In collaboration with Wan Bao and OMY, the veteran food critic Ah Lun sets out to bring you through 4 sessions of festive gourmet food trail. The 1st session took place last Saturday and I was really lucky to be part of it!

The day started off at Crystal Jade Palace with Salmon Yu Sheng. I was late and therefore missed out on the tossing part.

My portion of Yu Sheng. The portions were just nice and had a generous serving of 4-5 slices of Salmon. (I know, sometimes when you pay so much for Yu Sheng, you get only a few slices for the huge plate) The sauce is slightly blend though, I prefer it with more plum sauce!

The participants of the food trail. There were 6-7 tables? I heard that Ah Lun oftens hold food trails and this festive one has been a traditional for 8 years!

Here’s Ah Lun (in red) and the host of the day.

They had yellow lightings in the room and so all our photos turn out really bad. Pardon for the photos. It was halfway through that I switched on the flash mode.

Me and Steph! Another blogger invited for the food trail and she is my table buddy. She’s such a nice person and it’s so amazing how we hit off straight away!

Next dish served was ‘Peng Cai’ 盆菜.

A closer look at it. It is basically a pot of everything! Scroll down and see what’s in the layers~

As many ingredients are used in this huge pot, it has to be served in 3 portions!

1st layer – (Delicacies/Seafood) Abalone, Fish Maw, Dried Oyster, Shitake Mushroom, Dried Scallop
2nd layer – (Meat) Pork Knuckle, Roasted Duck, Preserved Meat, Sea Cucumber
3rd layer – (Vegetarian) Cabbage, Yam, Raddish, Bamboo Shoot, Dried Tofu Skin

Of all the ingredients, the roasted duck stood out and beat the rest hands down! I never had such gooood duck before~ It was so soooo tender!

We were served with Honey Ginseng Water Chestnut drink to cleanse our palette. It tasted like Ginseng sweets.

In between the dishes, the host and Ah Lun interacted with the participants by playing games.

Here’s the black box game! They had to put their hand into the freezing ice box to look for red marbles. Unfortunately, none of them found it. Poor thing!

Here comes the next dish!

Chef live-demo:

The soup is simply marvellous! It’s brewed with a few KGs of fish bone and you can see the stock is milky white. Drank up all the wholesome soup and the fish slices were so tender. Yums!!

The other game played was making red packet lanterns. Each table was given some red packets and staplers. And our table conveniently asked me and Steph to do up the lantern.

Although I like arts & craft, but this is too random! I frantically grabbed the red packets and started folding and stapling the ends together. I didn’t really know what I was doing! Thankfully, with cool and calmed Steph, we managed to fix up something, decent?

Each table had to send a representative to showcase their works and give a short introduction of the inspiration.

Me and Jacqueline, the other blogger invited but she’s siting at another table. Check out her pretty lantern (as compared to mine).

Now, what can I say about our lantern!!? Ok, I said it’s a durian lantern~ LOL. Some slight resemblance right!? No?

The judges bought my story and we got 2nd!!! But too bad, no prizes. The kid won with his nonsensical replies. He said he made it but he doesn’t know what it is. HahahahaAh..

Alrighty, next dish up – ‘Eight Treasures Rice’ 八宝饭

As the name suggests, it’s glutinous rice with 8 ingredients. I like this dish! And I’m already thinking of ordering it for CNY. It would be great for relatives get-together times~

The glutinous rice is soft yet textured, not the mushy and sticky type and is well-flavoured! The 8 pairing ingredients were really yummy too!

Finally, it’s time for desserts!

Look at the white chocolate and champagne oozing out! I love this fusion delight~ The traditional ones are usually either stuffed with peanut or red bean. Had this somewhere else before and it’s definitely a favourite!

This is Pulot Hitam (Black glutinous rice with coconut milk) with a twist of mango and strawberry. I thought it was a weird combination. The fruits were kinda sour and didn’t blend into the aromatic coconut milk.

That ends off first half of the session! What a filling CNY dinner tasting~ Thankfully, the next stop is a bus journey away, giving us some time to digest the food.

Crystal Jade Palace
Ngee Ann City #04-19

We followed our guide and hopped on to the bus and head away for the Christmas treat!

A welcome gift was placed at each of our seat when we arrived at Merchant Court.

Matching mask!

Kicking start the Christmas dinner was Cream of Cauliflower. Creamy, smooth and with a tinge of chicken broth.

Pear Salad. A refreshing flavour~ Love the berries, honey roasted walnut and the glazed pear. A harmonious blend of flavours and something different from the usual salads!

Turkey with Cranberry and Apricot Stuffing.

The turkey was tender but cranberry and apricot stuffing was new to me. Besides, we already had so much food previously and I only managed to finish half of this.

Lastly, Fruit Cake with Vanilla Ice-cream. The cake was kinda dry on its own. The ice-cream added moist to it and brings down the heavy cinnamon taste.

That pretty sums up the day but wait! There was a lucky draw to end it off~

Swissotel Merchant Court
20 Merchant Road

Ah Lun will be having 3 more Festive Gourmet Food Trails over this month and if you’re interested, you can check out more information here. It’s $108/pax or $88/pax for 2 to go. It’s pretty worth it since you get to try out so many dishes and chances to win dinning vouchers~ Plus, everyone gets to bag home a goodie bag with lots of goodies!

Thank you OMY and Wanbao for having me~

And it was such a disappointment that the sound got removed by Windows Live Movie Maker.

Took it on the 4th night of CNY, right below my block. Everyone was just firing fireworks into the sky to welcome the arrival of the God of Fortune once it strikes midnight.

It was a lovely sight on the highway when we cab home. Fireworks shooting up everywhere at our eye level.

Something that we won’t get to experience in Singapore.

刹那间的烟花带着一丝丝的希望。

I drank a little too much – bottoms up 4 glasses of red wine.

And I started puking all over when I left the restaurant. I wasn’t that drunk as I could bring myself to the toilet and I did remember that I have a train to catch in the evening.

So, I tried very hard to keep myself sober, packed my luggage and insisted on taking the train.

Thankfully, I made it to the station on time though i was feeling really terrible.

Somehow, I felt so stressful, lonely and disappointed in myself when I stood by the platform.

It was cold and as the chilly wind blew against me, I broke down into tears but I managed to calm myself down just before the train stopped in front of me.

During the train journey, I felt so nausea and puked twice – there wasn’t anything left to puke and therefore, it was my gastric juices.

At that moment, I knew I wasn’t drunk. I supposed I had gastric flu.

I pulled myself together and endured till Shanghai. Luckily, I got a friend to pick me up from the train station and drove me to the hospital.

And there, I got my fair share of the drip. 2 bottles.

Practically a weight-gain program.

It’s kinda boring…. except for the fireworks and the huge red packets I received. =p

Last night, we went out to get the fireworks for the strike of midnight.

This cart of fireworks cost around $700.

Preparing for the firecrackers.

Kids happily playing with the sparkles.

I had my fair share of firing the fireworks. Feels darn good. haha..

I should probably attempt firecrackers the next time.!!!