Pancakes outing

Pop quiz!

Q: “Who the hell takes leave only on Wed and works for all other days?”

A: Wen Long.

Perhaps it’s the monsoon season, or perhaps some other country has a hurricane (as told by Shahidah), it’s raining very heavily almost every afternoon! Nevertheless, I still managed to have the mood and time to go out. Posting about the pancakes outing and the AFA outing! ^^

*Pancakes*

So yup, I decided to burn WL’s leave by asking him and ZY to go out in the afternoon for a pancakes meal when WL could be playing himself / doing stuff at home. =P

With some time to burn before the meet, I went to the National Library to borrow a few books, and then proceeded to Plaza Sing. Along the way, it was pouring VERY heavily and a lot of people simply didn’t bring their umbrellas. Someone near SMU, a guy came up to me and asked if I could share my umbrella with him. Luckily I wore my cap and jacket; otherwise I would be half wet with that sharing. =P

WL and ZY were late for 30 mins. Even though WL said that ZY wasn’t with him, he was definitely with him when they reached. (Wakao cheat my feelings sia) With this arrival, we set off for 44A Prinsep Street.

Weekdays and weekends in Plaza Sing are totally different scenes! During weekends, everywhere was crowded, people are squeezing everywhere, and they would be many mini gatherings at the outdoor area. On an ulu Wednesday afternoon, you can seriously run around without fear of knocking onto anybody. As usual, we walked out from the main entrance, which displeased WL to a very large extent.

WL: “The subway route is shorter what, how come we are not walking out from there?”

Jeff:  “Nvm what, we still have to walk to this road anyway.”

WL: “It’s shorter! We are going 1 big round! “

Jeff: O_O

Saying that it’s a must to use the subway route to walk out of plaza sing is just like saying that morning must eat chicken rice. =P

The rain stopped, so it took us only a short while to reached Strictly Pancakes. No crowd on a Wed afternoon, so we didn’t have to wait to be seated. We were brought upstairs where it’s more spacious with more tables and chairs, and a few sofas. The design reminded me of IKEA, with wardrobes, cabinets and other furniture shop decorations. We were seated at a wooden design table. No comments on the materials of the furniture.

Strictly Pancakes’ menu is rather interesting. A wide variety of pancakes including original, chocolate, sweet ones, salty ones, and pancakes that goes with different variety of food items, etc. Even though it says ‘Strictly’, SP menu offers sandwiches and some special drinks such as milkshakes and unique tea. Sharing some interesting things on the menu~ :D

*Size vs. Stack*

SP quantifies the number of pancakes as stack. I assume the pancakes are all of the same size, is just that you can choose the number of pancakes you want. Apparently, you can also choose the type of butter and additional food (more of breakfast delights) to go along with the pancakes. A medium stack (3) costs $7.

*Sweet vs. Salty*

“Huh? Where got people eat pancakes with bacon sia?” – WL

Yep! Just like MacDonald’s do sell hotcakes with sausage, SP does sell pancakes with a variety of meat and other interesting fillings. The sweet section includes having caramel, apples, bananas, other fruits and berries, or even different sweet spreads. Sounds very delicious! ^^

*Is SP halal?*

Well, we saw some Malay ladies eating. Thus I am assuming whatever bacon should be chicken/turkey?

After a long time of deciding thanks to us being spoilt of choices, we finalized our orders with the friendly waitress.

Jeff: Large stack, rum and raisin butter, with additional Sauté mushrooms! J

WL: Caramelized banana pancakes, medium stack. (It’s medium anyway)

ZY: Medium stack, unsalted butter, with additional butter, eggs and bacon! O_O

*Sauté is a method of tossing small pieces of food while cooking. So for the mushrooms, they should fit the description perfectly!*

>.< *.* =.= X.X ^.^ -.- o.o $.$

The first item that arrived (other than the ice water) is the butter, which is placed in a surprisingly cute small bowl/saucer.  It’s a rather weird way to eat the butter by itself, but that’s what we did anyway! The rum and raisin butter lived up to its name; the taste of rum is definitely evident in just that small bit of butter. Raisins? Yep, being seen in the butter itself. ZY’s unsalted butter seriously tasted like mint! I’m seriously hoping that the minty taste is there on purpose and not the effect of putting in the fridge for a very long time~ while enjoying the butter, the making of rum was brought up, with many different theories.

Jeff: The rum and raisin go well together.

WL: Well, rum is made from raisins.

Jeff: I thought rum is made from grapes???

WL: O_O

Jeff: Eh? Raisins are from grapes, but I always thought rum is made from grapes only.

WL: Raisins are grapes what, so rum can be from raisins!

Jeff: But raisins are dry, I thought rum needs some grape juice? Squeezing liquid out from raisins (dried grapes) sounds like taking something out from nothing sia…

ZY: XD

Looking back at this convo, I have no idea which sentences are real. Shortly after, the pancakes were being served. Mine and ZY’s stacks looked perfectly normal, nothing interesting about that. WL’s caramelized banana pancake looks like an extremely appetizing dessert!

3 pancakes served with freshly cut bananas, served with rich caramel syrup and a scoop of ‘vanilla’ ice-cream. Tried a bit of everything, the syrup is VERY sweet! It’s not a good idea to taste the syrup by itself, but if you combine the pancake, banana and syrup together, it would be a great combination. ^^ The ice-cream tasted like Horlicks! Did SP add any Horlicks powder into the ice-cream by accident? WL simply passed off the ice-cream taste with a cruel comment: ‘Mineral Water’.

This is my pancake after borrowing a bit of scrambled eggs and bacon from ZY. Looks rather nice with more toppings! ‘Friends for a lonely stack’:  A seriously appropriate description from SP to encourage customers to buy extra toppings for a wholesome pancake meal. J

The pancakes size look like they can be gobbled up in less than 5 mins, but don’t be mistaken, as they are not your usual fast food restaurants nonsense thin, empty pancakes. SP’s pancakes are really thick and filling, so unless you are really very hungry, keep the stack size to either small or medium. Luckily I didn’t order anything extra apart from the large stack, or I would be really bloated. =P

The syrup SP provided is VERY different from normal maple syrup / hybrid honey-syrup. This syrup is not exactly sweet, and has a taste which suggests a hint of herbal origin. I had the impression of tasting this type of syrup in the past, but forgotten where, when and with who. -_- The viscosity of SP’s syrup is like water, it easily flows off any slanted surface, so when I poured some syrup over the pancakes, it really flowed to the plate easily, making a rather large mess…

Nothing really special about the scrambled eggs and bacon, but the mushrooms is simply fantastic! A bit salty, with a dash of black pepper, doesn’t seem to enhance the taste of the pancakes when taken together, but is definitely cool to eat it on its own! :D. ZY doesn’t like the bacon for some reason… =/

~

ZY seemed to be very distracted while enjoying his pancakes, until he finally cannot take it and grumbled: “How come we don’t get to sit on the sofas?”

Jeff: Maybe that place is for VIPs? Or maybe if full then bo bian must sit there.

WL: Perhaps only couples can sit there?

ZY: Then how come the far end table has 1 sofa and 2 chairs?

Jeff: Good what, the couple can sit on the sofa together, romantic mah. :D

WL: Then the 2 chairs can hold the director and cameraman, if you know what I mean. =P

ZY, now you know why you cannot sit on the sofa, otherwise WL would be watching you when he feels like shooting something. ^^

~

One good thing about SP is that the iced water would be refilled rather quickly, thus diners would not have to worry about being thirsty for too long while enjoying the pancakes. With this inspiration, WL told us about his awesome childhood experience when he was drinking the endless cups of wisdom tea while everybody else is getting drunk with wine.

-

WL words of wisdom:

Gone were the days when I see everybody wasting their lives, toasting to nothingness and drinking wine like there’s no tomorrow. I don’t appreciate that, there’s no meaning in life. What is life? Life is actually a direction for us, it could also be a test for to see how we could be a changing factor to anything or anybody, or it can also be what we commonly term as, ‘HP (Health Points)’. My principle is very simple, ‘One does not simply drink red wine as if they are drinking water.’ [Refer to the post on the 1^st guild outing, esp. the red wine part] It’s hard to believe but unbelievably so, my favorite thing in this world, other than monkeys, YGO, One Republic, Justin Bieber, soft porn and some other things (a non-exhaustive list of 1001 items), is actually drinking tea.

You start to wonder: “Since when on earth does WL drink tea?” For those who know me long enough, I am a fan of drinking tea. Green tea, ice lemon tea, oolong tea, English tea, Chinese tea, KOI tea, milk tea with pearls, milk tea without pearls, tea-shirt, tea-rex, Tea-fal and other teas you can’t live without. I see tea as a way of life. In the past, I went to a very grand tea ceremony. The waiters kept on serving me tea. For the rest of the people, their beverages and alcoholic drinks need to be requested before they could get what they want. For me, mine was spontaneous. I didn’t have to request, the tea comes to me, just like Chuck Norris. At the start, the waiters would be friendly enough to ask for my permission to fill the cup. I asked them to carry on 20 before they poured in for asking such a question, isn’t that obvious? But soon after, they knew what they have to do and stopped asking me whether I need a refill. I shall give an example, there’s a waiter who walked around to see if anybody needed a tea refill, but even though my seat is rather far and inconvenient for him to pass by, he took the initiateave to come around and investeagated my cup. For a moment, I felt that I was the only one who is drinking tea in the whole ceremony.

When I got home, I wrote a compliment letter for that waiter. His automa-tea-ic service shows a good at-tea-tiude. Now that I am going to the facul-tea of Arts and Social Science in the National Universi-tea of Singapore, I shall always remember the art of appreciatea-ing the aroma, the culture, the significance of this tradition.

-

After listening to WL’s words of wisdom, ZY and I were momentarily stunned. I can safely say that ZY had forgotten about which angle should the cameraman be positioned in order to have a good view on the sofa. WL seemed happy about sharing this experience. ^^ Unfortunately, everything comes with a price and poor WL simply had no mood to finish his banana pancakes and asked me for help. I ate about ½ of his pancakes plus a few bananas, only to receive an unappreciative comment. =(

Jeff: “Ok, I help you eat some already.”

WL: “Wao! That time I help you eat so many pork bellies then today you only help me eat so little sia!”

In the end I ate 1 full piece of pancake, with some caramel and bananas. I also took the butter from WL’s side. So a total of 5 pancakes, some bananas, and extra butter. Dared WL to finish up all the caramel sauce on his plate, and only realized that he is scared of dripping things, including dripping sauce, dripping rain. No wonder he likes tissue paper. =P

Other random happenings in SP, which I’m lazy to elaborate on it. =P

1.       The first song we heard in SP: ‘Let’s Get Loud!’

2.       Jeff wanted to try to order from a book about Waffles.

3.       WL: “Aiya, so much for STRICTLY pancakes.”

4.       WL: Nutella not made from peanut butter?

5.       ZY: Nom nom nom nom nom nom!

6.       Jeff treated the syrup and water and almost drank it all up.

After the meal, we paid up and I was once again requested to calculate each person’s payment amount. The awesome moment when I realized that the receipt showed ‘extra butter’ which was meant for ZY. No wonder I found it weird that WL’s pancakes had butter to go along with! Since I took like almost the whole butter, I paid for the extra one. Ah, mystery of the additional butter: CASE CLOSED! :D

One of the staff found my thinking cap and returned it to me; someone should give that staff a prize! :D With that, ends the fabulous lunch/tea break at Strictly Pancakes! How do I find it? Excellent! Should visit that place again (preferably weekdays)!  

Next up, we went to POMO for a digestive walk. Apparently there’s a dance lesson in a random studio at a seriously ulu corner of POMO. It looks rather interesting when people wearing all kinds of random attire are dancing hip-hop to a random bpm song. Perhaps it would be suitable for WL, as any move can be considered a dance move (how the heck can this be true?).

We walked Cold Storage for about an hour or so. For some reason, I always feel that Cold Storage has more random products compared to other supermarkets, but doesn’t have a large number of brands to choose from. Some of the products were found amusing: ^^

~~~

水饺 vs锅贴

Jeff: One is water, one is fried.

WL: Potsticker!

English tea

ZY: Eh why got breakfast tea one?

Jeff: Got afternoon tea also mah.

WL: Atas sia!

Alcohol

Jeff: What is the capacity of a typical bottle of beer?

WL: 660ml?

Jeff: Sia la! This can got 1 liter capacity wor!

Ingredients for Cheng Teng

ZY: dried longans? Sugar?

Jeff: Oh look! Ikan Bilis! (Points to a packet beside the ingredients)

WL: We can add Assam inside also! (Points to another packet beside the Ikan Bilis)

The different types of cheese

Jeff: Imagine cutting sliced cheese into Mozarella cheese and make pizza~ =)

WL: Lol must well just use the packet down there.~

ZY: nom nom nom nom nom nom!

Nutella VS peanut butter

WL: Nutella confirm made from peanut butter!

Jeff: …

ZY: O_O

Sugar candy cane

Jeff: Merry Christmas!

ZY: =D

Pasta section

Jeff: I like Fusili! Fusili pasta in the Al Funghi is very delicious!

WL: Short Cut angel hair? SMLJ!

ZY: =D

Nuts

Jeff: Pistachio is a very good nut, you see the price?

WL: Huh got difference de ah?

ZY: (Points to a more expensive random packet of nuts)

Jeff: Oh ok… So pistachio is not the most expensive after all.

Hard skin remover

WL: This one like not bad, put on then can remove hard skin.

Jeff: Use scrapper la! Good skin also can scrape off. =P

ZY: [Don’t use my tender skin >.<]

Halfway through the random browsing, we saw ZY watching the TV which is advertising bras at that point of time. Of course, WL and I were naturally curious about why ZY was staring with such great concentration.

Jeff: ZY, why you staring at the bras? o.o

ZY: No ah, I looking at the dishwasher…

Jeff: ZY ah, you stared at the bras for over a minute leh, I don’t see any dishwashers.

ZY: Have!!! (Suddenly panics) You see!

[TV still showing bras]

WL: ZY, I see what you did there. =P

Jeff: Aiyo ZY, if you want to watch porn, go home watch. Now outside, just shop happily. ^^

ZY: REALLY! GOT DISHWASHER! I not… (Gahhh! Scratches, meows and noms)

Kelly Clarkson: “Everybody’s got a dark side!”

~~~

Nothing much happened after that. We sat outside School of the Arts to listen to Cody Simpson’s songs. Jeff like it, WL dislikes it, ZY is neutral. Nyan Cat is an Atas town song. =P

With that, ends the auspicious pancakes outing! ^^ 

*Something's wrong with the colour. o.o*