Cavalock and The Search for The Stallion Steak

You know it was never my intention to go on a Stormtrooper buying spree but these things happen! First one I grabbed was at Changi Airport before I even boarded the plane. Now if you are a Star Wars fan, you would know that Stormtrooper figures are the hardest to find and if you do, it's usually in a collectible shop and at a ridiculously high price. Like I said, sitting on the shelf at Changi duty free was a sole 6-inch Stormtrooper from the new Black Series at retail price.

A 200 Yen Stormtrooper from a little gachapon machine.

Started my Tokyo vacation innocently enough, did a little window shopping and next thing I know, I see Stormtroopers and Sandtroopers everywhere! Bic Camera and Tokyu Hands had them all at retail price. What they say is true, you can never stop at just one Stormtrooper. Now all I gotta do is find some space back home for them.

Alright back to food now. Straying off the beaten touristy track has its benefits. One of the most unforgettable meals of this trip has got to be dinner at Fregoli Ebisu. The journey to that little restaurant was already extremely memorable as it was 45-minute trek through the Tokyo suburbs in single-digit temperature. Tucked away in a street corner and as it was also dark, it took us more than awhile to find the restaurant. It became like a race to beat the 7pm reservations that we made a week ago. So was it worth the frigid evening odyssey?

Absolutely. The highlight was the grilled horse steak. Yup, you heard me right, that's horse meat or horse beef as it's also known. And for good reason too as like the baker in the house pointed out, it tastes like lightly seasoned beef but since it has less marbling than beef, it's not as tender. We really enjoyed it. The raw watercress is a pleasant compliment too. If I'm ever back there, I would go for this again in a heartbeat. Oh, or maybe try the horse sashimi slices next time.

The above white asparagus was good too but I thought it could do with a bit less parmesan cheese. Now the uni linguine signature dish below was hearty, not that creamy at all and definitely worth coming back for more. The uni is soooooo deliciously rich. Trust me, you just can't get enough of sea urchins when you are in Japan.

Spotted the below building in Ebisu on my trek to the restaurant and I couldn't resist snapping a shot of it cos it resembled a typical HDB block back home. So I posted the pix on Facebook and complimented HDB for allowing all these fancy restaurants to operate. Hah, folks started asking me which HDB blocks they were! Heh, I haven't posted a reply yet. <^;^>