The Vines Steak & Seafood at Novena Ville

Isn't this neat? We splurged at Changi Village on Tin Hang Zai's birthday, and we continued our celebrations at The Vines in Novena. We brought along the Gnome, the Goose and their kind new helper.

The place looks very cottage-like, and the menu looks somewhat like Jack's Place. However, the similarities stop there.

The Vines gives a lot more value for money (for the same price, you can get much more at The Vines than at Jack's Place), service staff are more courteous, and the food tastes better generally. You don't get those crummy desserts at Jack's Place (those jellies that taste as plastic as the cups they come in, or horrid pieces of butter cake that taste like they were leftovers from Jack's Place cake counters) - we got apple crumble that night.

And even though there were no credit card offers, Tin Hang Zai got a free slice of yummy blueberry cheese pie with ice cream!

The Senses & the Stomachs

sp









It's Tin Hang Zai's birthday. To celebrate, we indulged by going to the spa & pigging out near the sea.

As a single-income family, it had been a loooong time since we wanted to go and splurge on things like spas. But well, what the heck. It's his birthday!

So we checked out The Ultimate Spa at the Civil Service Club (since it was so near our place), and we used some Maybank offer to get ourselves a cool 2 hrs of pampering (scrub, massage, hydrobath) at something like S$150+. And they give you some fancy drinks & dessert after that.

We had a great time, and we finished off by going to the neighbourhood foot reflexology for another 45 mins!

Evening time, we picked Little Pixie up and headed off to the far east to pig out at the Saltwater Cafe at Changi Village Hotel. I wasn't expecting too high a standard, but the food was amazingly fantastic! I'd always thought we'd outgrown buffets long ago, and certainly our last few buffets in 2007 weren't fantastic. (Think Merchant Court's high tea (yucks - you just don't want to pay more than S$20 to eat nothing but kuehs & kuehs) and Paris at Marina (just too much rich food in a day).

But this was different! I had everything I wanted to eat. The BBQ section was decent (I got to eat my favourite lamb chops - something I can't eat with Tin Hang Zai at home since he doesn't like lamb), the seafood was decent, and so was the sashimi! The desserts were decent too, so were the soups. The cold seafood selection was very decent too. All in all, I haven't (and we haven't) been so satisfied in a loong time. I finished up all the keropok the moment they were laid out (freshly fried). The poppadums were nice too.

Yum!!