Harry's Singapore Chilli Crab...NOT.

Before I start, let me say that I went to Harry's a week ago. And it took me a week to write to post. Not because I didn't have time, but I needed a week to calm down and let the fury within me die down a bit. Anyone of my friends on facebook would've experience the wrath of my fury on Saturday night and I didn't want to unleash that to the rest of the world just yet.

I was so SO looking forward to going to Harry's Singapore Chilli crab ever since I found out about it a few years ago. Its around the corner from Spice I am and I've always wanted to go, but have always been tempted by thai more. When Amz said she was organising her birthday party there I did a little cheer inside me. Especially since PP had visited Harry's a few times and always said it was good and would invite me the next time.

We arrive at the restaurant and we're seated at a table for 10 even though there's 8 of us. Usually I wouldn't complain, but they didn't have a lazy susan on the table. Meaning we had to practically climb onto the table to get anything on the other side. This is also why I there's not many photos as it was impossible to get decent photos from the other side of the table.

Most of the people weren't huge crab eaters and only wanted 1-2 pieces to taste what Singapore chilli crab tastes like. We ordered 2 mud crabs at $64/kg. This is after I had to convince the waiter that no, we don't need 4 crabs. We want TWO crabs. TWO. NOT FOUR.

We ordered a few other dishes as well so the non-crab eaters didn't starve.

San Choy Bao - $5.20 each

This was.....disappointing. A good san choy bao should be dry and crunchy with a lovely breath of wok aroma. This was soggy and sloppy. The fried vermicelli noodles they added had turned to mush. They also put the filling onto a very wet piece of lettuce which basically watered down the whole dish and causing a huge mess when eating.

Chicken and vege with cashew nuts

We had a few other dishes that came out before this. Salt and pepper calamari was nice, but nothing to write home about. This however, is something to write home about. In blood. This was.......wrong. The vegetables, carrots and celery, was bitter. It also had a tough chewy texture which is usually the result of using old leftover veggies that have been sitting in the fridge for too long. The carrots weren't peeled and had a dark skin on it which further confirms my "bottom of the veggie bin" theory. This dish wasn't touched much. And if it wasn't $20 for this, I wouldn't have forced myself to eat it. I would actually rate this dish BELOW food court food which has been sitting in the bain marie for too long. BELOW.

"Singapore Chilli crab"

OK, this was the only decent photo of the crab I could get from my side of the table. Compare that "Singapore Chilli Crab" with the Singapore Chilli Crab I had in Singapore:


1. Notice the lack of sauce in Harry's
2. Harry's sauce contains NO tomato sauce

Not only was the sauce NOT Singapore Chilli crab sauce, it was OVERLY salted. There was 2 taste in the sauce. Salt and chilli. This was a huge disappointment, especially since we had invited people hoping they get to try authentic Singapore style chilli crab.

We had ordered 2 serves of Roti because they told me they had sold out of the Man tou that you use to dip into the Singapore Chilli Crab. And honestly, what place that serves real Singapore Chilli crab will sell out of Mantou at 7:30pm on a Saturday night?

The waiter convinced us to order the roti instead, which we did. $5 for 4 serves. Or rather, $5 for 2 pieces of roti cut in half. And it wasn't even fresh made roti. The roti, although crispy, was dense and compact. The exact same texture of the frozen roti we buy from the asian grocery store.

Ontop of this, we had ordered 5 bowls of boiled rice (As they only serve them per bowl) at $2.80 a bowl, thinking we wanted something to soak up all the sauce with.

1. there was no sauce.
2. they only gave us 3 bowls.

When I asked for the other 2 bowls, the waiter said he had already given me 5.

Me: "Errrrr.....no. You gave me 3 bowls."
Him: "No, I already gave you 5 bowls."
Me: "No. You gave me 3 bowls. 1. 2. 3." *pointing at the only bowls on the table

He gives me a look as if I had hidden the other 2 bowls. I was so close to screaming that he only gave me 3 bowls and I didn't shove the other 2 bowls down my top. My boobs really do look like that!

I was so angry by this stage I didn't even want dessert. ESPECIALLY when I saw that they were charging $9 for a fried ice cream. I basically had the mentality I didn't want to let them earn another dollar off me.

My friends went ahead and ordered fried ice creams and chocolate cake. The order was, 5 fried ice creams. 3 with caramel 2 with chocolate. What came out was 3.5 caramel and 1.5 chocolate. Yeh. They had put caramel onto the 4th order. And instead of going "oops! lets make another one or atleast scrape the caramel off", they proceeded to pour chocolate ONTOP of the caramel which resulted in topping overdose.

Then there was the ice cream. Or what we though was ice cream. It looked like a banana fritter, but when you cut into it, the whole thing collapses and starts oozing white stuff. The batter itself was incredibly doughy and chewy, almost like stale chinese fried dough sticks.


And just to make the night worse, the people eating the fried ice cream started digging up corn kernels.

Corn...in a fried ice cream!?

Chocolate cake

Our friend had ordered a chocolate cake, was starting to think he was the only one to get out unscathed. That is until he realised the $10 slice of chocolate cake he ordered was from Coles! It still has the ridges from where they peeled the baking paper away from the cake.

By the end of the night, most of the table was a ball of raging fury from being so openly ripped off. For 2 crabs, 4 main meals, 5 bowls of rice, roti, soft drink and dessert, we paid $420.50. And that is exactly what we paid. $420.50. No more, no less. I then wrote on the receipt that "THE ICE CREAM IS CRAP!!!" and handed it back to the waitress. I probably would've written a much harsher note had there been room on the receipt.

I can't remember the last time I have ever walked away from a restaurant feeling so angry and ripped off. If you think this post is harsh, you should've seen how I was saturday night and will understand why I didn't blog straight away.

How it has such a "good" reputation I don't understand. I guess being endorsed by The Veronicas might have something to do with that. And the wall of photos with celebrities visiting will probably contribute to that. But I can tell you, none of the celebrities were asian and must never have had an authentic Singapore Chilli crab. Because if they have, they would not endorse this place.

I will NEVER, EVER go back to this place. EVER.

The Corn Exchange - Four Points Sheraton

It's been a few years since I've visited the Corn Exchange. I used to come here quite regularly with my family when they had the buy 1 get 1 free offers every few months. But they haven't had that offer for quite a few years. As a part of the Enliven Sydney Promotion, they're offering the buy 1 get 1 free offer again! Woohoo! I immediately dragged my friend with my for a bout of seafood feasting! I thought I should test the place out before bringing my family here again.

I'm always well prepared for visiting The Corn Exchange. Minimal breakfast and lunch. Don't drink anything fizzy or full of dairy. Order hot water when at the restaurant (So I'm not tempted to drink heaps of water). Get plenty of prawn chips/papadums and some hot soup to counteract the slimey cold seafood I intended to gorge on.

I decided to combine all the photos from both my visits into one big post. So don't worry, I didn't eat ALL of this in one sitting. But even if you average it out....... *Cough*

Cold seafood section

Smoked salmon

Cold prawns

Mussels, sushi, sashimi

Some lobster/prawn/bug type thing

Anti pasto/Salad section

More salads on another night

Let me firstly explain what type of person should go to the Corn Exchange. The buffet is catered for those who love their cold seafood and dessert. The hot food on offer is minimal and very disappointing for those who don't eat seafood. Whilst for those who like their seafood, this place is HEAVEN. And I mean HEAVEN. Huge amounts of oysters, sashimi, smoked salmon, prawns, crab, balmain bugs, mussels, octopus and sushi. And that's exactly what I intend to eat.

My DIY seafood platter

My 2 favourite things, oysters and sashimi

More oysters, sashimi and prawns

Oysters, crab, prawns and some sashimi hidden in the bottom

More oysters, sashimi, smoked salmon and mussels

Moving onto the hot food. Confit of duck, saffron pasta and more seafood

To be honest, the total amount of hot food I ate was limited to that piece of duck confit and about 1 tablespoonful of pasta. I also sampled 1 or 2 pieces of other hot food, basically they were all quite terrible. Gluggy, salty or flavourless. "Hot food" selection includes things like white rice, roast potatoes, pumpkin, green beans and occassionally some sort of roast meat/fish/stew. Basically, nothing appealed to me. I'll have 1/2 a bowl of soup to warm my stomach up and move onto the dessert.

Dessert

More desser offerings

Orange cream, creme brulee, fruit tart, portugese tart and strawberries and chocolate

I was really disappointed when I found out that they no longer did their gorgeous sticky date pudding with hot vanilla bean custard. It was my absolute favourite dessert at The Corn Exchange. I almost liked it more than the seafood. They've replaced it with a huge vat of melted chocolate which you ladel over strawberries and marshmallows.

I tried a bit of everything on my plate, but I quickly gave them all up for one thing. The creme brulee. OH. MY. LORD! Their creme brulee is AMAZING! Its extremely smooth and creamy. Totally decadent even though the burnt sugar had melted by this stage. Infact, I liked it so much, the first time I went, I ate 6 of these babies!

Second time I went back, I warned my sisters to get out of my way if I'm getting creme brulee. I WILL hurt them if they fight me for it. Luckily, the had the dessert section well stocked with creme brulee. So well stocked in fact, that between the 4 of us, we ate a total of 36 creme brulees. 36!! It was quite embarrassing whenever the waiter came to collect our dirty dishes and it was all creme bruless dishes.


The good thing about us eating all the creme brulee was that they had to keep bringing out more. We ate everything they put out so they had to make a fresh batch where the sugar was lovely and crunchy! What a perfect way to end our meal!

Extra crunchy top

The Corn Exchange

161 Sussex St
Sydney NSW 2000
Ph: (02) 9290 4851

Red Oak

I'm certainly making use of the We Love Sydney card lately. My 3 weekly lunch catch up lunch with a friend had us meeting up at The Red Oak. We were both pressed for time that day, so the location was really what drove us to go there. That and the fact its buy 1 get 1 free ;)

We quickly scoured the menu and both settled on the Crispy Skinned Tasmanian Ocean Trout with sauteed scallops, cauliflower mash and tomato and chive dressing for $26.


I had ordered my trout medium rare and it was cooked to perfection. I wasn't so sure about the scallops though. I was expecting it to have a lovely golden crust, but it looked like it was slowly poached in oil or something. However, with that said, the scallops were also cooked to a lovely medium rare.

I rarely eat trout, so this was a lovely way to have it. I could really taste the sweet freshness of the fish. I wasn't too fond of the cauliflower mash, but I've never liked cauliflower anyway. So the fact that I ate all of it says something!

This turned out to be a fantastic lunch with our We Love Sydney offer, $13 each without alcohol!

Red Oak
http://www.redoak.com.au/
201 Clarence Street, Sydney
Ph: 02 9262 3303

Cafe Mix

I've always heard so much about Shangri-La's Cafe Mix and I couldn't wait to try it. However, I found the price tag of $58 was a bit much to swallow. ($58 is the cheapest price, Mon-Thur. $85 Sat. $68 Fri & Sun). However, when I spotted Cafe Mix on the list of We Love Sydney restaurants offering buy 1 get 1 free, I just had to book myself in. I personally don't like cold crab or lobster, so opted to go on a Thursday night where it's cheaper since they won't be offering any lobster. I mean, why pay extra for something you won't eat?

We arrive and we're quickly seated, after having to walk past the dessert bar which practically gave me a sugar high just breathing in! Once we were seated, we did a quick recon around the place to suss out what was on offer, so we could plan out what was the best way to attack the buffet. There was a Cold Bar, where the prawns and oysters were, along with antipasto and the DIY Salad. A western section, a Japanese section, an Asian section and an Indian section.

Japanese section

Cold seafood section

I didn't really look too closely at the hot food since my main victims were the prawns and oysters.

I had atleast 2 plates just like this

Moving onto the hot food...kinda

Once I had completely overdosed on the cold shellfish, I headed off to the hot section to find something to warm me up. I did about 3 laps, going from station to station, when something hit me. The variety.....sucked? Let me list out exactly what was on offer.

In the Western Section:

- Steamed Vegetables
- Potatoes
- Roast Lamb
- Fish

Roast lamb was just roast lamb. No sauce, no gravey. Just roasted lamb sliced. The fish bain marie only ever contained a maximum of 2 fishes, each one slightly bigger than my hand. If you're not there when they refill it, its gone. It didn't help that people will scoop up an entire fish and plonk it onto their plate. But even then, the fish wasn't that big, so you couldn't call the person a glutton. They just really like their fish.

In the Japanese Section:

- Miso soup
- Potato and Roasted Garlic Soup
- Sushi

The sushi section was very disappointing for me. Most of them were chunky rolls filled with heaps of rice. When the chef bothered making the nigiri sushi, they were quite good in making the rice quantity quite small, so you didn't fill up. Except he was making them one at a time, and placing them on the tray, one at a time. That unless you were standing right there, with the only pair of tongs in your hand ready to swipe up whatever was laid out, you get nothing. There was always plenty of rolls, but the amount of rice on them just screamed FILLER. And that was the extent of the Japanese section. Rolls, a few pieces of nigiri, soup and pickles.

The Asian Section:

- Sago pudding
- Some form of sweet glutinous rice with sultanas
- Stir fried green beans
- Tom yum soup
- Roast Pork
- Boiled rice
- Steamed buns
- Dim Sims

The Asian Section was probably one of the better hot food sections there. I'm only saying this because I love tom yum soup and dim sims. Whilst I really loaded up on the dim sims...they were of the frozen variety. The big dim sims had the exact same texture, and almost the exact same taste as the ones I get at the local fish and chips shop (Soft, lots of shredded cabbage and grated carrots). The only difference is that these are steamed, whilst I usually get mines deep fried and doused in chicken salt. I didn't mind the dim sims, but I'm usually paying $1 each, vs people who would pay $60 for this buffet? The prawn dumplings were incredibly floury, and the prawns almost had a mushy texture. Something you usually get when you steam poor quality frozen prawn dumplings. There were also a few mysterious dumplings that surfaced during the night, each one was mushy and you had to pull the whole thing apart to see what the fillings were.

Funnily enough, the buns and the dumplings were placed in the Indian section of the restaurant. Strange you would think? Not really....considering what they had on offer in the Indian section, they had to put a few decent things there to make it worthwhile.

The Indian Section:

- Naan bread
- Basmati Rice with a bit of saffron mixed in
- Tandoori chicken
- Lentil curry

Where is my beef vindaloo? Or butter chicken? Or Samosas? Is there nothing else in the Indian cuisine that they could've offered??

We had been strategic to lay off all the starch and carbs to make sure we had plenty of stomach space, but after doing a few laps, we realised that the variety of food on offer was so sub-par, that we just started eating the buns, rice and even the naan (Which was incredibly tough, as if someone had over microwaved it). I half heartedly loaded up on the dim sims before I gave up on the hot food and went for the dessert bar.

The dessert bar was probably the highlight of the night. Chocolate fountain, creme brulee, creme caramel, tiramisu, macroons, cheese platter, ice creams etc. Even I went back for 2nds and 3rds.

Dessert section

Choc dipped strawberries, macaroons, creme brulee, creme caramel

With the discount, dinner came to $29pp. If I had paid the full price, $58, I would've been really annoyed. And I mean REALLY ANNOYED. Maybe bordering on pissed. Even though I only ended up paying $29pp, I was still really disappointed. I have gone to many RSLs, where you paid less than $29 and get twice as much variety and pretty much the same quality. You still get the prawns and the oysters (Probably not as much oysters as you would get at Cafe mix as some of them limit you to 6 at a time. BUT, unlike Cafe Mix, you don't get a mouthful of grit and crushed oyster shells), but you also get a whole grilled salmon, mussels, salt and pepper prawns, swimmer crabs, heaps of deep fried seafood, stir fries, sushi, salads, a huge carvery bar with ham, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, pasta and other stuff. The desserts will not be able to compete with Cafe Mix, but I'm not a huge dessert person, so it doesn't make a huge difference to me.

I don't know, maybe if I went on a Fri-Sun, I would've enjoyed it alot more. But I couldn't really see what they could offer to make it worth the $85 you have to pay on a Saturday? Or maybe I am being picky?? Maybe there was just too much hype and I had expectations that was too high....but I was really disappointed. And so was my friend, so I guess we'll just have to go to one of my favourite buffets to make up for it. Stay tuned!

The last of the feasting for awhile.....(plus a bit of a rant)

December was all about food. January finally rolled around where I tried to get back on track with eating right, going to the gym at lunch and basically going easy on the alcohol. Come February, my favourite Uncle was visiting from Hong Kong. This meant 2 things. Eating heaps, and drinking everything in sight. Thank goodness he's only here for 1 week!

One of the things we always do when my uncle visits is to load up on the seafood. He loves Australian seafood, we decided to go to Yummy Seafood Chinese Restaurant in Beverly Hills. This was a restaurant we've been to quite a few times, and is frequented by my parents and their friends. They were doing a special on lobster, which was the main reason for coming. They fished a 2.7kg lobster out of the tank for us, which we requested to be cooked with stock on a bed of e-fu noodles. We also ordered a few other dishes to go with it.

Peking pork ribs

Our night was going really well. We were enjoying each other's company, snacking on the ribs whilst watching all the other tables receiving their lobsters. Almost every single table had ordered lobster of some sort. Whether it was cooked or done sashimi style. Then our lobster came out and this is what we got:

Our lobster

If you have a closer look, those shreds of white stuff, is actually lobster meat. At first it looked like an eggy sauce was poured on top, but no. That was our $160 lobster meat disintergrating into the sauce. We asked the manager to check with the chef why our lobster was cooked like that. He took one look at it, lifted up a few pieces with a fork and watched it break apart and fall back onto the dish. He runs back to the kitchen and then gets another manager to talk to us.

The senior manager comes up to us and apologises, saying that the chef is really busy tonight rar rar rar.....and (I'm paraphrasing since this was going on all in cantonese) "can we just live with the dish". Excuse me??? "Live with the dish"??? If this was any other dish that cost $30, we wouldn't even have complained. We would've eaten what was good and left the rest. THIS dish was going to cost us close to $160.!We weren't going to just "live with it". We asked if he could cook us another lobster, and he exclaims that he's barely making any money on this lobster as it is! Honestly, if you can't afford to do a special without making a profit, then you shouldn't be doing a special at all. Just because you're doing it at a special price, doesn't mean you can serve us turd. When we told him this was not acceptable, because we're paying for a lobster dish, and we're basically not getting any lobster as everything has disintergrated, he starts yelling "WELL WHAT DO YOU WANT THEN!?".

To be fair, we offered to pay for 50% of the dish. I mean, they did use the lobster, just that they massacred it. Upon hearing this, the manager stood there thinking for about 3 seconds and went "Well, if you're only going to pay for 50%, you might as well not pay!". He yanked the dish off the table and almost throws it at another waiter whilst screaming "THROW THIS IN THE BIN!".

Having worked in a restaurant and knowing heaps of people in the restaurant business, we know its stressful when its busy. But what they brought out to us was a joke. It was clearly not restaurant quality. Even the standard housewife can cook something better at home, it was THAT bad. If Gordon Ramsay was there, he would've throw the plate half way across the restaurant. Heck, after the managers performance, I would've thrown it half way across the room if they didn't take the dish from us. Needless to say, we did not enjoy the rest of our meal one bit. Even when the other dishes came out, we had already lost our appetite to eat. We left most of the food untouched, paid and left.

I can tell you, we won't be back for a VERY long time, and neither will our friends and relatives. And considering the way word spreads, neither will our friend's friends.

To make up for this huge disappointment of a meal, we went home and drank 4 bottles of wine! Woohoo! The only bad thing was that we had to get up early the next day to hit the Sydney Fish Markets. I was definitely going to make up for the seafood debarcle that happened last night!

We get to the Fish Markets for brunch. Having left the restaurant without really eating the night before, being hungover and haven't had breakfast, I got straight into action! We grabbed a table and set off in groups of 2 to buy food!

Part of the spread

2 Doz Sydney Pacific Oysters - served with lemon or Tetsuya oyster dressing

Calamari rings

2 x Oyster mornay and 6 x grilled scallops in half shell

1/2kg salmon sashimi

2 whole crabs

2 whole lobsters

I also grabbed 1/2 kg jumbo king prawns, a packet of abalone sashimi, uni (sea urchin), seaweed salad, grilled barramundi with chips and fish cocktails! This was really for 3 people. My mum ate 1/2 of the barramundi and some seaweed only. My dad had a few fish cocktails and 1/2 a lobster. The rest was shared amongst me, my uncle and aunt! We were so full we almost had to be wheeled out of there! We finished almost everything except 1 crap, the seaweed salad an calamari.

My sister, hearing about our dinner the night before, went out and bought another 2 dozen oysters and a kilo of prawns for our BBQ dinner that night. (Not realising we were going to the fish markets, and the day before my mum had bought 1kg of prawns for snacking on at home!).

Later that night, we headed over to my sisters place for a BBQ. (She had asked if we wanted to BBQ at our place or her place, of course her place I said! No washing up for me afterwards! LoL). We decided to split up the food prep as she had already marinated the chicken and bought the sausages and seafood. Me and my uncle got together to do the red meat. I did a lamb chops with garlic, rosemary and red wine. He marinated the world's BEST pork chops I've ever eaten! I really hate pork chops as I find them dry and tasteless. His pork chops were moist, succulent and melts in the mouth! Oh yum!!

Some of the stuff cooking on the BBQ

I ended up manning the BBQ stove most of the time and didn't really get to take much photos. Here's a few.

Pork and chicken sausages and grilled chicken wings

Grilled garlic prawns - done by my uncle

He also did his favourite garlic oysters!

Close up

Hot damn! These oysters were amazing! He simply put them on the grill in the shells, and DOLLOPED on a heaped teaspoon of chinese crushed garlic. (Lee Kum Kee brand) As the oyster cooks, it bubbles on the grill. When we took them off the grill, the oyster was hot, but still smooth and creamy on the inside. Sooooooo good! And, we didn't have to worry about vampires! lol