I really should post something this month. I’m always so busy these days so I have no time to blog!
Here are some pictures from Singapore airport!
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Japan, April 2017
Time to post about my second visit to Japan. While I was still pretty clueless, my brother had been living in Tokyo for a while now, so I pretty much had a guided tour, which was pretty cool. What I didn’t expect was for it to still be so cold the first couple of days! That was mainly because it was also rainy; the last few days were nice and warm.
I had wanted to book a nice restaurant while I was here, but alas, the ones I wanted were all closed! It wasn’t until afterwards that I realised that it was because the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best awards were on. Then I didn’t mind so much that I missed out. Maybe next time!
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Singapore Coffee
Oops, I forgot that I intended to split Singapore into two sections, one about street life, and the other specifically for coffee. Guess I should post that now before I get distracted by my Japan adventures!
I started compiling my Singapore list quite a while ago, and one of the recommendations actually came from some coffee people while I was in Dubai. That was Common Man Coffee, and in a stroke of luck, my accommodation was nearby so I knew that if all else failed, I’d have an easily accessible cafe if I ran out of places to visit. Being part of the 5 Senses group, I also know that it’d have a certain level of reliability to it.
What I didn’t anticipate was the late opening times of cafes here. By late, I mean 7:30am. Some other cafes opened even later than that! It was probably the biggest shock to my system here, since I’m used to cafes being open before I’m awake back in Aus.
The prices here are pretty insane too. Breakfast and two coffees cost me about 40SGD, and my conclusion is that Australia does the best Aussie brunch!
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Sakura, featuring lil’ Gilg
Mainly a photo spam of pretty sakura. Gilgamesh wasn’t the biggest fan of the flowers (he even jumped from a branch!), he’s much more of a green and moss person.
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Singapore adventures – land of the green, humid and beautifully predictable rain patterns
Okay. Now that I’ve settled down a bit, I’m going to do my best to recount my Singapore, Japan and Sydney adventures.
This will be a very long post I think, considering it’s the first time I’ve been, and because there’s 72 pictures without coffee and stuff. Here goes nothing!
I’ve wanted to go to Singapore for a while, and what better reason to go than a stopover while on the way to Japan. I wasn’t sure exactly how many days I’d need there – all I knew was that I wanted more than an 8 hour overnight stopover. It turns out 4 days is about right, one more day would have been good too. The main reason being, there’s only so much you can eat in a single day!
The first thing I noticed as soon as I entered the airport was that it was green. There were plants in the airport! And it turns out there are plants outside the airport too! It’s such a green place! The humidity wasn’t too much of a shock to the system considering Sydney was stupidly humid earlier. In fact, I ended up really liking how the humidity changed throughout the day because it made the rain predictable. I think that was one of my favourite things about Singapore! Does that make me weird?
For day one, I’d already marked a cafe to go to – Common Man Coffee. What I hadn’t realised was that cafes here open late. By late, I mean that Common Man opened at 7:30am. I’m so used to cafes in Sydney opening anytime between 5am – 6:30am that this actually made me deliberately shift my waking hours. The coffee stuff will be in a separate post, so I won’t elaborate too much more on it here.
Instead, let’s talk about the streets!
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Waku Ghin
Finally. Just under 6 years after my first fine dining experience at Tetsuya’s, I finally made it to Waku Ghin. Technically that makes it the restaurant I’ve had on my wishlist for the longest! I almost didn’t go ahead with the booking though. I knew that it was potentially expensive, but I didn’t expect it to be Noma level expensive! At 450SGD plus tax and service charges, it would be my second most expensive meal to date. But, I had to go, because it closes my Tetsuya loop.
First of all, the booking process was essentially the same as that of Tetsuya’s. I emailed them, they emailed me back, I filled in my credit card details, they secured me a table. Now it was just a matter of waiting.
Then on the 28th of March, it was finally time to trek to Marina Bay Sands and check out the amazing complex. It turns out even with instructions, I’m bad at navigating indoors. It took me a few goes to finally get to the elevator that went up to the restaurant floor. Then, I was somewhat baffled because Waku Ghin’s door wasn’t open so I didn’t see that there was a door! I walked all the way around and back before realising there was a handle and that all I had to do was push.
As I walked in, they greeted me by name. I was a little suprised by this, but then figured they were able to deduce this by the fact I was dining solo, and because I booked the earliest time. I was lead into a small room that seated about 5-6 people, in front of a shiny, super clean hot plate which looked a lot like we were going to experience a teppanyaki style dinner. Being alone, I decided it was a good idea to ask if I could take pictures. They said yes, just no flash photography or filming. They also brought a bag hook over so that I could place my bag somewhere.
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Cirrus
There are two seafood restaurants that are quite noteworthy at the moment – Cirrus, and Saint Peter. For me, I’d read more about Cirrus, but Saint Peter seemed to be the more interesting restaurant even though I didn’t know much about the history of the chef. In my Sydney visit, I wanted to go to Saint Peter more, but the location wasn’t ideal for a dinner due to limited public transport options. In the end, I settled for a brunch visit to Saint Peter, and chose dinner at Cirrus.
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Firedoor
Ok, finally time to start posting about all my fantastic adventures! I really hope I haven’t forgotten too much. I’ve decided I should do all the restaurants first, then Singapore, then Japan, and Sydney last. Maybe. Only because Sydney is already so familiar.
Firedoor. The story with Firedoor is that when it opened, I added it to my list. Communal tables, cooking with fire, what more could you want? But then it never really made the top of the list for some reason. A year or so later, I got linked an article which claims Firedoor has one of the world’s best steaks and was expensive, and aged in its own kidney fat. That didn’t really get my curiosity going enough to bump it up either. It wasn’t until I was looking at the cost of booking Burnt Ends in Singapore that I realised, I don’t need to fork out three times as much for an expensive restaurant there, when I could get the “same” thing here for much less! And that’s how I finally went to Firedoor.
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Random Sydney adventure post thing
I feel like spamming some words just cause I can 🙂
- My Das keyboard is no longer crunchier than my Ducky.
- I need to save a lot of money
- I had a discussion with a friend about coffee and I was saying how my specialty coffee tastes is the same as hipsters and that he was fine to have his opinion on coffee. He was saying how ristrettos are tasty and I was saying how that was 5 years back.
- Some people to my left at a cafe this morning sounded like they were really involved in politics, and judging by other things they said, they’re university students. Hopefully what they achieve what they want because they were very passionate and sounded like they wanted some good changes to happen.
- The people to my right were agonising over whether to visit “a really good donut shop in Barangaroo”. I almost interjected, since I wanted to say YES OF COURSE YOU NEED TO VISIT. THE SHOP’S NAME IS SHORTSTOP. HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW THIS. But maybe that would also sound a bit snobbish right at the end. Also cool was that they were talking about beer or wine or something before donuts.
- I might make a separate blog of this but basically I met chefblackjacket and it was awesome. And his business partner in crime The Somm. I should probably refer to him by name though. But he doesn’t have as “internety” of a pseudonym as Jack (because I never remember his name, only his handle).
- I really want to draw but there really is no time. I really hope I end up blogging everything that I want to blog about.
