sangsara.net

  • Maison Ikkoku cafe, Singapore

    Spent my afternoon off at a new cafe in the Kampong Glam/Arab Street area. It takes a whole lot of inspiration from Japanese culture, by which I mean they had a Japanese barista champion instruct their team; the second-floor menswear boutique is 80% independent Japanese labels; the decor is minimalist, eclectic, intimate, and well-worn all at the same time, just like any self-respecting Japanese hideyhole’s should — it only lacks the sonic environment of one, substituting a bordering-on-hip soundtrack of singer-songwriter tunes and Bristolian trip-hop for what would normally be a mix of guileless cool jazz cuts and barely-audible breakbeats. From vinyl.

    The coffee, anyway, was fantastic, and alongside cupcakes, savory pork buns, and other snacks, they offer a variation of the Spam musubi. No seaweed wrapped around the body, no soy sauce and rice wine seasoning fried into the Spam (only a small sachet of Japanese soy sauce accompanying the clingfilm-wrapped slab on a plate… don’t use it), but the use of furikake in the shortgrain rice is a nice touch. Like I said, it’s a variation, and one I’m happy to have in the absence of Spam musubi anywhere else on this island.

    I was told they get really busy on the weekends, so I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to be back again. Opening hours on weekdays are 9am to 7pm. Fridays and Saturdays, they’re good till 10pm. In about a month or so, they expect to open a cocktail bar on the third floor, and it’s my guess they’ll revise the opening hours of the cafe to suit demand as things progress. If I can’t make it in for a cup of coffee after work, there’s always alcohol (as one review mentioned, pork and alcohol on the menu are cause for a bit of a double take; it’s practically in the shadow of a giant mosque, and right in the middle of an Islamic cultural district).

    It’s the kind of place I fully expect to find started by a handful of hardened advertising and design veterans who’ve finally had enough of the slog and now want to live out their cafe dreams, but this article says it’s run by two married couples, and I heard today that their backgrounds couldn’t be further from the theory. One of them worked in freighting, it seems. With any luck, my retirement job will be in fund management.

    0163__maison_ikkoku 0171__maison_ikkoku 0169__maison_ikkoku 0165__maison_ikkoku 0166__maison_ikkoku 0167__maison_ikkoku 0168__maison_ikkoku 0172__arab_street

    See the full gallery on Posterous

    Maison Ikkoku – Facebook Page
    20 Kandahar Street
    Singapore 198885 

  • How the Taylor Lautner movie ‘Abduction’ fooled my subconscious into buying a ticket

    Can you deny the similarities in composition and atmosphere? Loved the game, pretty much let down by the movie. Hard to believe John Singleton was doing anything but pandering to the teen market with this job.

  • From the rooftops of Chinatown to a Mexican restaurant by the river

    Couple of unposted GRD3 photos from the last couple of weeks. The bar at the top of the Screening Room is a great place to drink in near darkness, and at Cafe Iguana a week later, I learnt from my colleague (from Chicago admittedly) that they don’t have Chimichangas in traditional Mexican cuisine.

  • Keisuke Tonkotsu King ramen

    P439

    This place just sprang up near the office, an offshoot of the Keisuke at Millennia Walk (not to be confused with the also- excellent Nantsuttei). Now, a proper Japanese ramen restaurant near home or the office has always been a dream of mine, in the way that being able to experience the convenience of good noodles down the street as if one were living in Japan is the next best thing to uprooting and actually being there, so I’m really glad that their standard bowl is well-crafted and authentic. The staff seem mostly Japanese and prone to misunderstanding your English, which I consider an essential part of replicating the full experience. They give you all the boiled eggs you can eat for free (“even you eat one hundred is okay”), bean sprouts in a separate jar that you add to your own noodles, sesame seeds in a little mortar and pestle, and a bunch of other condiments.

    I am going to get so fat on this shit.

  • A Chinese clan association reopened nearby

    Every day that I get to shoot with my Ricoh GRD on the way home is a good one.

  • The Closing of Borders Wheelock by the Landlord Similarly Named

    We had a look at Borders yesterday, with its shutters down and roses left for it by visitors. A large piece of cardboard on the inside was on display, with a handwritten goodbye letter from its staff to Singaporeans thanking them for their patronage and acknowledging their sense of loss — they too had grown up there and loved books, it said. The final line: “P.S. remember to look after your books”, was sweet enough to offset the embarrassment of their having misspelt “privilege”.

    By evening, someone had come along and left a note on the glass: “U can’t do this to us! (sad smiley), (heart) Singapore.” It seems having a large bookstore in the middle of Orchard Road for 13 years did little to instill some standards of English language use.

    —

    I remember the first time I visited the store, all those years ago, and being floored by the breadth of what was now within reach, shelves upon shelves of poetry — that eventually, and sadly, dwindled down to a small and forgotten handful of crass anthologies in a corner — how it forced me to plan and prioritize and comprehend that much time had to be made, and many more sacrifices to be accepted, for the countless books that I now could read but for the most part never would.

  • Smith’s Fish & Chips

    (I’ve started keeping a journal with the Day One iOS app, and though this defeats the purpose of a private record, I think I’ll post a few entries to the blog now and then. This is one of them.)


    First takeaway from the new Smith’s Fish & Chips shop today; hard to process that this meal option is going to be a part of my life for the foreseeable future. They were doing great business with loads of churchgoers and a student sort of crowd dining in, although that’s to be expected from any new place with novel cuisine. Authentic British fish and chips is ridiculously hard to find, and Smith’s is thankfully high on the authenticity scale, alongside the Penny Black pub in Boat Quay. And with Balmoral Plaza they’ve picked one of the better locations to open up a second branch in Singapore. The English-men-with-Asian-wives category alone will keep them in business, to say nothing of the full-on expatriate families in the neighborhood.

    The food was good and took me back to the days of Big John’s as a student, where £2 would get you a nice portion of fish and chips in a cardboard box — I haven’t a clue what kind of fish they used (Smith’s offers cod, haddock, plaice, dory, and halibut) — with lashings of malt vinegar and salt. Ah Big John’s, I remember your £4 doner kebabs in naan bread fondly. By the time I used to get home with my fish, everything would be soggy and I’d eat the fries with too much mayonnaise and it’d all be very satisfying. To be fair, Smith’s is better quality than that fast food stuff, closer to £8 spent in a nice part of London, but that’s what I was thinking of when I ate it.

  • Red Dot Museum event

    Last night, a bunch of us from work dropped by the Red Dot Museum (on our way to a long night of drinks at Clarke Quay) for a sort of artists’ and makers’ fair they usually hold once a month on weekends. I’ve been once before, and that was a much smaller affair, so I think last night’s event with its beer and food sales, guest appearance by former minister and current presidential candidate Tony Tan (who bizarrely sat for portrait sketches), live music, and subsequently larger crowds, was a one-off.

    Photos from my iPhone 4.