Lunch with a Lonely Mountain view in Bali? - Wouldn't Mind at All

 

Looking at another holiday destination in Bali that is not a beach? Kintamani might be one option I would like to recommend. It is located at north-eastern of Bali and you will need a car to reach here.

 

Kintamany is a village around Mount Batur area, and has been since filled with many tourists to view Mount Batur region. The weather here could be quite cooling sometimes, hence you might need a light sweater to cover your body. It is best to go here during daylight, particularly on 10:00-15:00 as it will offer the best view of the place. So normally many tourists, including us will go here for short while to get a nice lunch, mainly because of the amazing unique view that it has to offer. We didn't really do some pre-research first for which kind of restaurant we want to have a lunch at, as I thought also it was not really necessary. We were just looking at which restaurants has the most visitors, and as far as the instinct goes, we chose that restaurant. Though right now I am quite forget what was the name of  the restaurant we were visited at that time, but no worries as there were a lot of restaurants along the road offering similar kind of view and dining concept like the one we were visited.

 

On the restaurant, don't forget to choose the balcony area for the best view, especially when the sky is so bright and less windy. The restaurant we went offers a lunch buffet with not cheap but reasonable price (around 10USD). And by the way, without reducing the excitement, I would say that the food taste here was just normal. I would not say it was not nice, but just fit to fill your hunger. Still because of the nice view we would not really mind on the food. 

 

So, here are some of the lunch views that we had on the restaurant balcony area.

 

Lunch View Facing the Lonely Mount Batur

The Table Set



Restaurant's Balcony Area

 

Mount Batur and Batur Lake View

Cheers!

High Tea Session at Arteastique Cafe - Cafe Hopping

This weekend, I am having a special high tea session with my ex-colleague. One of a pleasure of living in Singapore is having a huge selection of different cafes to hop to! So I think, why not looking to some unique cafe to have a high tea session.

After browsing through some list of cafes, I finally discover this unique gem at Orchard Road area, located at one of the shopping mall which I had never entered before. Funny tho', after so many times passing by the building, only this time eventually do I enter it. By the way, the shopping mall name is Mandarin Gallery. 

Judging from the cafe's website (http://www.arteastiq.com/) the place looks pretty great, so I decide to try this cafe for the meet up.

This cafe has quite a range selection of different tea. They also have some range of food menu, although not as much as their tea. If you notice the promotion board in front of the cafe, we are actually decided to try that menu, the 'Afternoon Treat Special'. It is meant for 2 people and includes a free selection of tea for each person, with price of 48 SGD instead of 52 SGD by normal price. 

The 'Afternoon Treat Special' consists of crispy wrap with meat (able to select the meat choice preference), smoked salmon, smoked turkey ham, crab meat salad served with volvant, spicy jumbo top shell with chilled mango salad, and cake (choice selection between apple cake or orange cake). For the tea selection, both of us decides to take lychee tea, both hot and cold. 

I especially like the crispy wrap (we choose to have the wrap with smoked chicken breast), the crab meat salad food, the spicy jumbo top shell, and the cake (apple cake selection). Smoke salmon taste pretty great too, though I am not a fan of raw salmon meat, I can still say this salmon taste quite good. As for the smoked turkey ham, I think it tastes pretty usual. 

Both of me and my friend really likes our lychee tea. I choose the hot tea and she chooses the cold tea. The sweetness and the aroma of the lychee blends a splendid taste for the tea. Highly recommended to try for those fruit tea lover out there! The tea comes with cookies for each. For my friend, she got lemon butter cookies, and I got lemon chocolate cookies. The cookies tasted great as well, excellent combination for the tea. Perfect indulgence for a happy afternoon!

P.S, Arteastique actually has a painting studio just beside its cafe, so for those of you who wants to unleash your hidden artist potential, could practice it here!!

Address: 

Arteastiq Boutique Tea House

Mandarin Gallery, #04-14/15

333A Orchard Road, Singapore 238867

Opens: 

11:00 am-10:00 pm Daily

Boutique Tea House reservation: 6235 8370

Art Jamming reservation and enquires: 6235 8705

Website: http://www.arteastiq.com/

Have a great day everyone!

Enjoying Sunset and Seafood by the Beach - Jimbaran

Sunset, Seafood and Beach is a must when come to Bali! What's more is that you can enjoy it all together, enjoying the seafood right at the seafront while at the same time watching a sunset, what a perfect combo! This especially one of specialities that made Jimbaran one of the famous place in Bali. There are a lot of restaurants and cafes a long Jimbaran Beach, with specialities of seafood. We chose one of the restaurant that look promising among others, namely Menega Cafe. How did we know that, of course by judging from the number of people that came to the restaurant.

All of the restaurants here have a very similar concept, its table setting on top of the sand with the candlelight facing right to the beach. Very beautiful indeed. The beach and sand was quite clean, the sea wave was moderate, I guess these are the reasons that made Jimbaran a perfect location to set this kind of restaurant concept. 

In total there were only 6 of us, but we order a lot more than we think we could eat. Guess we were too hungry when we order it. To name it, we order 2kgs of grilled shrimp, 2 portions of big grilled fish, 2 portions of sautéed kangkong and 6 portions of rice. Not to forget, we eat this with a Balinese special sauce ("sambal Bali"), mmm, yummy! There were 2 types of sambal Bali that we tried here, 'sambal merah' and 'sambal mattah'. 'Sambal merah' seems to be a mixture of chilli, tomatoes and other Bali special condiment. While 'sambal mattah' seems to be a mixture of raw onions, chilli, salt and some vegetable oil. We order a lot of 'sambal' as it tasted just nice, not too spicy, not too salty or sweet, a perfect combination with the dishes.

The downside of this trip was that we waited quote long for the food to come, almost 1 hour if I was not wrong. Actually this trip to Jimbaran was sort of unplanned, so when we reached here most of the tables were already reserved. Luckily we got 1 for us. I guess the restaurant that we came was actually very famous among the rest. So we learned our lesson, it is better to reserve the table and order the food in advance, so we would not waste our time just waiting for the food. But overall, I still highly recommend this restaurant, aside of the waiting time, all of us were very satisfied with the food quality.

Cheers!



Enjoying High Quality Tea @TWG

 

I am simply a tea lovers. So coming to TWG is a perfect place to enjoy this!!

Here you could see all kinds of tea varieties which you would probably never find anywhere else.

TWG is a perfect choice to have an afternoon get together session with a high class feeling.

 

 

Not only tea varieties, TWG also offers companion food to compliment the tea, varieties from light to heavy food.

I personally loves their scones. A lot of time I came to TWG at any place, I always order scones as my tea companion.

I think scones compliment the good aroma of the tea. How about you?

 

Cheers!

 

Cafe Hopping Day - PoTeaTo

What a lovely day today in Singapore! And what I love to do the most to begin my day with, is to dress nicely, go to new hangout or eating places and just simply having a nice breakfast or brunch. This time, I would like to try finding cafe which I never been to. And I am hopping at a place around Tiong Bahru area, where cafes plus hangout places located according to the information from my sister. Reaching Tiong Bahru MRT, we would need to walk further towards Yong Siak Street. As we walk through, we pass by housing and HDB area in which I thought in my mind, who would open hangout places on the neighborhood area. Yet, we see some people are walking towards the same direction, well, from the appearance, it looks like they are going to the some hangout places. So to the sign that we are going towards the right direction. Reaching at Yong Siak Street, we see few cafes with variety choices. There are quite a few people around, not so much, but I bet this place will be crowded in the afternoon. We screen through to which place we would like to have our brunch at. What I like about the cafes in Singapore is, the edgy design of its interior architecture. Even though the food taste is quite standard, and sometimes I feel quite expensive, but I still like it simply due to the artistic feeling when stepping inside the place. Finally we choose PoTeaTo Cafe, from the look and feel, it seems like the food inside is quite affordable.

Poteato Cafe

Dinner at Charlie Brown Café, Singapore

After walking a whole day, what's more interesting than having a dinner at a nice restaurant on a beautiful evening. This time, me and my friend were hunting of this unique cafe with a well-known cartoon character theme concept from Peanuts. Although, I only familiar with one character, Snoopy, a Charlie Brown's pet dog. I wonder how my friend knows all of them. What I thought that eating at this kinda place will be quite pricey, then I saw there is a sign of 'There is NO Service Charge In My Cafe', how cool is that!

Sunday Brunch (Plus Dinner) at O'Coffee Club

What a nice weekend to spend in home, just sleeping the whole day, relax, watching movie from laptop, to rest for a while after 5 days continuously doing a hard work in office. So, as a result, I skipped my breakfast, and as well my lunch, what a lazy weekend day. And then I thought, how nice it is to go to the CBD (Central Business District) area in Singapore during this time to have a nice brunch and as well as dinner with my sister. As I know, only at this time there is less people and less activity around CBD site. Since there is almost no office activity around this area, practically very less people seen here on the weekends. So, we decided to go around Raffles Place. It was nice to wonder across to open air, it was a rare view in Singapore. Sadly though, some of cafe and restaurant around were also closed at the same time. Luckily, I found this nice cafe at a nice spot of CBD area, still open during weekend.