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Have been away for about a week. Just got back last night. It's amazing how much of the time I spent in Singapore was all about food. I was actually in Penang for about two days. Unfortunately, the hotel fare had been rather disappointing. The best part was probably the durian feast they arranged for us across the road from the hotel. You see, durians are not allowed in the hotel. They must have bought quite a bit, the backseats and the trunk of the car was completely filled with durians. Felt really sorry for the person whose car it was.

I arrived in SIN on Tue, 22 Aug. Had already fixed lunch with Su, Boon and Ed. You can tell I had my priorities all right! We decided to go to an Italian restaurant near Bukit Timah called Valentino.

It was a good thing Su had made reservations earlier. The place was full when we got there. The waiter had explained what the specials were while Boon was parking the car. So we had it repeated, but this time by an Italian chef (he was dressed like one anyway.) It was amazing how an Italian accent and a bit of enthusiasm can make the food sound so much more delicious.

We ordered two starters, the salad with the fried squid and a block of cheese wrapped in Parma ham and fried. Both were excellent! The three pastas were just as good. Apart from the one with the wild boar, which I ordered, I can't for the life of me recall what the rest were. We managed only one main course after that, the osso buco, which was melt-in-the-mouth. Unfortunately, I had left my blogger head in Bangalore. Hence, no pictures of any of the food.

But the best part of the meal was the dessert. We all loved the tiramisu there. Perfect way to end the meal.

We couldn't resist having a bottle of wine with the meal. Which made this one of the most expensive lunches I've ever had. But highly recommended.

The space was rather small and it was some task for them to wheel the dessert cart about. I had to shift my seat several times to accommodate it and they couldn't ask the person at the other table because he happened to be Yong Pung How. Boon had an interesting anecdote which I can't repeat here.

That evening, my family decided to try out the crab bee hoon at block 232 in Ang Mo Kio. We've heard so many good things about it.

Who'd have thought that one had to make reservations for a coffee shop. It was a good thing we did. When we arrived at 7.30 pm, there was already a queue there. Even though we had a table, after placing our order, we were still told that we had to wait about an hour for the food to be served.

But the crab bee hoon was indeed excellent. The broth was milky and full of flavour, so unlike the rubbish we had at Food Republic at Wisma Atria. The crab was nice and fleshy. It was interesting that they had actually added a notice in their menu that they couldn't gurantee the quality of the crab.

The other dishes we had ordered were good too but not something I would shout about. We had also heard that the butter crab was good too, but I wanted some chilli crab instead. Perhaps next time.