*Note to Readers: This review is from my guest author, CY.
I had the privilege to be invited down to eM by the River to review on their drinks menu and some of their, as they would put it, Bar Grub.
eM by the River is located within Gallery Hotel, and as the name suggests, its right by the Singapore River. It’s a really nice place to have your after-work drink because of its ‘chillax‘ ambience and relaxing music, or you could grab your brunch over here becasuse they have a menu for food as well.
A recent invitation by the One Rochester group offered me the opportunity to visit one of their restaurants within East Coast Park. Much like its sister restaurant One Rochester, COAST@1-TwentySix, features a communal menu and an indoor & outdoor concept.
A direct lift from the press release mentions that Coast “Takes cues from coastal dining trends in picturesque destinations like the Almafi Coast, the Hamptons at Long Island, New York City, COAST seeks to propagate 1-TwentySix as a chic seafront lifestyle dining mecca in Singapore.” I’ve yet to visit the above mentioned places (although, I do intend to visit Long Island soon), but I was very keen to see first hand if COAST manages to live up to their own aspirations.
When the craving for those bite sized dumplings that are filled with flavourful broth and minced pork (a.k.a. Xiao Long Baos), two places come to mind – Crystal Jade and Din Tai Fung. Granted that there are other restaurants serving up XLBs, Din Tai Fung’s xiao long baos are still my favourite.
Din Tai Fung recently hosted a meet-the-bloggers outing where a Din Tai Fung master chef showed us the art of making Xiao Long Baos. In my opinion, calling it an art would be an understatement in itself. The chef informed us that due to the stringent quality controls and the need to uphold it’s status as one of the world’s Top Ten Best Restaurants as ranked by The New York Times, a chef needs to complete at least two years’ of training, before he or she is allowed to make these dumplings.
But, a show-and-tell session would have been far too boring. Din Tai Fung, arranged for us to personally make these dumplings, albeit with red bean filling. Understandably, it was difficult to achieve the required characteristic 18-folds of a properly made xiao long bao. (Hey, who was I to kid!)
But just when we thought that a show-and-tell-and-make session was more than enough fun for the morning, we were treated to a sumptuous lunch. Read on, to see what delicacies we had the honour of sampling.
