Hoshino Coffee @ Plaza Singapura (New Wing)

Hoshino Coffee

It was the array of artificial food displays that caught my eye when I first strolled past Hoshino Coffee at Plaza Singapura’s New Wing. Laid out on a table at the restaurant’s entrance, it resembled something straight out of a classy high tea.

Needless to say, it had my mouth watering even before I had caught the slightest whiff of what was cookin’ in there. 😉

Hoshino Coffee is just one of the many food chains that have invaded our sunny island to feed an ever growing appetite for Japanese cuisine – or any type of cuisine that has that unique Japanese twist to it.

With close to 50 outlets scattered across its home country, Hoshino has brought its famous Hand Drip Coffee and Pancake Souffles to one of only two outlets located outside the Land of the Rising Sun. And with snaking queues forming around its wooden perimeter, my expectations were certainly high when I finally got round to checking it out!

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[MOVED] Maki-San @ The Cathay

Update 20 Jan 2025: Maki-San has closed at The Cathay. Visit their other outlets. 

Maki-San

Sushi on conveyor belts. Sushi on naked models. And now, sushi in designer boxes.

Wait, what?

Yup, you heard me right. The world’s favourite food from the Land of the Rising Sun just got a funky makeover at Maki-San, a Japanese-inspired sushi joint that’s riding on Singapore’s newfound love for customisable, DIY bites! 😉

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Tanjong Beach Club @ Sentosa

Navigating one’s way around Singapore can be a tricky affair at times, especially with her ever changing infrastructure, and not forgetting – and this is my greatest pet peeve – the ever so strange way we name our places and buildings. Like how some places are named after a district that they’re not even located in.

Heck, there’s a certain Pasir Ris Secondary School right smack in my neighbourhood, and I sure as hell am not living in Pasir Ris!

Luckily, Tanjong Beach Club (TBC) is nowhere near committing this cardinal sin; its name is as straightforward as its location: right in Tanjong Beach at Sentosa! Though some might easily confuse it with Tanjong Pagar,  going by evidence in hash tags on Instagram.

Arriving at its pristine white entrance with a couple of colleagues one sunny Saturday afternoon, who would’ve guessed that we would be stepping into a tropical oasis with a 1950s beach resort concept:
Tanjong Beach Club

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Hello Kitty Fairy Tales Plush Toy @ McDonald’s (Valid from 30 May to 3 July 2013)

It doesn’t take much to get a girl’s attention; hang out with your girlfriends and you’ll find that your day has been punctuated with oohs and ahhs at anything and everything that catches their fancy. 😉

The same thing happened to me the other day when I swung by McDonald’s for my fix of French Fries.There it was: the world’s most iconic pair of cat ears, embellished with a little bow, sitting atop the crew’s head as she bustled about dishing up servings of Mc Goodness to the customers before me.

It could only mean one thing: Hello Kitty’s back in town, and this time you can enter the world of the Hello Kitty Fairy Tales! 

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source: mitsueki.wordpress.com

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Surviving your first outdoor concert (The Singapore Social Concerts 2013, Day One @ Gardens by the Bay)

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Scoring free tickets to The Ultimate Concert Weekend is a lot like winning the lottery; you cast your lot in, half hoping and half fearing at what your luck may bring, and in a bid to eliminate any possibility of disappointment and false hope, you try to distract yourself from your one-off game with fate by going about one mundane task after another. Then out of the blue, you get the call of a lifetime (I say lifetime because you’ve probably spent that long waiting for it): you won!

And the million dollar prize? A pair of free tickets to catch your all-time favourite artistes LIVE at the Starcount Concert 2013, held in conjunction with the world’s very first Social Star Awards at Gardens by the Bay!

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Nana’s Green Tea Cafe @ Plaza Singapura

If there’s one thing I love about the Japanese, it’s their ability to take anything that’s quintessentially Western and add their own unique twist to it.

Take Nana’s Green Tea Cafe for example: ever since it opened its doors to matcha lovers ten years ago, it’s been touted as the Starbucks of Japan. And what’s more, word is on the street that Nana’s only uses green tea leaves from Kyoto, the capital of matcha production! Talk about taking quality control to a whole new level.

So when Fiona and I checked out their flagship store at Plaza Singapura on a whim, we certainly had high expectations.

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