It took us longer than we expected, three months to be exact but we finally made it to Sushi Masaaki for dinner last week. Reservations were first made to celebrate the Baker-at-Home's birthday there in June but the lockdown changed that into a double birthday celebration with yours truly in September.
This was certainly well worth the wait. Now unlike places like Esora and IL Den, this is the kinda "real" sushi that I much prefer. All-round excellent fine-dining experience, our omakase dinner saw some of the freshest fish I have had since lockdown. Hah! The sake choices we were top-notch too. Sake pairing wasn't exactly on the menu but we requested for one and that was exceptionally good. Did we drank, ate and spent too much? Definitely. We kinda justified it with the fact that we didn't travel anywhere the last two years. And we already made our next dinner reservations at the end of the year.
Me 87-year-old Dad took these photos in Pasir Ris earlier this week. Fortunately the hawk stayed more or less still enough for him to snap over 1,000 shots of the bird and allowed me Dad to play around with the different camera settings. FYI that's a monitor lizard tail he or she is eating, not a snake.
Well, if you have been following the local news, it sure looks like we are heading into another mini-lockdown pretty soon. Anyway the Barker-at-Home and I managed to snag my birthday lunch at Garibadi earlier this week with her! There's a running joke between us bout how she has eaten at the Italian joint while I have not. This went on for years and finally I'm here. Joke's over I guess. Hah!
Didn't really planned it that way but I had truffle on both my first and second courses, on the scallops as well as the ravioli. Fantastic lunch, only complaint was them ravioli were some of the smallest I ever had! Not a complaint but the wine pairing did left us both with a slight buzz in the afternoon. Guess we ain't as young as we were.
Back home, we ordered an amazing coconut cake from a homemaker, yes, that's a pretty huge cake for just the two of us. So we sliced it up and gave some to the neighbours too. Obviously the kids love it.
Now I usually treat myself to a new game or something similar on me birthdays but I can't really think right now. Not that there isn't anything I want. Gawd knows there are plenty of stuff I want but space is an issue and I still got games that I feel I haven't played to justify its purchase, know what I mean?
Right now I'm back to playing Kill Team, a game I started bout four years ago. There's a new edition that got released couple weeks ago with completely new rules. This is a game that I kinda stocked up on when I was over in the UK back in 2018. Played a few games when I got back then moved on to other boardgames. Well, this is a miniatures game where I have already invested hundreds of dollars on and dozens of hours of painting, so when this new edition got released, a lot of folks were pretty excited bout it and I bought the new rule books, that's already like a more hundred bucks right there. Hopefully this will last awhile.
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot ... it's September. You know what that means.
Last August was a pretty good month for me as I got to meet with friends for meals more times than I had in recent memory. Lunch at Far East Plaza's Maddie's Kitchen, breakfast at Tiong Bahru Market and two epic meals at Kakiin Oyster Bar and my first time ever at Pistachio Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Grill. Four meals with friends in a month and I don't feel like a bloody hermit anymore!
The oyster bar dinner at Orchard Plaza was fun although one of the guys couldn't make it at the last minute so it was three guys eating and drinking. Lots of great oysters obviously and highballs too. And several servings of chicken liver which the guys really liked, that was quite unexpected. Now this dinner was especially memorable as it was planned way back at the beginning of June and postponed twice cos of the on-again-off lockdowns we been having.
Lunch at Pistachio over at Wheelock Place was also kinda memorable cos its been ages, years actually since I had a meal in Wheelock Place. It wasn't just me, the other guys also said the same thing. Since Borders closed, we didn't really have a reason to go there anymore expect maybe cross over from Ion to Isetan I guess. Anyway my friend ordered the tomahawk steak couple days ahead so that's what we had. Quite a table spectacle to be honest, torch flames and all that. Great lunch with even better company.
Got a proper game of the award-winning Terraforming Mars last week too. This is one of the most popular modern boardgames around and also one of the more complex ones. The players are running corporations in the near future and we are racing to colonise the Red Planet. The first time I played, this was several years ago, was against a buncha folks who knew the game (with expansions) inside out and naturally I was slaughtered. Then bout a year after that, I played it again with almost the same folks, by then I had already forgotten my earlier mistakes and rules, which led to another massacre. But last week, my friend sat us down and explained the base game, and I finally played a proper game with a total understanding of the rules. Good game, quite thinky at times, decent amount of player interaction. Looking forward to have another go at it.
