One... and over the Mooooon at Art Speaks Studio

Matt and I turned one about a month ago. 

To celebrate, Matt took me to Art Speaks Studio and we spent the afternoon painting in acrylic. It has been years since I last picked up a paint brush. In fact, I don't really remember working with acrylic. The only thing I remember from art class was the lesson where we had to "paint" by blowing at the watercolour through a straw.

Which is probably why ten seconds into painting the background, the art teacher stopped me and gave me a lecture on how to glide the brush over the canvas; ten minutes later, she confiscated my brush and finished the background herself. This repeated when I attempted to outline the huge round "moon" in the middle, and when I was filling it in. After a while, I figured it'd be easier if she just did all the finishing touches anyway, and was calling for her every ten minutes.

As she set about evening out the paint and mixing colours, I would look over at Matt and watch his brush glide effortlessly across his canvas. I think his day peaked when the art teacher leaned over excitedly to ask, "have you taken art classes before?". Very, very cunning choice by this "O" level art student to spend our anniversary at an art studio.

Don't get me wrong though. I did enjoy the class. The art teachers knew when to chip in, just in time to salvage my painting. And more than that, I enjoyed learning to mix any colour with white to thicken its texture. I also enjoyed learning how to introduce gradients into my background. But I didn't really enjoy the fact that the six-year old sitting next to me seemed to know it all and was totally kicking my ass with her landscape painting. I am beginning to think my primary school art teacher cheated us of real technique. I haven't come across anybody who "paints" with straws.

After the class, we took a walk around the studio and chanced upon the children's room. 

Other than paint, Art Speaks Studio teaches children to work with other fun materials like pipeliners, cotton wool, etc. It was amazing looking at the children's pieces and how they had reinterpreted scenes from their memories. It felt like I was reading into the children's minds, their moods, their sentiments when they visited those scenes. It felt like I could read into how they had felt at that point.

I started to think about when I last did craft. The last time I did craft, I put together a handmade birthday card with a huge pink cupcake in the front. I had been very proud of that card. I had looked at the bright, pop art colours, and had felt that I had conveyed my blessings well beyond the usual "happy birthday" greeting.

Can you tell what I have tried to figure through my painting this time around? My art teacher couldn't but Matt and I could. And that's arty enough for us :)

Pigged Out! Sydney Edition

I'm not quite done with Sydney yet. 

We had some really good food in Sydney. And I thought to list them here so that I can come back again and again to all these wonderful food experiences. A little like my very own pocket guide to my food memories.

I imagine I would very soon start kicking myself for doing this because staring at, much less thinking about, these photos always inadvertently sets off unrealistic cravings. But I just had my favourite wanton mee for dinner and that might just hold the stomach for a while.  

*****

Pho Pasteur - 709 George Street, Haymarket, NSW 2000

We chanced upon this busy cafe right after landing in Sydney. The beef slices were melt-in-your-mouth tender, the soup was delicious and, for about $10, the serving was generous. Even Testuya's got this one's back.    

Harry's Cafe de Wheels - Corner Cowper Wharf Roadway & Brougham Road, Woolloomooloo, NSW 2011

Giant hot dogs and caramelised onions nestled in chilli con carne and sweet green pea mash along views of the Woolloomooloo waterfront. The celebrity photo line-up is enough proof this hot dog stand have got their dogs right. 

Read more about our delicious meal at Harry's Cafe de Wheels here.

Medusa Greek Taverna - 2 Market Street, NSW 2000 (Corner of Kent & Market Streets)

Medusa was a favourite of Matthew's when he last lived here. He saved it for special treats e.g. when his family visited, or at the end of the week when he had spare cash from his weekly meal allowance.

It was easy to understand why. The food was delicious, fresh and came in very generous portions. Olive oil was the star of the meal, featuring very strongly in each dish - I've finally learnt why the Spanish and Italians are so particular about olive oil, it really propels any dish towards a new dimension.

Be sure to end your meal off with the "Medusa", a very interesting and pretty dessert of ouzu strawberries, pomegranate coulis, anise ice-cream and rose water fairy floss. It was our first encounter with ouzu and we enjoyed it very, very much.

Lindt Chocolat Cafe - Darling Harbour, 1 Harbour St Cockle Bay Wharf, NSW 02000

Visit here while touring Darling Harbour for some sinfully rich DIY hot chocolate. I like to make mine very very thick.

Nando's World Square - Shop 9.91, Lower Ground Floor, 644 George Street, NSW 2000 

The paella here is wickedly spicy and warms through your stomach - perfect comfort food our bodies welcomed on the first day whilst adjusting to the chilly weather.We were planning our next visit to Nando's right after we finished with our first. 

Four Ate Five - 485 Crown Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010

Perfect coffee, perfect eggs, delicious sourdough bread in a neighbourhood perfect for the Surry-Oxford-Bondi-Coogee walk. Read more about our breakfast at Four Ate Five here.

Papa Giovanni Gelateria - 172 Campbell Parade, Bondi Beach, NSW 2026

Generous nutella bits and swirls embedded in smooth, creamy gelato. Need we say more?

Adriano Zumbo - Shop 1, Cafe Court, The Star, 80 Pyrmont Street, Pyrmont, NSW 2009

This new dessert haunt serves up bite-sized sweet offerings on a sushi train. The idea is enough to get any dessert-lover carried away, but we were not very impressed with the desserts on offer - sugar seemed to be the star of every dessert, and nothing else. 

Visit here for the novelty of the sushi train but don't be expecting superstar desserts, even for the price.

Moo Gourmet Burgers - 232 King Street, Newtown 

The burgers at Moo are heartily-sized and are full of hearty flavour. The Moo team are big on free-range, free-to-roam produce, and I think this emphasis really comes through in their delicious offerings. We had the beef avocado and bacon burger. The ingredients tasted very fresh and made one very tasty burger. 

We also tried the tim tam milk shake... wait... did I just say tim tam milk shake? Yes!! If that didn't get to you already, you'd be pleased to know that you get to slurp it up with a straw taped in white and brown swirls. They really know how to complete an experience. 

Peter's Fish Market - Waterfront Plaza, Sydney Fish Market

Fresh seafood at very wallet-friendly prices. The box of uni packed a delicious punch full of creamy, buttery goodness at a very happy price of AUD12.

On our way out, we saw some very happy Japanese excitedly pitting the offerings of the Sydney Fish Market to those of the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo; almost proof that the seafood at the Sydney Fish Market is world class.

Matsuya - 14 O'Connell Street, NSW 2000

If you're too lazy to head down to the Sydney Fish Market, you may want to try the sashimi boat at Matsuya. In our case, we had just started the day with the Sydney Fish Market and were still reeling from that experience that we thought, why not just repeat it! You can never have too much of a good thing. 

We also tried the grilled wagyu beef, which was a plate of melt-in-your-mouth goodness, and the seafood hotpot which consisted of fresh and succulent seafood bathed in sweet and tasty seafood stock. Oh~ and they have green tea creme brulee here too! Yum yum yum. 

Bourke Street Bakery - 633 Bourke Street

The folks at Bourke Street Bakery have got their tart shells and pie crusts right, and I think that's what made the beef pie and ginger creme brulee tart so sublime! 

I swear, the tart shell on the ginger creme brulee tart, what really looks like layers of tart shell layers packed into each other, has the best texture I have ever come across. Add to that, the idea of ginger with creme brulee and pistachio... and bham! It was wow in every bite. 

Chat Thai - 20 Campbell Street, Haymarket and Shop 6002, level 6, 188 Pitt Street, Westfield Center Point

If I had a choice, I would try Chat Thai for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper. And that's because this wonderful Thai restaurant has a different menu for each meal. 

We only got to try Chat Thai for dinner and supper though, and each time we left feeling throughly satisfied.

For more on the delicious offerings at Chat Thai, see here. 

The Good Morning Towel Project - A Walk Through Our Heritage, Past and Living

Our minds were ablaze with childhood nostalgia at Night Festival 2012. It was a surreal experience, walking into the Great Singapore Souvenirs (GSS) collection. It was like walking down memory lane. Personal memories of playtime at primary school, my grandparents’ shophouse on Pasir Panjang Road… flooded my mind.   

At this National Day showcase, Bak Chang, 5 Stones, Nonya Kuehs and shophouses etc. were memoralised into contemporary design. What reality left behind was served into the spotlight, and back into our everyday lives.

For us, what really triggered the nostalgia was the Good Morning Towel dished up in gold threads; upgraded to symbolise the improved quality of life in Singapore, not unlike Kampong Punggol being remade into a waterfront town.

I remember the Good Morning Towel from my childhood – on the bamboo clothes poles in my neighbours’ backyards, draped over Ah Pa’s shoulders at the barbershop, atop the bamboo steamers at my favourite dim sum stall... Nenek too had a particular fondness for these white cotton towels. It was a mainstay in our kitchen. And it never missed a family dinner.

Perhaps in the beginning, the only towels available were Good Morning Towels so they have now become a habit born of our heritage. Or perhaps the stark white colour is a useful indicator of hygiene. I like to think its the bold red greeting that instantly warms its bearer to anyone – the rickshaw rider and his passenger or the barber and my father. A secret code between strangers.

In any case, I started to notice that the Good Morning Towel is still being used everywhere. It is in the office pantry, on the coffee grinders in the Toastbox outlet downstairs of my office and over the counters of my beloved Sago Lane egg tart store. In fact, Matt and I spotted it at the Nepalese café in Toa Payoh he frequents. The Good Morning Towel has really transcended cultures and generations in our society.

It was only natural then, when I found out about the Heritage Blog Competition, and reflected on what “Singapore heritage” means to me, I almost immediately thought of the Good Morning Towel and ting ting ting!  The idea for our little project came about almost instinctively.

What project? You may ask. Well, we set out to brand our heritage with the Good Morning Towel! We started with where we remembered the Good Morning Towel to be, and stamped those places with the Good Morning Towel – the stamp of our own brand of heritage.

The Good Morning Towel cleaned marbled table tops in kopitiams, wiped the sweat off the brows of trishaw riders, dusted the shelves of our good ol’ minimarts and kept the ice-box of the ice-cream uncle’s mobile cart dry.

The Good Morning Towel had always been just there, along with our friends and family. It was at our dim sum breakfasts and the roadside barber where I watched and waited for my father. It laid watching over my favourite kuehs prepared by the nonyas in Joo Chiat. It was also at the temple my family visited during Qing Ming to pay our respects to our ancestors.

Even on Channel 8 dramas, on the shoulders of samsui women in the 1980s drama “红头巾”, (Samsui Women), the unassuming towel was the preferred prop, used alongside tin cups, in reenacting scenes from our heritage. Across the causeway, the Good Morning Towel is paid tribute to in its own solo number in Broadway Parodies Lagi Lah!; a clear sign that it is a ubiquitous symbol of the Straits Chinese.

We also sought to brand other images outside of our Straits Chinese heritage. We laid the Good Morning Towel at our favourite prata store and the neighbourhood mosque. It was our small way of acknowledging what makes Singapore, well, Singapore. It really struck me, when I was in Sydney, hungry, cold, craving for prata only to find that it costs AUD9 for three small squares. I felt then, more than ever, how much I have taken for granted our multi-racial heritage. In Singapore, prata is part of our staple diet. Elsewhere, it is an exotic culinary experience.

And it is in a localized German street stall that we sought to reconnect using the Good Morning Towel; at Erich’s Wuerstelstand on Smith Street where we munched on currywurst. Like how Erich is trying to connect his culture with ours, we are adamant the Good Morning Towel features when we try out his, and our changing street food scene.

While on our branding campaign, we came across living scenes unchanged from before. Like a place stuck in time, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple still hosts retired men and their games of Chinese chess.

Time moves forwards, memory in the other direction. In the backalleys of Kembangan, state of the art condominium developments tower over old shophouses and five foot ways. At Clarke Quay, bumboats no longer deliver sacks of rice to godowns, but ferry tourists to admire the spectacular waterfront with its skyscrapers.

At the end of our day, and much to our delight, we also found old toys like tikam tikam and pick-up-stix at the Singapore Heritage Center. These served as sources of innocent joy common to both our parents and us. Like these old toys repackaged as mementoes, the Good Morning Towel has also been repackaged by Goods of Desire. we found it transformed into boxer briefs, floor mats, eye masks etc. – clearly, this towel of humble beginnings is keeping up with the changing times, and finding new ways to stay in the modern household; and not unlike the beloved place we call home – Singapore. 

Four Ate Five: Delicious Coffee and Eggs

Anybody who takes their coffee seriously would know to work as much coffee into their itinerary when in Sydney. Its pretty tell-tale, from how Starbucks never really took off in Australia. The Aussies know how to make a good cup of coffee and recognise what really should go into a good cuppa.

We had our first coffee fix in Four Ate Five... and it turned out to be the best, most aromatic and thickest coffee we got to taste on our trip.

Despite sitting in a suburb that leaves the brunch-hungry spoilt for choice, Four Ate Five packs in the crowds consistently on the weekends and has amassed five-star reviews for its hearty brunch choices. We visited the cafe on a Monday morning and were lucky to be seated immediately at the front window; the perfect backdrop really, with the occasional breeze and the trendy passerby on Crown Street. 

I picked the poached eggs, smoked salmon and avocado on sourdough bread. I always do, I know. But it always excites me, how a little ricotta, dill cream or whichever minuscule variation promised in the menus, can make a difference to poached eggs. I think I could be curious about poached eggs again and again, be they with crabcake or salmon or proscuitto. Once, I tried to be different and ordered coconut pancakes. Three mouthfuls into the coconut pancakes I began to wonder how the poached eggs would have tasted. Three more mouthfuls later, I concluded I had wasted a perfect brunch appointment by choosing something other than poached eggs. I am narrow-minded about brunch and poached eggs like that.

I never regret a poached egg-choice, I just end up wishing sometimes there were more of it - I didn't have to at Four Ate Five. At Four Ate Five, I was fighting a dilemma between my overly expanded belly and the too-delicious-to-be-missed mouthfuls of the two-egg, creamy avocado and nicely salty ricotta, smoked salmon on crispy sourdough helluva help-there's-so-much-going-on-and-I-can't-get-enough-of-any-one poached egg experience. The poached eggs won, of course.

FOUR ATE FIVE
485 Crown Street
Surrey Hills 2010

  

Harry's Cafe De Wheels: Serious(ly Good) Hot Dogs By Cowper Wharf

When Matt was posted to Sydney for work, a colleague of his who used to study at UNSW gushed about Harry's Cafe De Wheels as a Sydney tourist attraction not to be missed, lauded it the high honour as the best hot dog joint he had ever visited in his life and taunted Matt about missing out on the best thing Sydney has to offer if he skipped making a trip down to their Woolloomooloo caravan.

That's right, a caravan. A caravan cafe near the front gates of the Woolloomooloo naval dockyard to be precise, boasting dockside views of blue waters glistening silver on a sunny summer day.

It was only natural that two years ago, Matt, curious about this not-to-be-missed gastronomic experience, ventured to Woolloomooloo naval dockyard for some of Harry's hot dogs. 

Two years afterwards, I found myself walking down George Street, through Hyde Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens, past the NSW Art Gallery, along Cowper Wharf and finally onto Woolloomooloo naval dockyard, for hot dog with pea mash - phew! That was a mouthful. It was one big morning walk for a hot dog...

Which turned out to be well worth it.

Finally, a hot dog that is bigger than my face, is slathered with chilli con carne so spicy it made me sweat in the chilly dockside breeze, is bedded in thick creamy pea mash and crowned with swirls and swirls of caramelised onions. I never knew sweet pea mash and wickedly spicy chilli con carne make the perfect pair. But the folks at Harry's Cafe De Wheels sure did. And this, I think, is the reason why their hot dogs have struck a chord with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Anthony Bourdain, Jason Biggs... (the list and the photos just go on and on...), and the reason why I will never so much as look at any other hot dogs again.

The next day, Matt and I, legs sore from the hike we took to Harry's Cafe De Wheels the morning before, boarded the tram to the Sydney Fish Market and passed a Harry's Cafe De Wheels sitting right outside Haymarket, just two hundred metres from our hotel. 

HARRY'S CAFE DE WHEELS
Corner Cowper Wharf Roadway & Brougham Road
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
See www.harryscafedewheels.com.au for opening hours and other locations

Cockatoo Island

These pictures are of art installations on Cockatoo Island. The old shipyard and penal establishment proved to be a great venue for the 18th Biennale. The art installations loomed large in the spacious warehouses, which ran so long that we could never really see what was in the next room until we stepped right in and into full view. 

It was our first time to Cockatoo Island and our trip was totally unplanned. We had run out of things to do in the city, and had just come from lunch close to the free ferry service from Circular Quay. But the harbour views from the ferry and the island, and the interactive, experiential art installations, easily turned Cockatoo Island into one of the highlights of our holiday. 

Chat Thai: Reinventing Thai Street Food

We got two times lucky with Chat Thai. The first, was while taking a new route back to the hotel from George Street, and the second, while shopping in Westfield Sydney Shopping Center. 

The long queues and working kitchen in the front of the restaurant at Campbell Street complete with bowls of kueh, coconut jelly and multi-coloured glutinous rice were enough for us to suggest Chat Thai for supper with Matt's friends the next day and then jump at spotting Chat Thai on the store directory while shopping around Westfield Sydney Shopping Center on our last day - it quickly turned into a natural choice for our last dinner in Sydney.

For supper at Chat Thai, I picked the Khao Sao. Egg noodles and braised chicken in coconut curry and chilli oil. On a chilly winter's night in the city, this dish warmed me completely through my belly. It was very comforting because the rich spicy broth reminded me of laksa from back home, and yet its sharper curry and chilli flavours carried their own weight, forming a perfectly appetising balance of spice against the coconut cream which does not sit too heavily on the gut. Perfectly dangerous - I could keep drinking the curry without feeling it weigh on my stomach.

On our second visit, we had Todt Mun Goong Gaeng Keaw, battered green curried prawn mousse deep-fried and then served with pickled plum sauce. The pickled plum sauce and curry spice lent an interesting and  refreshing sharpness and flavour to what would otherwise have been the usual prawn cake.

We also had Gaeng Keaw Louk Chin Bpla Gaia, housemade fish dumplings and eggplants soaked in green curry (can you tell I really love green curry?), and, in a measly effort to make up our vegetable intake, emerald duck or stir-fried five-spice duck with greens. These were delicious dishes and the flavours were nicely balanced.

But what really took the cake that night was the dessert.We picked the Dessert Lovers' platter, eager to try a little of Chat Thai's bests - sticky rice and mango and Khao Nieaw Daam Bieak, black sticky rice and coconut cream pudding with yam and coconut flesh. What I really enjoyed about the sticky rice and mango was the creamed mango which had an almost pudding-like texture and the fragrant, scented sticky rice. It was a first, and a very good first, with creamed mango and sticky rice, and it was a very sweet note to a very sweet meal. The Khao Nieaw Daam Bieak was also interestingly sweet and salty, creating a richly flavoured and creamy black sticky rice porridge. The platter also came with a small glass of dessert wine, but with strong offerings like the sticky rice and mango, I thought it was a little bit extra. 

We walked out of Chat Thai at Westfield full and fully satisfied. Chat Thai reinvents Thai street food that is deliciously playful, but stays close enough to familiar favourites to create one very interesting and still comforting Thai dining experience.

CHAT THAI THAITOWN
20 Campbell St. Haymarket
10am-5am, Mondays-Sundays

CHAT THAI WESTFIELD
Shop 6002, level 6
188 Pitt Street
Westfield center point
10am-10pm, Mondays-Sundays