Lei Garden, Orchard

I spent a lovely afternoon with hubby and princess eating and shopping. Hubby took us out to lunch at one of my favourite dim sum restaurants. However, I find that the food isn't fantastic now, and the staff were really pushy. There were like 3 menus to choose from, and the minute we sat down, we were 'pushed' to go for a soup dish. You really need to be very firm in what you want. We opted for the dim sum dishes which was what we were there for in the first place. But before I could even go through the dim sum menu, another lady came along and asked if we wanted to order soup. Again! They tried to 'push' their specialties, set menus etc. It got pretty annoying after a while, and with the princess being a bit hyper, it was getting on my nerves. We stuck to dim sum and 3 dishes from the main menu, and even with those, we were stuffed to the max. Of course dessert was a must.

I don't know what was with the girl yesterday, she was all over the booth seats, couldn't sit still, and I hadn't even given her any sugar! Hubby and I were discussing it later, and realized it could be because exams were over. Kids can't tell you, but I guess they show it through their actions. Their stress has been released so I guess it was a great weight off their minds. Could it be?

Apologies for poor photo quality as photos were taken with my iphone. I don't usually use cameras in restaurants. In order of appearance...

Siew Mai & Har Gow. A must as hubby loves these.

Cheong fun with char siew. Ok, hubby doesn't touch this. He doesn't like tasteless food, which is how he describles cheong fun, chwee kueh, tofu. I loved the cheong fun. It had great skin, not the mushy ones that make you feel sick after polishing off a plate.

Fried radish cake was ordinary.

Baked cod with some bean sauce. Ordered this for the princess to go with her bowl of plain rice. It was lovely and hubby enjoyed this. He had most of it.

A very unusually shaped ham soi kok or fried glutinous rice flour dumplings with meat and mushroom stuffing.

Sweet and sour pork with pineapple. This was well done, and went very well with the rice.

Lovely crunchy broccoli, not overcooked. I asked for oyster sauce but this seems to be the garlic version. Didn't bother to check with server.

Another favourite of mine after ham soi kok is wu kok, fried yam balls with similar stuffing to the former. I felt the stuffing was a bit on the salty side.

Princess wanted to have these. Nice crunchy, addictive fried silver fish. This came too late, at the end of the meal, and was nearly cancelled. I thought we could have done without this dish as we were quite full by then.

Mango pudding which used to be my favourite dessert here. Somehow I had forgotten the taste of this dessert, but something tells me it is not what it used to be. Maybe I am wrong, or my tastebuds have forgotten but this one feels more like a mango mousse. Thousands of bubbles burst on the tongue with each mouthful. It was a delight but I prefer my mango pudding to have more substance.

After lunch, we made our way to Tangs to look for my pot. I was really happy that they were having specials off the Le Creuset range. There wasn't just the buy 1 @ 20%, 2 @ 30% and 3 @ 50% off normal discounts. There was quite a good selection of reduced price items. I couldn't decide between the red oval pot or the pink 24" round one, but when the sales lady said the antique rose colour was a limited edition range from Japan, it kind of decided for me that I would go for that. I love pink, and it's not too girly a pink for a pot, so it was perfect. I'm in love with it! It was originally $568 but marked down to $284. Happiness!