Thai Basil

Date of visit: 25^th September

Thai Basil @ Pacific Place 

menu

"Hot and Sour Rock Lobster Soup" ($68)

rock lobster pieces, cherry tomatoes, shallots, ginger, hot and sour broth

A very strongly-flavoured soup of equal spicy and sourness. I enjoyed this mug of soup (despite its high sodium content), but the ridiculously over-cooked lobster pieces had lost its taste and texture, and became quite bland and soft. 

"Char-grilled Prawn Salad" ($88) 

grilled prawns, pomelo, green beans, Chinese garlic chives ('gau choy'), thai basil, fried garlic, chilli lemongrass dressing

This salad is really spicy! A twist on the traditional spicy prawn salad, this one incorporates other greens and pomelo fruit for a citrus zingg. There's an abundance of Thai basil leaves which I liked. 

"Char-grilled vegetables" ($88/4 items)

sweet potato, pumpkin, asparagus, zucchini

Everything was cooked perfectly, and the charred bits were the best. They were brushed with a little olive oil before cooked so they were naturally flavourful without the addition of any extra sauces. Pumpkins were sweet, but the sweet potatoes were not (I guess they aren't in season). 

"Char grilled basil chicken wok fried noodles" ($88)

Grilled chicken breast, basil, Thai asparagus, shallots, bean sprouts, vermicelli-like noodles, fried garlic

The chicken breast was not at all dry despite having been grilled over high heat to achieve its marks. The noodles are very lightly seasoned, and if you don't like fiery foods this is an option, as it contains no chillies. Sadly the charring ended at the chicken breast and did not extend to the noodles - there was no 'wok-hay' at all, which is what I look for in a good fried noodle dish. 

"Wok fried Thai Spicy Crab" ($188) 

Whole Crab, Thai basil, lemongrass, chilli, garlic, shallots, fresh green pepper, black pepper

My ma had tried this before and said it was good but extremely spicy, so we asked them to go lighter on the chillies, and it was indeed lightened. Nonetheless, it is still a rather spicy dish, so wouldn't recommend this if you detest any form of heat. The crabs were fried well, each piece equally coated with all the seasoning and spices, and the crab meat was not to soft (not over-cooked). 

Overall I enjoyed the food here quite a lot for its big and bold flavours, and will be back in the near future to sample other items, but I still miss Lian!

Food: ♥♥♥1/2 

Service: ♥♥1/2 

Price: $$$-$$$$ 

Thai Basil

Shop  001, Basement Floor, Pacific Place, 88 Queensway

Admiralty, HK

Singma Deluxe

Date of visit: 26th August 2010
Singma Deluxe @ Admiralty

For lunch a friend and I went to Singma Deluxe to grab a quick bite. Rather than having a separate menu for lunch, they have their regular menus available and the items with a sea-horse sign on them are 'lunch set-available', i.e. you get a drink with the item during lunch hours. 

After looking through the extensive Singaporean-cuisine based menu, we both decided on Boneless Hainan Chicken Rice set, which came with a soup + coffee/tea. Hainanese Chicken Rice sets typically come with a bowl of chicken soup, the stock from the liquid boiling the chicken, and a bowl of rice which had been cooked using the cooking liquid from the chicken. The soup at Singma however, was a typical Chinese soup found in many households, rather than the chicken soup that you normally find with Hainan chicken rice. Different, but the soup (Pork with beans and lotus root) was tasty, so I'm not complaining! 

Between us, we had one of their original chicken rice set i.e. with skin on chicken (white and dark meat available) plus a pandan flavoured rice, and one sans skin and with plain white rice (in case the pandan rice was bad, right??) 

Above, we have the original Singma Deluxe Hainan Chicken Rice. The slices of boiled chicken looked very nice, but definitely not the smoothest in texture we've had. The chicken was quite tasteless itself, so the sauces here were very important to impart some flavour. 

The pandan rice was basically rice which had been cooked with some pandan, which gave it a nice aroma, and a slightly different taste than your standard chicken rice which is cooked with ginger and garlic... The flavoured rice was tasty, so chicken stock was probably used, but it was not oily at all. 

The other set we ordered was asked to come with plain rice instead, and without skin on the chicken. The meat was the same as before, not bad with the sweet soy sauce and chilli.

The plain rice however, failed in comparison to the pandan rice as it was poorly cooked. It was way too mushy and overcooked, having no bite and being too 'wet'... Not sure how they managed to mess up plain white rice over pandan rice, but they did. 

A little mention on the sauces - whilst the dark soy and chilli sauce were fine, the ginger sauce was a disappointment. Predominantly oil, they need to fix their minced ginger-to-oil ratio!

In hindsight we probably should have ordered something totally different between us, e.g. the steamy bowls of laksa (chicken / seafood / vegetarian) that we saw coming out of the kitchen and onto other people's tables! 

Food: ♥♥1/2

Service: ♥♥♥

Price: $$

Singma Deluxe

Shop C2, G/f, Far East Finance Centre, 16 Harcourt Rd,

Admiralty, Hong Kong