Hi,
When I’m out eating on my own, I’ll usually find the cheapest food I can find. So near where I work there’s this hawker stall ‘Rice Garden’ by NTUC Foodfair, as long as you show your union membership card, you get a discount on your cai bng. Yeah its a economic rice or cai bng stall. So that means, everyday I eat cai bng, for lunch.
That’s why at night, I always have craving for better food, not that the good old cai bng is bad, its just that.. Eating from the same stall everyday makes me sick of it, but the price is unbeatable so I still have to go there for my daily sustenance. Then at night when I’m with wifey, I can use her as an excuse to splurge on dinner.. a little.
One night, we had business to be at Wisma Atria. After the errands we were famished, I absent minded-ly went up to the higher floors because there’s a Sony showroom on level 5, where I can ogle on those cameras. But we never made it to level 5, because level 4 is the Japan Food Town.
Its a enclave of Japanese food stalls hailing from all over the beautiful country. There are 16 brand names there, 16 my friend! And 15 our of 16 are new in Singapore. Only Hokkaido Izakaya had another branch in Tanjong Pagar. And that’s the one me and wifey went to.
The interior of the Hokkaido Izakaya really look like we’re in one of those izakaya (something like a bar and bistro) in Japan. I only went once in Japan so I’m not sure what’s authentic and what’s not, but it feels that way. Comfortably casual Japanese wine and dine setting, its cramp, it looks energetic from the outside (but doesn’t feel that way when I’m inside..), and its too neat. But hell the decor sure looks authentic lah.
They serves Hokkaido style soba which I fully appreciate, because the air-con in Wisma Atria is so darn cold. There’s free-flow eggs which wifey would love, but there’s only one left on our table. Then there’s konbu and what looks like leftover tempura crumbs.
Yes… that’s pokemongo on my phone. Anyways I had Kakiage Tempura Soba set ($12) which comes with an onigiri. So nice. The Kakiage Tempura is addictive like potato chips, I guess they are the same kind because kakiage is all vegetables, and potatoes are vegetables too. The soup was a salty shoyu based soup with a hint of bitterness and sweetness.. This kind of confusion must be the legendary ‘umami’ taste.
Wifey had the Tsukimi Tororo Soba ($13) and honestly I don’t see where the extra $1 gone into. Mine was $12 and its got a large piece of tempura, her’s was just the bowl with a floating egg on what looks like spit in the soup that might just be the grated mountain yam. According to wifey, she couldn’t taste the difference between her soup and mine. Oh well. So the magic in her bowl was only that egg.
After the hot bowl of soba in the frigid.. air-coned mall.. We were rather satisfied, I of course ate half of Claire’s soba and seriously shes making me fat. I kinda feel like I’m in Hokkaido where its cold and slurping a hot bowl of soba. A complete experience.
Then after the meal we of course need to settle wifey’s OOTDs. Lucky she doesn’t do this daily.
This basically summed up my life as an instahubby.
Good luck with your other half.
Simon
