mindless ramblings

Esther and I were having trouble thinking of a place for dinner, so when we drove by this place that Yen told us about a few days back, we did the impulse thing and went for it!

If you don’t know where this place is, it might be hard to find it. Thankfully I’ve done all the hard work for you and all you have to do is click here for the map. Once you find it and step inside, you will find that it is beautifully decorated for essentially what is a fancy bubble tea place. It’s probably the nicest place I’ve seen so far, on the same level as Pearl Castle. The similarities don’t end there, the food is pretty much the same fare: Taiwanese food, hotpots and the usual variety of assorted bubble teas. I chose to go with a mala spicy beef hotpot, and Esther had a “3 Cup Chicken” set meal.

Our shared passion fruit green tea arrived promptly. It tasted fresh, but it came way too sour for the both of us. We ended up stirring the drink constantly to get the ice to melt and dilute the taste. The food was great though. The hot pot came chock full of ingredients like beef (which was quite tough unfortuantely), cabbage, enoki mushrooms, crab sticks and a wonderfully bouncy fishball. the soup wasn’t all that hot though and I ended up asking for another side dish of the yummy hot sauce. However, as the meal went on, the spice started to kick in and it felt really good. Definitely quite the comfort food during a cold day! Even though I was utterly stuffed from lunch, the food was tasty enough to get me all hungry again, even to the point of ordering an extra bowl of rice and slurping down every single last drop of spicy soup! The “3 Cup Chicken” was ok, the sauce wasn’t as powerful as the one I had at Vogue. I have no idea what goes into the sauce, I can taste some rice wine, but I don’t know what makes up the 3 cups of spices that give the dish its name.
Well Tea (cha jaang in Cantonese) is a good alternative to the often overcrowded Pearl Castle. If you are not interested in waiting 30 mins for a table, take a quick drive over here instead!