JPot Chilli Crab Steamboat: Food Review

I eat at JPOT a lot and 90% of the time I'll order their special JPOT broth as my soup base which is basically the plain old chicken broth. When I heard about the new Chilli Crab soup I was a bit tempted to try it but decided not to, until we came across their new set menu.

I was still a little skeptical but the meal looked pretty worth it so why not.

OK so here's the thing. My first thoughts about it before ordering was 'is it the sticky sticky kind of gravy that Jumbo uses for their chili crab or is it the legit watery kind of normal soup' and to my delight it was BOTH.

You start off with the normal kind of soup which tastes pretty damn good. And how they recommend eating it is to place the crab in the soup and cook it all the way till the end (trust me the soup will taste so much better and the crab was so so sweet at the end). When you're done steamboating, the staff will turn the soup into the thick chili crab sauce by adding corn starch and a raw egg. Actually now that I'm typing this out it sounds kinda sketchy and gross but trust me it tastes a lot better than it sounds!!

I thought that the crab tasted really sweet and honestly preferred it to the ones sold at Jumbo Seafood although the one there would obviously be fresher. Maybe it's because it was due to its sweetness from being brutally boiled for over an hour. It was also really easy to eat because the shell softened so much that it was possible to bite through it easily.

And here comes the best part of the set, the fried mantous!! It's been so long since I've had FRESH HOT STEAMING fried mantous and I've never been more satisfied after that meal! I know a lot of people like to dip their mantous into the sauce but that's the boring way of eating it. How I do it is that I dig a hole into the bun with my chopsticks and fill up with the chili crab so that all the savory goodness explodes in your mouth once I take a bite. You should try it too, all the cool kids are doing it (-;

Looks really trash but it is the BOMB

I highly recommend trying this out if you're going to eat at JPOT and remember to jio your friends because the more people try it, the higher the chances of this being part of their main menu so go go go!!


Ratings:
Food: 9/10
Ambiance: 8/10
Service: 10/10

https://www.jpot.com.sg/en/home

FatBoy, Make Your Own Burger: Food Review

Yo i'm back with another irregular blog post. Recently i went to FatBoy at Serangoon Gardens for lunch and before that I had no idea what FatBoy offered. Besides the usual burgers for sale, they have a make your own burger section for greedy fat boys (pun intended) like me.

It's pretty obvious why the restaurant is called FatBoy because there are no just vegetables on the menu. So if you're accompanying your friends thinking you can order a bowl of salad then you'll be disappointed to hear that the only vegetables given is a small piece of lettuce and a slice of tomato that comes with every plate of burger. Guess it's time to break that diet that you're gonna break eventually right.

There were so many things I wanted to try on the menu like the beef chilli fries but no one wanted to share it with me. The burgers on their menu looked really good but I felt like the DIY burger was the main attraction of the bar so I settled for a huge DIY burger.

For the DIY burger, you get the choose the type of buns, meat, sides and sauce. I chose honey oats as my bun, but tbh I think all the buns taste the same. For the meat, they offered the usual beef and chicken and I was delighted to see that they offered lamb too. I was a little skeptical at first because I've never even heard of a lamb burger, let alone taste it but I was so glad I got over it and ordered it because it was so so amazing. For the sides I ordered spam, jalapenos, caramelized onions, guacamole and chilli queso and blue cheese dressing as the sauce. This totaled up to about $21.

My friend ordered this really weird (but I shall not judge) burger which had a slice of pineapple and peanut butter and she kept on telling me how good it was and how the bread tasted like chocolate with the peanut butter. But I guess that's what's so good about the place because they have a huge variety of sides and sauces that you can mix and match to concoct a burger of your liking!

I really liked the overall ambiance of the place. It was dimly lit and it wasn't crowded at all even though it was during lunch time on a Sunday. The only downside to this place is that it's kinda inconvenient to go to but I guess if it was at a mall the cozy atmosphere that FatBoy has would be really different.

Ratings:
Food: 9/10
Ambiance: 9/10
Service: 9/10

https://www.fatboys.sg/

African Safari 九州自然動物園 (Japan, Oita)

I'm going to start off with one of my favourite attractions: The African Safari Park in Oita. This is the best zoo/park/safari I've ever been to and you'll find out why in a second.

So like y'know how animal feeding works in other places, where the animals are in the cage or behind a fence. African Safari has the most unique animal feeding. Instead of the animals being fed in the cage (or fence), you'll be in a caged bus which will enter the respective animal areas. So technically we're the animals here!

And I feel that it's really cool because we get the opportunity to feed the big cats rather than the usual harmless-vege-eating giraffes and zebras.

If you don't wanna spend money on the caged bus ride, simply head down to the pets area where all the cute animals are! There're monkeys which you can feed- again, I've never seen this anywhere else- with seeds which costs ¥100. These cute little things won't stop until they snatch the food between your fingers!!

My favorite attraction of all has got to be the guinea pig house. As the name suggests, it's a house of guinea pigs which the workers will help place on your lap. Do note that some guinea pigs are more timid than others so you have to be really careful when handling them. Obviously, if they start squirming around and squeaking it means that they're not comfortable with either the way you're holding them or you entirely.

They even have dog and cat houses, which requires an entry fee. The dogs are trained to sit on people's laps and if you're not attracting any dogs, you can request for a blanket, which the dogs are attracted to, and place it on your lap. There's this really cute dog (i think her name is miu or something like that) who literally follows me around the place and gets angry when I try to move her away from my lap. What a cutie

If you're not a dog person then head down to the cat house which is opposite. But I don't recommend this unless you're a super cat person because it's more expensive (i think 500) and the cats won't interact with you.

Lastly what makes this attraction such the BEST zoo/park/safari whatever is that there are good food!! Y'know how theme parks rip of their customers with expensive and below-standard food? This is not the case in African Safari. They have two restaurants- one that sells curry and pasta and the other one that sells curry and pasta (but better). The better one is located further in the attraction and even though they sell the same kind of food, I prefer the second one because it's actually a curry buffet, making it more worth it. There are 4 different kinds of curry of different spicy levels to cater to different tongues- beef, chicken, eggplant and sweet potato. I absolutely loved their eggplant and sweet potato, but if you're there you should definitely try all 4! If you're going in a group and there are people who doesn't like curry, there are also pastas which taste just as nice!

 Perched atop a mountain, African Safari is definitely the most natural safari I've been to. Not only do the animals have a large area to roam freely, there's also minimum man-made structures in their living space. And while you're there, don't just pay attention to the animals because the scenery there is something else too!!

Thanks for reading!!

http://www.africansafari.co.jp/english/