've paired a single mussel, au gratine, and veal. (Yes, I do eat veal.) I like my food parallel. Also, I like my gravy drizzled artfully that borders on pretentiousness.
I think this particular plate would have benefitted from some sauce/gravy. Otherwise, it's not too bad and I'm happy about it.
I didn't fare so well with dessert presentation, partially because I was two hours into my meal and didn't have any more creative energy to enthusiastically decorate a strawberry cheesecake with such zealousness and artistic depth, and partially because I was the worst cake-cutter in the entire restaurant. I felt so apologetic after ruining the symmetry of chocolate truffle cake, but it's just cake! I just stick a fork into it and put it in my mouth. The chocolate fondue, however, is something that I still remorsefully reminisce, because all I had were three sticks of chocolate-dipped melons and a scrumptious Belgian waffle. Chocolate fondues often provoke a Pavlovian response in me, but chocolate fountains are getting tacky.
Holiday lessons start tomorrow! :(
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