Grubbing with Family

 It has been some time since my last post, due to my examinations and my busy schedule. Now I'm back to share on my visit to one of the cafes which has a rather different environment, compared to most other cafes in Singapore.

Well, I had my chance to visit this cafe that is located in the middle of a park, along with my parents and my brother, to celebrate my birthday with brunch! We visited this cafe called Grub, which a lot of people might have heard of it, which is situated in the relatively newly "renovated" park, Bishan Park. 

Grub is a stand-alone cafe located in the middle of Bishan Park Pond Gardens (formally known as Bishan Park 1). To get to Grub via public transport, you can choose to take bus 52, 410W from Bishan Bus Interchange, bus 262 from Ang Mo Kio Bus Interchange or bus 162/162M from Yio Chu Kang MRT Station. The stop to alight at is shown in the map below. GRUB is just walking distance from the respective bus-stops.

As for me, I took bus 162 to GRUB, which led me to the nice scenery above! As you can see GRUB is surrounded by greenery and fresh plants, and a beautiful river, which is connected to Kallang River. This alone made the cafe different from most other cafes! Customers are closer to nature when they dine in in GRUB.

Arriving at GRUB, you will be welcomed by an iPad to ask you to join in the wait-list, with the number of pax and a contact number to get a queue number. Due to the space constraint at the entrance of GRUB, no physical queuing is allowed outside the cafe. Thus, customers are encouraged to get a queue number and wait for a SMS to be sent to you when the cafe is full. 

Before heading to GRUB on that day, I've done some homework on the internet on the recommended dishes to try at GRUB! And some of the dishes are the popular ones by netizens!

First up, as appetizer! Chili con carne($8)! It means "chili with meat"! This appetizer consist of a bowl of corn chips, tasted like those you can buy from any convenient store, and a small bowl of meat sauce with a scoop of sour cream. This meat sauce is a fragrant beef chili sauce, which is not too spicy. The chunky minced beef gives this dish a pleasant texture when being eaten with the corn chips! The sauce is definitely great to be eaten alone too!

This dish is suitable for all, but the corn chips is a little bitter when being eaten alone. Highly recommended dish if you can eat beef! Definitely having this if I'm visiting GRUB again!

Each of us ordered a drink each for ourselves to complete our meal! Right above, on the left is a cup of Latte($4.50), on the right is a cup of Cappuccino($4.50). Right below are Long Black($3.50), and a cup of Hot Coffee that came with a GRUB Breakfast Set that we ordered. 

The coffee were pretty normal, which has nothing much to comment on. But, if you are a coffee lover, you will not like the Liberty Hot Coffee. It was so blend that it tasted like plain water to me. For coffee lovers, if you decide to order the GRUB Breakfast Set, I would recommend that you order another drink, instead of having the Hot Coffee.

Crispy Fish Burger($14) - crumbed fish fillet with remoulade sauce. 

Remoulade sauce is a French-invented condiment that is popular in many countries. However, the taste of the remoulade sauce in the burger was not strong enough to bring flavour to the burger. The fish fillet is a very crispy and big dory fish fillet, and it tasted like it was only marinated with salt and pepper before being fried. 

On the whole, this dish did not bring surprise to me, except for the crispy-ness and the size of the fillet. Fish lovers can consider giving this dish a try, but I would not recommend this dish if you are looking for a special dish to try. 

Pork Steak Burger($13) - sous-vide glazed pork, grilled pineapple

Sous-vide is a cooking method by sealing the meat in an airtight plastic bag and cook in a temperature-controlled water bath or steamed environment for longer-than-normal cooking hours, at a lower temperature from normal cooking methods.

The pork is quite tender, but just a little too dry for myself, the marinate was not too special, tasted just nice for me. Not to worry about the pork smell that a lot of people are afraid of when they eat pork.!To make the burger special, a slice of grilled pineapple has been added to the burger to compliment the taste of the pork! Overall, the taste was quite surprising for me and will recommend it to everyone!

Portobello Burger($11) - grilled portobello, crumbed feta, lettuce, vegetarian option (but not vegan)

I have always been a fan of sautéed mushrooms, any type of mushrooms! Just love the natural fragrant of mushrooms when they are being sautéed or being grilled. This Portobello Burger sure caught my attention! A simple burger with no meat patty, but replaced with 2 caps or grilled portobello mushrooms, topped with feta cheese to add on to the taste of the mushroom. The portobellos are so juicy and tender that it feels like meat if you were to eat it blindfolded! This burger sure is a suitable choice for vegetarians, but because it contains feta cheese, which is made from sheep's milk, Vegans will not be able to have them. Maybe they can request to have it without the feta cheese?

For the price that we are paying, I felt that the portobello mushrooms could be bigger in size to make it a more value-for-money option for the customers. On the whole, Portobello Burger is a simple, not too strong tasting, main course to choose if you are looking for a not-so-sinful main course from all the other options! Definitely a recommendation from me ;D

GRUB Breakfast Set($15) - grilled focaccia, scrambled egg, grilled mushroom, side salad and a choice of chicken cheese or garlic thyme pork sausage

How can you not have a breakfast set if you are brunching? Heres GRUB's Breakfast Set! Well, nothing much special about their breakfast set and the portion is not enough to fill up my fat tummy if I were to have this set alone for brunch. We chose the Chicken Cheese sausage over the garlic thyme pork sausage as my mom don't really like pork due to the smell that she is quite afraid of.

Portions for the sausage, scrambled egg and salad were alright, but the grilled focaccia bread is probably a little too small for a breakfast set. Another thing that I was quite unhappy with was that the served half a small slice of portobello mushroom for the breakfast set? It don't look presentable and the portion definitely is too small to be served. I did not not even know that there was a slice of portobello mushroom until my brother told that they finished that half a piece of it. GRUB Breakfast Set did not give me a good impression on the whole, with its portion and the bad coffee that came with it.

That's all for our appetizer and main course! Here's a picture of what we had before having our dessert served!

Churros - dark chocolate, tangy crème anglaise

And of course, voted as a MUST TRY for dessert in GRUB by netizens, is definitely their Churros! Recently, there's been a craze over churros! Where to find churros, whose churros is the best, and where to find unique churros. 

GRUB has been known to be a place to find Churros, so how can you miss it when you visit GRUB? Tasted it, and it is indeed YUMMY! Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside! The kitchen cooks them only when you ask for your Churros to be served, so that they are ensured to be piping hot! It is served with dark chocolate sauce and tangy crème anglaise sauce. 

Crème Anglaise is a light pouring custard as a dessert cream or sauce. GRUB added a tangy flavour to their crème anglaise to give it a refreshing taste! The Churros is coated with a layer of cinnamon sugar, which is the norm for churros. To compliment or to balance out the sweetness from the cinnamon sugar, the warm dark chocolate sauce is served. Have it for more flavour, or to lighten the sweetness using the bitter taste of the chocolate sauce! The crème anglaise sauce is served cold, and it tasted like condensed milk with cream, and a little refreshing tangy taste! Very refreshing and totally enjoyable munching on the churros with the sauces! MUST TRY!

A reminder to all my readers, GRUB does not allow pets to be brought into the cafe and no smoking is allowed, even in the outdoor dining area.

Do donate some money to Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (S.P.C.A.) into this cute donation box, on your way when you are leaving the cafe!

Here are the information about GRUB cafe!

Adress: 510, Ang Mo Kio Ave 1 (Bishan Park 1), Singapore 569983

Telephone: +65 64595743 (No reservations)
Website: www.grub.com.sg
Email: info@grub.com.sg

Opening Hours:

Tuesday-Friday: 11:00am - 3:00pm, 5:30pm - 10:30pm

Saturday-Sunday and Public Holidays: 9:00am - 4:00pm, 5:30pm - 10:30pm

Last orders at 30 minutes before closing.

GRUB is closed on every Mondays and the last Tuesday on every month.

Habitat Coffee Cafe & NeLi's Ice Cream @ Upper Thomson Road

Had a chill and relax meet up with 3 of lovely friends I got to know during a Channel U talkshow filming on 2nd November 2013, we are known as Yishun Clique although I don't stay in Yishun. We had been planning to have a little meet up over some better food, and we decided to give Upper Thomson Road a visit. Upon reaching there, we had a hard time choosing which shop to visit as there were just too many shops there providing great food! And among all, we decided to try out the well known Habitat Coffee Cafe!

It was a public holiday and it was our first time visiting the place, and we were lucky enough to get a table for 4 within 5 minutes of waiting time upon reaching the cafe. At first look, the cafe looks rather small and uniquely decorated, with a beautiful chalk board written with the names of all the dishes provided by the cafe, which is behind their cashier, coffee machine and cake display fridge. Our table is right at the upper deck, which is really a small area squeezing easily 30 pax there. I did not manage to take a picture of the upper deck as the space was really too small for my 550D to capture. Well, I would say its really cosy having our meal on the Upper Deck :) 

The first decoration that caught my eyes when I stepped onto the upper deck was the Palette like poster, with a cup of coffee, different coffee machines and the words "DEAR COFFEE I LOVE YOU" printed on the Palette, hung beside my table.

Their menu is really unique! Instead of normal booklet that you see in most restaurants or cafe, their menu came to us as a wooden board! Its my first time seeing such a special menu provided for customers! Looking though their menu, me and my friends had a really hard time deciding what to order for our brunch/lunch. There are just too many tempting dishes that makes you feel like trying every single one of them! After about 20 minutes, we decided to proceed to their cashier to place our order! Woohoo! Just cant wait to receive our food, looking at our neighboring tables with full of beautifully prepared food! Upon ordering, a table number tag was given to us, on it printed a really cute quote: :"Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms, by William J. Bennett

My 3 friends ordered themselves a cold drink each, Iced Tiramisu Flavored Coffee, Ice Habitat Fusion Tea - Peach and Iced Mocha Flavored Coffee. While me, I insisted on getting a cup of hot coffee that comes with coffee art =D I ordered a Hot Cappuccino Coffee! The cappuccino that I had was really smooth and fragrant! Although I love drinking coffee, but I do not usually go around trying out coffee. But the Cappuccino I had was really good for me! Beautiful coffee art as well! And the biscuit given with the Cappuccino was really good, and it got me looking for it in Supermarkets! :)

Iced Tiramisu Flavored Coffee

Ice Habitat Fusion Tea - Peach

Iced Mocha Flavored Coffee

 

Hot Cappuccino Coffee
(I have uploaded a picture of this cup of Cappuccino on Instagram to take part in a competition. Please show your support if you are an Instagrammer! ^^ or just drop by to view my picture taken using my Samsung S3 @ http://instagram.com/p/gRuZf5AMUC/ )

Alright! After looking at the beautiful coffee and drinks we received before our food came to our table, here are some pictures of what we had for brunch/lunch! My friend ordered Mama's Banana Pancakes, Blackened Dory, and I ordered their Brunch, The Big Ben!

 

Mama's Banana Pancakes
(- Real banana pancakes with maple syrup, caramelized bananas, and choco fudge)

Blackened Dory

(- Grounded black pepper Dory with Pasta)

I had the brunch below, The Big Ben! Upon receiving the beautifully prepared dish, and after taking pictures of the food, the first item I "attacked" on the plate was the scrambled eggs! To me, a nicely done scrambled eggs should be soft, fluffy and creamy, which tests the skills of the chef when he cooks it, constantly pushing the eggs when he cooks it, and not over cooking it into a hard lump of dry scrambled eggs. Of course! Their scrambled eggs did not disappoint me! ^^ And to my surprise, there was a piece of bacon hiding below the scrambled eggs, on top of the piece of little pancake that the eggs were sitting on! Great surprise I got from the dish, and the second surprise I got was the huge Cheese Sausage sitting beside the scrambled eggs, bacon and pancake!

According to the menu, its a 100 grams Swiss Cheese Sausage. When I cut a slice of the sausage, cheese came running out of the sausage! I only have a Singapore "word" to describe the sight, SHIOK!

The cheese inside the sausage is really generous and it is really tender, fragrant and not too saltish, well at least to me ^^ The Hollandaise sauce provided was great too! However, there was just one thing on the plate that kind of spoilt my great experience, which is the hash browns. As I am very particular about oily food items, the hash browns had oil oozing out when i cut it into half. But I thought to myself, maybe it is because that the hash browns are very thinly made, it will tend to absorb oil easily during the cooking procedure. The taste to it was still quite acceptable as it is quite fragrant, from the frying and the spices they used, and not too saltish as compared to the hash browns we find from other places!

As a whole, this brunch dish is definitely recommended to give it a try! A seemingly small portion brunch could make a huge guy, like me, to be full and satisfied! ^^ Of course, they too have Egg Benedict that a lot of people has been trying out at all other cafes! 

The Big Ben
(- Scrambled eggs on bacon and pancake, home-made hash brown, fresh greens, oven grilled tomato and 100 grams Swiss cheese sausage with Hollandaise sauce)

One of my friends didn't have appetite for a main dish, so he ordered their Lava Cake with a scoop of Vanilla ice cream! It took about 20 minutes to be served. Looks great to me, and the price for it isn't expensive!

Lava Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream

After eating and chilling at Habitat Coffee, we decided to move off to an ice cream shop to complete our meal and continue chilling. We wanted to go to an ice cream shop on the opposite side of the road, but we didn't expect that it was raining when we left Habitat Coffee. And so, we decided to go to NeLi's ice cream, just a few stores down the same row of shophouses with Habitat Coffee!

When I stepped into the shop, I was surprised by the simple yet beautiful design that the shop has! Very clean white with some turquoise is their main color combination, with some very simple drawings on the wall and a few classy pictures of their desserts on the cabinets at the counter. 

They have a variety of ice cream flavors served by them! Most of them are created by them! There are about 20 different flavors available! 

Similar to Habitat Coffee, NeLi's ice cream has a second deck to their store. There is a little cozy corner for a larger group of customers to play games there at the second deck, with a few shelfs of books for customers to read in the store!

On one side of the store, there were some pretty words written on the walls to beautify the store! Some were drawn on, and some were painted wooden word blocks, with a row of old school erasers with flags of different countries printed on them! Those erasers brought back memories of my Primary School years, where the boys will buy lots of such erasers to fight with each other, flipping them towards your opponent's eraser, winning your opponent's eraser when yours stack on top of your opponent's. 

My friends ordered scoops of different flavored ice creams to satisfy their cravings for sweets after lunch! They ordered Cookies and Cream ice cream, Holicks ice cream and Lemon Sorbet.

Cookies & Cream, and Holicks Ice cream

Lemon Sorbet

While for me, I had my virgin experience on trying Lava Cake! Upon ordering the Lava Cake, I was being told that it takes about 30 minutes for the cake to be ready! Yup, I was willing to wait for it, hoping that its worth the wait, and I had it with a scoop of very special flavored Sorbet, Chrysanthemum Sorbet with Wolfberry! Its my first time seeing such a special sorbet flavor and immediately I decided to have it!

And after a 30 minutes of waiting time, here comes a beautiful plate of Lava Cake with my Chrysanthemum Sorbet!

Lava Cake with Chrysanthemum Sorbet, with Wolfberry

The beautiful plate of Lava cake came with a generous drizzle of chocolate sauce! As It was my first time trying Lava Cake, it did give me a great deal of satisfaction, with the soft warm chocolate cake on the outside warm gooey chocolate sauce flowing out from the cake the moment I cut it open! The sweetness of the cake itself is just nice, but with the chocolate sauce drizzled on the cake, its a bit too sweet of me, but overall, its all good! ^^ Curious about the how the Chrysanthemum Sorbet taste like? 

I fell in love with it the moment I put a little of it in my mouth! Its very smooth and it has a strong fragrance of Chrysanthemum running all over in my mouth! At first, I thought the sorbet will be quite light, but its a total opposite of what I expected it to be! The sweetness of the sorbet is really light, but when you bite on the Wolfberries in the sorbet, it gives an additional natural sweetness to the sorbet! Its really refreshing to have it as dessert after a meal, and I think people who cant take desserts that are too sweet can give this flavor a try!

(Of course, I had decided to send a picture of this Lava Cake into the Instagram competition. 

Please show your support if you are an Instagrammer! ^^ or just drop by to view my picture @ http://instagram.com/p/gSmT6UAMc5/)

Its my first time doing a whole blog post on food, and I longed to write food blog on this blog! Finally, I have started and I shall continue trying out different good food around in Singapore and give a review on the food I tried! Hope you like this post on my relaxing day, having brunch at Habitat Coffee and desserts at NeLi's ice cream, all at Upper Thomson Road! Stay tuned for more food posts if you want to know where to try out for your next food hunt! Information of the places we visited are below. Do visit them and try out their great food if you are free! ^^ Feel free to send in comments on my post, like what you want me to include on my next food blog post and suggestions on where you want me to try out for my subsequent food hunt journey!

To view the pictures on my Facebook Page, please visit: 

https://www.facebook.com/habitatcoffee and https://www.facebook.com/neli-icecream

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Habitat Coffee Cafe

Address: 233 Upper Thomson Road Singapore 574355

Opening Hours: Tues - Fri 11am to 10.30pm, Sat - Sun 10.30am to 10.30pm, Closed on Mondays

Tel No: +65 6456 2567

Email: info@habitatcoffee.com.sg

Website: http://www.habitatcoffee.com.sg/

NeLi's Ice Cream

Address: 233 Upper Thomson Road Singapore 574364

Opening Hours: Sun - Thur 12pm to 11pm, Fri - Sat 12pm to 1am

Tel No: +65 6453 2410

Email: info@neli-icecream.sg

Website: http://www.neli-icecream.sg/

Bus Services

52, 132, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 410, 855, 980

Alight at 'Before Thomson Ridge' bus stop or 'Aft Thomson Road PO' bus stop (requires to cross the road)