Hai Di Lao Hot Pot | 313 Somerset

So, after much persuasion from the boy, I finally got round to try this Hot Pot thingy. The reason why I kept putting off coming to this place because of the crazy waiting hours. Can you believe that I actually waited 3 freaking hours. 3 Mother Of God Freaking HOURS!!!! I would have skip the queue and head to other eateries by now but since its his friend's birthday, so I decided to be the good girl and stay on.

No seriously, never again. 

Although they do offer free services during our wait like free fruits, snacks and drinks, free fish spa and free manicure (some people specially come here to go for these), I personally don't really appreciate the need to wait for so long. 

But you can't complain really. Its such a new concept here in Singapore to have these services for free while waiting. So.... Yeah, its just a dilemma whether to complain or not. Sigh...

Now, onto the food... As you expected, its a steamboat where you dunk raw ingredients into their boiling soup (you can choose the soup base and we got Ma La spicy version and chicken soup) to cook them. 

The chicken soup was good. Like really good. They definitely know their stuff and scoop some soup into individual bowls for us to drink it straight. Yup, their waitress/waiter serves you throughout (hence the exorbitant price) your meal making you feel like a VIP. 

Look, they literally go all the way to peeling your prawns for you. Highly please with them being all accommodating. 

And surprisingly, the ingredient that we enjoyed the most was its luncheon meat (spam). Something about the meat soaking up the soup and bursting in your mouth just feels oh-so satisfying. The Fu Zhok (Fu Pi / Dao Kee / Beancurd Skin) acts as a good soup sponge too. 

The meat was alright. I mean, they are kind of fresh and thinly sliced but nothing to shout about.

The highlight would have to be this guy throwing and tossing around a pastry ball to transform it into a noodle. Yup, that's literally one long strand of noodle made right in front of us. We were impressed by his performance. Taste wise I guess its mediocre (most probably due to us stuffing ourselves full to the brim and still order 2 portions of noodle) but the texture was quite bouncy. 

This meal was really confusing to me. I wanted to like it but was superbly annoyed with the horrendous waiting time. And we spend about $50++ per person (not affordable either). So, this is a miss from me and I won't be going back anytime soon.

Rating

Taste: 4/5

Food Variety: 4/5

Ambience: 4/5

Service: 5/5

Price: 3/5

Waiting Time: -10/5 (Yup, you read it right, its a negative)

4 Fingers Fried Chicken Review

Now, I've always liked Fried Chicken. Especially the Korean kind. You know, the ones with the crispy outer layer drenched in its hot or sweet and salty sauce while its inside is moist and juicy. Those always get me every single d*** time. 

And my favourite of all time is the Bonchon Chicken situated in Bugis+ ground floor. 

So, when 4 fingers pops up in Westgate 2nd floor, I have wanted to give it a go but always reluctantly walk away as they queue is like massive. Imagine 10-15 people queuing in front of you with each person taking 5 minutes. Like heck I will queue for an hour just for some fried chicken. I go eat my Bonchon chicken better, no need to queue summore.

So, it is this one fine day that our fate linked and there are only 5 person was in the queue (ok, maybe its because its near 10pm and nobody should eat fried chicken for supper, right? right?). So I went ahead and queue and waited for our food to be prepared which still took us 30 min for the whole process. 

Tadaa!!! The one that I've been dying to try. On first look, it looks tantalising and yummy. Glistened in its sauce, its just calling out to me.

**Sorry for the blurry picture, I'm trying my best not to shake with excitement/disappointment afterwards** 

Took a bite, lo and behold, I was disappointed. The chicken tasted over-fried as the skin was so dry and hard. The sauce didn't provide that kick that we were expecting like from Bonchon. It just tasted bland. I was like "Meh" the whole time eating the remaining pieces. How dare they made me queue for a whole 30 min and it wasn't even as good as the Bonchon ones. Sigh....

Price wise was at $8++ if I'm not mistaken and given the subpar taste, I'd rather eat my KFC chicken then this one...

Instagram Round Up (Part 2)

So here comes the 2nd part... Instagram here

Just a side note, there won't be any posts up next week as I would like to take a break from blogging while I recover from my jetlag (yes, I have anticipated that). 

Oh, and if you're curious, the countries that I'm travelling to is London -> Amsterdam -> Germany -> Austria -> Switzerland -> Italy -> France. The boy and I are joining this international group tour call Contiki (seems to be exclusive for youngsters as they impose this age restriction of under 35). Thus, there will be some days when we are guided and some days we are free to roam around which is good as we kind of have the best of both world. 

Alright, enough of me babbling about my trip (you can sense how excited I am)... Enjoy...

Instagram Round Up (Part 1)

As I'm on holiday for these few weeks (yup, few weeks, lucky me ^_^) to Europe **cue happy music and dancing around**, so here's just a quick round up of what I usually put on my Instagram account. If you haven't follow me already, please do by clicking here. 

As you may have noticed, I mostly post pictures of makeup, beauty, trips, food and things that are going on in my life. What can I say!? I'm as random as that... Hope you like it...