Isetan Hokkaido Harvest & Food Fair (2 Nov - 11 Nov)

Isetan is always having Japanese fairs which is a SUPERB thing for foodies like me hehe. But well, totally not good for my $$$$ stash. Always depletes quickly when I'm there!

Some highlights of things they have this time (am listing things I didnt take pics of):

• Lavender ice cream & vanilla ice cream from Hokkaido + lots of lavender scented products!! $6.50 per cone of ice cream! Really wanna try the lavender one, will probably go back to give it a try!
• Croquettes, HUGEASSSSS king crabs!!! -> they seem to have this at every fair
• Cream puffs, vanilla swiss rolls
• Parfaits! They have matcha, WHITE, melon etc flavours
• Japanese Fish balls (this is towards the end of the supermarket)
• Crepe cakes (there's cheese flavour! Choc and strawberry too! This is towards the end of the supermarket too)
• Dried seafood
• Lots of frozen Jap fish

This is a stall selling these lovely swiss rolls! The filling is made of berries special to Hokkaido The Haskap roll (the one in the 1st pic and at the top of this pic), there are no samples for that but you can sample the jam in it! Its sour but not overly so, with a tinge of sweetness! Balances the slightly sweet sponge cake perfectly and the cream used in the swiss roll tastes like cheese!! Vvvvvv good but expensive!! It is $8.50 per slice in the first pic! Of course they sell it for a longer roll but cant rmb how much that is!

The cassis roll, there's a tester for this and this is sweeter than the Haskap rolls generally.

This stall also sells the jam made from the diff berries & yoghurt smoothie made on the spot!

The very kind Jap man here let me try a haskap berry (idk if its called that haha but am assuming) and it was not too sour really but appetising! :)

Apple Pie | Apple Chiffon Cake

Apple Tart | Cheesecake

The apple tart has samples and its like v little tart, LOTS of apple slices haha

Cheesecake tester!

THIS IS SO GOOD. SO. GOOD. The cheese is so smooth and not too creamy, loved it so much!!! According to the sales aunty, the Jap guy only brought in 30 boxes of this cos he thought not many ppl will buy it and on 2 Nov before like 3+pm, 15 boxes were alr sold out! Am not sure if this is a marketing ploy or sth hahah but well I kinda believe it? Cos its so yummy! The jap man here at this booth is so sincere and polite :)

HUGE scallops + squid being grilled!!!!!

LOOK WHAT WE FOUND

Shiroi Koibito's Chocolate Drink!!! Yes its the famous bai se lian ren! V ex though think its $5 for this small can!

BIG frozen scallops

Think this was some high grade pork, sorry didnt take note!

Our grilled scallop! Asked for w/o sauce. Sauce is basically the yakitori kinda sauce. The scallops are v nicely grilled, the part below the roe is soft and quite sweet!! 

Ok this is not part of the fair but found at Sun Moulin, the bakery opposite Isetan supermarket! 

This fair is certainly worth a visit!

Takashimaya Basement, Ochacha, Thai Village, Burger King

Hello! This is basically a rather rojak (random mix)

Popiah $2.50 from Yikouwei

Look at the amount of filling!!!! I've eaten popiah from many places (I'm a HUGE popiah fan) and so far nowhere beats this place in terms of filling! It is really packed with ingredients which makes it really value for money I think! It also has a good ratio of all the ingredients and is a very yummy popiah!!! Must-try! (PS I've tried the popiah from Bugis Junction's yikouwei and theirs uh really sucks. The skin is hard and disgusting) 4.5/5

Black sesame ice cream!

Finally satisfied my cravings! I like how this feels like eating many sesame seeds in ice cream form! 4.3/5

Food at the Takashimaya Hokkaido Fair (Isetan's also having one now at Tampines 1)

This bamboo coconut thingy from Takashimaya's Food Fiesta

Mom said the smell of the coconut was too overpowering, making it a really difficult to finish it

There was a longggg queue at the Johor Bahru Handmade Pau stall @ Food Fiesta and I joined the queue to buy this red bean pau!

For 80cents, it was really big and filled generously with red bean paste. This was different from the normal red bean paste, it was finer and a bit thicker. The pau was springy - not my type of pau unfortunately. 3.5/5

Japanese stall @ Food Fiesta

This chef was very nice! Although the usual sashimi portions were 3 slices, he allowed us to customize our order - only 2 slices each! V nice of him (:

Background from L-R: Otoro, Swordfish, Octopus, Unagi

Foreground L-R: Tamago, Scallop, Scallop

The otoro was quite good, Mom and I were rather surprised at this! The rest were average but the tamago was really BAD. Tasted like a manufactured product, yuck. Overall: 3.3/5

Akagai sashimi (fresh)

The first one they gave us had a smelly fishy smell, so we told the chef and he changed one for us and was very concerned about whether the 2nd one was okay, luckily it was and was rather sweet! 3/5

They have a store at Plaza Sing - Kai Sushi & Grill

Heard Ochacha is good for their green tea desserts and decided to order this Green Tea Adzuki cake. Turns out? I was eating more of cream than cake or anything else. I couldnt taste any green tea at all, neither was there the taste of red beans. Was v disappointed cos this totally wasted my calories. 1/5

Stir-fried cabbage with mushrooms

This was too oily! 3/5 (This and the following 2 pics were taken at Thai Village)

Fried vermicelli with crab

Didnt eat the vermicelli, but the crab was rather fresh and had infused the flavours of the noodles 3.4/5

Steamed lobster with garlic

Singaporean lobster! Haha. This was fresh no doubt as the waitress told us it just arrived. 4/5

Wanted to eat Macs vanilla cone but there isnt a macs in Kallang Leisure Park :(( (we still think macs is everywhere huh)

SO had to settle for Burger King's waffle cone ($1)

Thought it was a bit too icy and definitely tastes more milky than macs. Summary: Macs over BK anyday. 3/5

Yikouwei

Takashimaya Food Basement

Takashimaya Hokkaido Fair

Takashimaya Food Fiesta (ended)

Ochacha

Paragon B1

Thai Village

Kallang Leisure Park (KLP) Level 1

Burger King

KLP Lvl 1

Japanese Food Day!

Today has been a Jap food filled day! Here goes!

First I had the new Black Sesame Green Tea Frappuccino - no whip cream, non-fat milk from Starbucks. Each sip had the fragrance of the black sesame and the creaminess from the milk + green tea. There was also the distinct crunch from the sesame seeds in each sip! 4/5

Dinner was at Shimbashi Soba @ Paragon.

They recently launched the new Cha Soba only from 1-31st July at their Paragon outlet (the oth outlet's at nex) and it either comes with this soup broth + veg or a special dipping sauce.

The veg broth was a tad too salty, but was alright if you dip the noodles with it (which you're supposed to). The soup came with quite a few slices of mushrooms, spring onions, some eggplants and that's basically it. It was about $18+?

The green tea taste wasn't really distinct in the noodles and I thought the noodles were average only 3/5

Raw chopped salmon with natto, quail egg and seaweed. This was an okay-ish dish, you cant really taste anything? 2.5/5

Mom's set. Came with fried soft shell crab & tofu, salmon sashimi, tamago & unagi sushi (it was supposed to be 2 pieces of unagi only but they told us they ran out of unagi and its replaced by these 2 sushis which I thought was slightly absurd because the cost difference is a little stark?), bowl of cold/hot soba (mom chose hot), and watermelon

Then Mom and I went over the Isetan Scotts and bought Japanese sweet potato!! We're gonna steam them and eat 'em, hopefully we can have what we ate in Japan right here in Singapore!

They were having this small fair selling different types of beans from Japan and Mom bought this scallop one which she thinks is good! One packet's $7!

Then we bought Japanese chestnuts!! They were roasted on the spot and packaged. Most were reallyyyy sweet and fragrant :D Yummy! Couldnt stop eating them!!

Walked over to Ngee Ann City and realised there was a food fair going on - Takashimaya Food Fiesta! Many stalls selling Japanese stuff (dried food, sauces, tea, seaweed, fruits, ice cream, sushi, mochi, Japanese salt, nuts, etc!). There was Juz Bread there selling some durian cream bread, Udders, Meiji, korean food etc!

Look at the hugeass pau!

Super fragrant green tea ice cream from Okinawa! They also had brown sugar, milk, sweet potato (doesnt taste like it at all), etc. But it wasnt cheap, $5.90 for such a small pint! But it was really good, I think! 4/5

The mango snow ice was quite yummy! The ice was fine and the mango was sweet! (: 4/5

Takashimaya Food Fiesta 2011

Ends 10 July 2011, Sunday