Satisfying night out!

I always look forward to my Friday outings with CH because it's the only weekday that I get to eat out! So sad right? Well, I have dinner at home with the kids and my parents on most days.

So I never let my Friday nights go to waste. We'd start thinking of what to eat the day before. I'd flip through the papers or recall food programmes on TV. Sometimes I surf the Net for food reviews...not a good idea because we'd turned up at food places that were long gone. The stuff that I read could be several years old! I'm more careful these days...

We were busy yesterday and didn't do any research. CH suggested 'zhi char' at Bedok. On the way there, we decided to turn off to Jackson Food Centre at Macpherson. We know it's famous for lots of yummy local food and I vaguely remember the unique "steamed shark head" dish being sold here. Yup...shark head! An enterprising chef realised that shark heads were being thrown away at the fish wholesale centre, hence he created this signature dish that made him famous.

We were greeted with lots of stalls in Jackson Food Centre. Dim sum, roast meats, frog porridge, hokkien prawn mee, ban mian, barbecue seafood, teochew porridge, mutton herbal soup, char kuay teow, fried carrot cake, oyster omelette and Katong laksa. The famous ngoh hiang stall is here too. A food centre isn't complete without a dessert stall and I wasn't disappointed! It was dispensing the most colourful icy creations. I must have some after dinner.

Again, when confronted with too many choices, my mind went blank. After scanning around and spying on what others were eating, we decided on roast duck, ban mian and dim sum.

The duck was roasted to perfection. I know how Singaporeans rave about the roast duck in Hong Kong and even London, this stall here (Hong Kong style, by the way) is good enough for me. It was seasoned just right and the meat was tender and succulent. Simply delicious on its own and tastier when dipped in the fragrant chilli paste!

The ban-mian (hand made) noodle soup was generously garnished with crispy fried anchovies, chye sim vegetable, chunky meat balls and egg. It came with a lethal chilli dip. The soup was so yummy, CH drank every bit of it. I felt very thirsty later in the evening. It could be the msg in the flavourful soup!

The dim sum with crunchy bits of asparagus, whole peanuts and fish paste wrapped in bean curd skin was rather unique and went well with the sweet chilli sauce.

So you can see, we had 3 types of chilli sauce on our table. All different in taste, colour, texture and degree of spiciness. That's what a typical local meal is like. I made a mental note to bring Viv to Jackson's when she's back.

After dinner, I stood at the dessert stall ogling at the huge array of desserts. From the traditional ice kachang to the ones topped with grated peanuts, durian, mango or strawberry, chendol, fruit jelly, ice ruby and hot desserts, they have it all. I finally decided on red bean milk ice and lychee ice.

The shaved ice mountain smothered with sweet mushy red beans and topped with a generous heap of sweet condensed milk was simply heavenly! It got tastier as the ice melted into a sweet milky slush. The refreshing lychee drink rounded up the dinner nicely.

Ahh, another satisfying Friday night out!