singapore

Reviews of a Gourmet Snob: Chikuyotei, Meritus Mandarin

jpatokalLeave a comment

Ever since I came to Singapore, I’ve kept hearing about Chikuyotei for two reasons. First, it’s Singapore’s only Japanese restaurant that specializes in eel (unagi), a dish that is quite difficult to prepare properly. Every now and then, hope has overcome bitter experience and I’ve tried my luck elsewhere, always ending up with a slab of fishy rubber coated with excessive amounts of sauce. And second, it has the reputation of being one of Singapore’s most expensive restaurants of any kind: a reporter friend of mine, who often went there on the company dime, used to tell stories of how many zeroes the bill could have at the end of a sake-soaked night. This, too, is a part of the restaurant’s 150-year heritage: the original Chikuyotei is located in the Ginza, Tokyo.

So when a friend of mine offered to return a previous favor and take me there, I jumped at the chance. The rather non-distinct restaurant is tucked away on the 5th floor of the Meritus Mandarin, one of Singapore’s older hotels, and on this New Year’s Eve was only half full, with couples enjoying a quiet splurge and one rowdy group of salarymen whooping it up in the corner.

Chikuyotei’s popularity with Japanese resident in Singapore stems from the fact that they make absolutely zero concessions to Western (or Singaporean) tastes. But unlike its Tokyo forbear, the Singapore outlet has been forced to expand its offerings beyond eel and also offers up a full range of Japanese izakaya (pub) fare: you could probably order noodles and a beer and sneak away for less than S$50 a head, but you could also order five pieces of tuna belly (S$100), some Kobe beef sukiyaki(S$123) or even ask for some wild eel (S$36/100g). Full courses start from S$110/head, but we opted to just get two dishes of Shizuokan farmed eel and a few appetizers, with a small bottle of Suigei (“Drunken Whale”), a slightly sweetish sake, to wash it down.

First up was kankoku-fu negi sarada (Korean-style spring onion salad, S$8), which consisted of chopped spring onion topped with sesame seeds, chili powder and soy-based dressing. It tasted exactly what it sounds like.

Second was ika no uni-ae (squid with sea urchin, S$15), in which a thimbleful of chopped raw squid was soaked in sea urchin roe. I’m not a great fan of either ingredient by itself, and mixing them together doesn’t much improve the result.

And third was konowata (S$10), a new acquaintance for me, served looking like a wad of phlegm dotted with a raw quail egg nestled in a spoon. I poked in a chopstick, licked, and felt ill when I remembered the last time I had tasted this nasty zing followed by a cloyingly putrid aftertaste. I’ve eaten silkworms, beef testicles, raw horse meat and dog stew, but firmly enshrined in my mind as the worst thing I’ve ever tasted is ika no shiokara, a pickle made from sliced squid soaked in fermented squid guts that has even made it onto Fear Factor. It turns out that konowata is almost exactly the same thing, except that it’s made from sea cucumber entrails, not squid. Mmm. Being the chivalrous gentleman that I am, I assisted my dining companion in tearing up the guts into eatable small chunks, then wiped my chopsticks clean and tried not to gag as I watched her slurp it down.

At this point, the restaurant’s sommelier — an acquaintance of my friend’s — showed up and kindly treated us to glasses of white wine, a fruity but dry French Chardonnay from the Loire valley. It was nice gesture, but well versed in the ways of Japanese etiquette, my friend knew we had to order two more glasses to compensate: it was a different (and very tasty) wine whose name this time escapes me, but the glasses were slightly larger and we paid $21 a pop for them. Even in Japan there ain’t no such thing as a free glass of wine…

At last the eel came. First up was the Kansai-style shiroyaki (S$38), plain old grilled eel, served with soy and wasabi on the side as a dipping sauce. It was alright, but didn’t really taste like very much, just vaguely fishy. But then came the Tokyo-style kabayaki (S$52), gently coated with sauce, and it was worth the wait. The meat was so soft it fell apart at the touch, and the skin too was so soft it could easily be pulled apart. I still prefer charcoal-grilled eel, which makes the skin and edges nice and crispy while sealing the moisture inside, but this was still far an away the best I’ve had in Singapore and made it at #3 on the all-time top eel chart.

The final bill came to S$220, which I thought was a pretty darn steep price for a rather modest quantity, but my friend thought was quite alright. “Sommelier-san is opening a new restaurant in Sentosa that will cost at least that much per head, so next time it’s your treat!”

TR 116 SIN-BKK Y free seating A320-200

jpatokalLeave a comment

I was about to fly halfway across the world and back in business class on my own dime, but first, it was time to repent for my sin and pay penance. After suffering through that oh-so-annoying hourlong wait between finishing all my pre-trip preparations and the point when it actually makes sense to leave for the airport, I counted to ten, bolted the door and lugged myself and my rollboard through the tropical afternoon down to the nearest subway (MRT) station. I can get to the airport by taxi in under 20 minutes, but doing it this way involves a transfer at City Hall, another at Tanah Merah and a third onto a bus from Changi T2 to the Budget Terminal. (The upside is that it costs $1.50 instead of $15.) The rush hour was just starting and there were no seats to be had on the train, but I didn’t particularly mind — there was plenty of sitting around ahead.

Almost precisely an hour later the third and final train pulled into T2’s MRT station. Newly added signage showed the way toward the Budget Terminal shuttle buses, through a bewildering warren of underground passageways leading past, among other things, a frosted-glass door signed “SIA Cabin Crew Control Centre”. Alas, any reveries of obedience training for SQ girls gone wild, involving spanking pert behinds wrapped in kebayas, soon evaporated when I emerged into the harsh flourescent light of the underground T2 bus terminal. One of the bus bays had a few signs with random colorful swirls, a sign stating that shuttle buses run every 10 minutes, and a bent length of steel pipe to balance your butt on (a task I’d imagine even well-controlled SQ stewardesses would find a challenge). After I’d inhaled my recommended daily allowance of exhaust, the bus eventually rolled up and I boarded, the only passenger aside from an Indian uncle toting a cup of teh tarik on a plastic strap.

The bus pulled up to a squat building painted creamy yellow and violet (I think Changi could use an Interior Design Control Centre) and I savored my first visit to the Budget Terminal, only opened in April 2006. Check-in queues were slim and my thumbprint-equipped Access Card eased me through immigration. Inside, the terminal bore a remarkable resemblance to a suburban Toys’R’Us: it’s a giant warehouse with an aluminum roof, lots of brightly colored gewgaws for sale and gobs of signboards from the Angry Fruit Salad school of design. But the duty-free shop had the prerequisite bottle of Singapore Sling premix, Genki Sushi sold me a bowl of noodles for $3.80 and there was seating to spare.

The Budgeteers had one clever if evil trick up their sleeve: to prevent kiasu Singaporeans from camping out, gates were not announced in advance. Instead, 30 minutes before departure the flight monitor just silently switched to “Boarding” and the gate number appeared, precipitating a good-natured stampede towards it. But a Tiger guy with spiky blond hair was standing guard and proceeded to divide all entrants into two queues: one for families, one for the rest. The system worked smoothly and half an hour later we were ready to go.

I don’t particularly like Tiger as far as Singapore’s LCCs go, but I seem to end up flying them quite a bit anyway — they fly to all sorts of interesting places and regularly offer the cheapest fares. The major problem for me is the seat pitch, which is bad by any standard, and I can’t really imagine sitting on one of these birds for over three hours. Today the load was 60%-ish, so I had a free seat next to me, and as the plane accelerated towards takeoff and the little pigtailed girl in the seat in front of me squealed with excitement I smiled and thought to myself: “BAM — on the road again!”

SIN-JHB-XKL-SIN in F: A little tale of first-class travel, Asian style

jpatokalLeave a comment

I rarely if ever travel in F, but as it happened a friend and I had to go from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur with 2 days notice, and everything else was booked up. Due to a quirk of international relations, KTMB’s tickets are charged in ringgit from Malaysia but in Sing dollars from Singapore, meaning that it’s effectively half price to leave from across the border in Johor Bahru (JHB). So that’s what we did, and the total price for two one-way tickets in F came to all of RM230 (~$60).

It being the Friday before a 3-day weekend in Malaysia, the Causeway connecting SIN and JHB was even more jammed up than usual. We were aware of this and hit the road at 20:30 (almost 3 hours before departure), but as it turned out the queues started at Kranji MRT station for the buses to the border! We took a taxi to Woodlands Immigration instead, but getting within striking distance even there proved tough, with our cabbie eventually depositing us at a shopping mall from which we could trek across the parking lot to the checkpoint. The queues for leaving Sing weren’t too bad, everything operating with typical Singaporean efficiency, but there was another bus queue & traffic jam on the Causeway itself; fortunately, we had only a little luggage, so we opted for the cheapest option and walked the 2 km across. On the Malaysian side it finally paid off to be a furriner — the “Other Passports” line was much shorter than the Sing and Malaysian lines and we were through in a jiffy. Another little jog to the terminal, and it was time to board…

KTMB 12 JHB-XKL F “Ekspres Senandung Malam” 23:15

We’d scored seats 1A and 1B, right up front, which in KTMB’s “Deluxe ADNF” are configured as a private little suite, complete with shower and toilet! A little cramped, to be sure, but what was the last time you saw that in First? The seats had already been converted to beds by the time we boarded; and yes, they are truly flat, but the rather unorthodox bunk bed layout with two vertically layered beds leaves a little to be desired, and the bed was just a little short for a tall guy like me. For IFE we had a personal TV screen with two channels, but alas, we got nothing except static out of either one and we didn’t get headphones for the audio either. Tut tut.

Departure was a couple of minutes late, but no big shakes; soon afterward the steward came to bring us amenity kits and take our meal order, our choices tonight being: Fried Rice, Fried Noodles (Mee), Fried Bee Hoon, Tuna Sandwich, Anchovy Sandwich.

Plus a selection of fruit juices. No alcoholic drinks available, but then again, this is a Muslim country. All in all, not quite a match for SQ, but then again, I wasn’t expecting even this for such a short hop and late departure; the poor slobs in J and Y got nothing at all. I took the bee hoon, which was mostly edible; the lady opted for the mee, which wasn’t too bad. Given that the F cabin was less than 25% full, our orders took a rather unreasonable 45 minutes to arrive though, during which time I sampled the joys of the shower. Quite nice, although the hot water took a while to get started.

After the meal was cleared we settled down to sleep. The ride was slightly turbulent and the engines were a tad noisy at times, but there was a rhythm to it all and soon enough we drifted off to dreamland.

A rude awakening came at 5:30 AM when the steward came around to bring breakfast. I’d been hoping for some decent nasi lemak, but no such luck, our choices were limited to the rather un-Malaysian selection of Chicken Burger, Tuna Sandwich and the undoubtedly ever-popular Anchovy Sandwich.

Plus the usual choice of warm and cold drinks. Neither Chicken Burger nor Tuna Sandwich were noteworthy, and my hot Milo was poorly mixed. Grumble.

At 6:10 AM on the dot — we’d obviously made up for lost time at night — we touched down at KL Sentral (XKL). Unfortunately for getting from XKL to our hotel we missed the 6:14 train and, it being a public holiday, the next one only came at 7:03. This, however, did not stop both signboards and staff from announcing non-existent trains that would usually have run if only it hadn’t been a holiday…!

But by 8 AM we had checked into our opulent Oriental Suite (RM168++) at the Heritage Hotel, and it was time to get down to some serious shopping. A veteran of KL, I started my day in authentic style with a Currywurst at Muller’s Imbiss in downtown Bukit Bintang, and then plunged into the murky depths of Sungei Wang…

So yes, KTMB = Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad = Malayan Railways Company, and the Ekspres Senandung Malam is the sole night train plying the SIN-XKL route. Yes, the KL Sentral train station really does have its own IATA code!

A legacy of the British era privatized some time ago, KTMB’s services are much better than they used to be thanks to the introduction of the new sleeper trains and nifty services like e-ticketing (which worked without a hitch), but as a whole the service remains a bit of a quaint relic. Most passengers are people for whom getting there is half the fun, as even the “express” takes 7 hours (compared to 4-5 hours by bus, 3 in your own car and 35 min by plane!)… or people for whom 18 RM (2nd class train seat) vs 20 RM (bus) for the trip actually makes a difference, still a not inconsiderable number in Malaysia.

Anyway, I was going to write more tongue-in-cheek tales of decadent luxury about our return journey by bus, but our plans were rudely interrupted by the realization that all NiCE tickets for KUL-SIN departing on 02 May were sold out! 

So we put on our thinking caps and booked a Plusliner to JHB instead, still leaving at an uncomfortably early 10:30 AM, but beggars can’t be choosers as the next available seats were at 8:30 (meaning arrival in JHB past midnight).

The NiCE Executive Express buses are the F class of bus travel in Malaysia, with 24 seats in the entire bus (built for twice that), meal service and direct connection into Singapore across the Second Link, all for a price of 50-70 RM from KL (and S$38+ IIRC if departing from Sing). By comparison, the same company’s Plusliners to JHB are C-class on a bad airline; plenty of leg room (at least 50 inches) but no other amenities, period. There are of course plenty of other companies plying the same legs from KL to both Johor Bahru and Singapore, but many are rather dodgy and your bus may leave late if at all, while NiCE/Plus are known for their punctuality. Also, while NiCE buses leave from the genteel charm of the quiet old Kuala Lumpur railway station (not to be confused with the new KL Sentral!), Plusliners and everybody else leave from the festering pit of chaos known as Puduraya deep in heart of Chinatown. The plus side to this (hee hee!) is that if you have a moment to spare you can saunter over to the food markets to sample some of KL’s famous bak kut teh, lit. pork bone tea, which despite the name doesn’t contain a drop of the stuff, but is instead basically a soup containing nothing except meat. 

To make a long story, the trip from KL to Singapore via JHB by bus ended up taking the better part of 7 hours, partly thanks to a traffic jam on the expressway (unusual), partly thanks to the bus stopping for snacks and to fill up. The bus dumped us at JB’s Larkin terminal, several km to the north of the city, where we changed to the Causeway Link buses crawling across the border in the omnipresent and interminable traffic jam between the two cities… sigh. The good thing is that all this cost a grand total of RM 20.20 + 1.30 = RM 21.50 (~$5); but I will still gladly pay the full RM 60 next time to go straight into Singapore next time.