Whisk and Paddle Review – Tebing Lane

Posted in Eating Out with Kids, Food, Food Journey, Reviews by jahbella

One would think that we would have discovered this café/ restaurant a lot earlier, given that we live almost right next to it and it has been opened for almost 2 months now. I guess this kinda shows that we haven’t exactly been on our family bike rides much in recent times.

Jah and I chanced upon Whisk and Paddle on Saturday morning when we took a Mummy-Son bike ride. Joel’s bicycle had somehow ‘come apart’ that morning, a combination of his annoying bike tyre problem and Jah messing up the bicycle chain while we were trying to solve the tyre problem. The result being, Joel and Bella were relegated to a morning at the playground (Bella was very pissed off) and Jah insisted that Mummy stuck to the original plan and took him to the park for a ride.

Whisk and Paddle is located at Tebing Lane, with a view of the park and the waters. It would have been a perfect morning outing for mummy and son but ermm mummy didn’t bring any money with her so we were resigned to coming back at another time with papa and little sister.

The view!

We decided to come back on Sunday evening for an early dinner with the other half of the JahBella team. The restaurant does not take reservation on weekend evenings so we did a walk-in. At 6pm, the place was already half filled with the other half of the place fast filling up. We chose to sit further at what I call the family friendly seating area, long tables with sofa benches. The other seating area consisted of more traditional café like tables and chairs. There was a small play area with a tent and some toys to keep the kids occupied. The play area was right smack between the two seating areas which in my opinion was perfect! Rather than have the kids play at some corner where only parents seated at those corners could see what was going on. Having kids right in the middle meant that they could have lots of light and they could spot their parents no matter where they were seated. 🙂

Family friendly seating area

Play area

The restaurant serves all day breakfast and other mains from 3pm onwards.

We ordered Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon and Ham for the adults and a Bolognaise Penne for JahBella to share. We wanted to try the chunky fries with truffle mayo but it wasn’t available. We also order a Piccolo Latte, a Babycino, a Crunchie Honeycomb Milkshake and a warm Chocolate Fudge cake with Ice cream. One word sums up our food experience..yummy! Jah was very happy with the food and he was also very happy with the old school snack corner. 🙂

The food plus the laid back ambience, blue skies and fresh air really completed our wonderful weekend. Our kids are very much like us…give them crappy food and we will get very cranky kids. Give them a good ambience and yummy food and we have the sweetest kids ever. :p Suffice to say, our kids were extremely happy and cooperative that day.

We will definitely be bringing the kids back to try more, in fact I think there might already be plans to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary with the kids there this weekend.

For now, we will let the pictures do the talking…:)

Eggs Benny with Smoked Salmon

Bolognaise Penne

Eggs Benny with Ham

Piccolo Latte

Crunchie Honeycomb Milkshake

Babycino

Warm Chocolate Fudge Cake

Old School Snacks Corner – Spoilt for choice!

JahBella’s Mummy

5Jan2015

SG50 Family Picnic at the Istana – Families for Life

Posted in Weekend activities with kids by jahbella

We had our first family picnic of 2015 over the weekend and we had it with tons of other families during the SG50 Family Picnic at the Istana organized by Families for Life.

Family pic before entering the Istana

Families for Life is organizing a series of family bonding activities and monthly family picnics in conjunction with the SG50 celebrations this year. In fact the monthly family picnics started last year and is held at a different location/neighborhood park each month.

The one we attended over the weekend was held at the Istana and was one of the largest one to be held, with families from all over Singapore gathering on the Istana grounds.

There were games, music, free milo, ice cream, coffee and popcorn. Bouncy castles and play equipments were set up all over the lawn to enter the little kids. Balloons and stickers were given out to kids and families. Each family that pre-registered for the event was also entitled to a complimentary cooler bag with some useful items like first aid kit, rain coats and a small umbrella to name a few. The cooler bag came in very handy for us to store our bag of ice because we were too lazy to lug a cooler box with us. :p

Milo truck

Items in our free cooler bag

SG50 Stickers and Calendar

Playground on the lawn

Families could also purchase up to 2 picnic baskets ($10 each) with proceeds going to the President’s Charity. I loved the little red picnic basket and it had some nice little treats inside. Especially nice for families who may have decided to travel light for their picnic. We, on the other hand braved the load and probably looked alittle silly carrying bags of bottle drinks and sandwiches and pies with us while queuing to get in but we were absolutely happy with the extra ice cold drinks and food. :p

Picnic basket goodies and more!

While the weather threatened to dampen our moods with passing showers (literally passing with 5 minutes of rain each time) and the occasional drizzle, the event was pretty cool. The kids went absolutely crazy with the space they had around them. The sprawling park and lawn where they could run freely without having us adults shouting at them to be careful. Something we really are not quite able to do or not do anymore. The live music that they could dance and groove to and the whole family just being able to relax and bask in the sunlight or huddle under one brolly together.

Perfect blue skies!

I’m singing in the rain!

The process of getting into this event was I assume slightly more tedious than the other park events but this is to be expected, given that we had to clear security etc to get through. Perhaps we will attend one of their other monthly picnics again soon to check out the difference. That being said, there is really nothing stopping us all from organizing our own little picnic with our families is there? 🙂

This is truly an awesome initiative and I hope more families will look to spend more time with each other. I’m fortunate that JahBella has the ‘village’ to spend weekends with, their ever sporty and fun uncles and aunties! #familytimeprecioustime 🙂

One more family pic before we leave!

JahBella’s Mummy

2Jan2015

Kovan Special Noodle and Chikuwa Tei Chirashi – Food Journey

Posted in Food Journey by jahbella

This blog was started to document our parenting and family travel adventures but this year I have decided that I will attempt to document our food journey as well. This might include not only food joints that are family friendly but the food ‘adventure’ that Joel and I embark on as a couple. 🙂 They may range from your simple hawker fare to ‘nice food’ for that special occasion. They say the key to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I say the key to a happy marriage is awesome food! Trust me! Totally tested! We argue less when there is good food. :p

So let’s kick off 2015 with the food we had today!

The Special Noodles at Kovan market is an old favourite for us. We discovered it way before Jah was born and used to have it almost every weekend. We have stopped visiting for awhile because bringing kids to a hawker centre and having to queue at least 20 mins for noodles is not exactly ideal. The stall serves your usual wanton mee, Ipoh hor fun and shredded chicken noodles etc but their signature dish is what they call Special Noodles which is kind of a mixture of all the above noodles I have mentioned. The sauce plus the chilli and tomato ketchup mix is simply awesome! Just make sure that you come early if you want to try their special noodles as they tend to sell out fast and the stall normally closes by late morning.

We decided that our lunch stop for today would include Jap food, a good barachirashi to be specific. We made a reservation at one of our usual Barachirashi haunts but found out when we got there that they were not serving their usual lunch bentos today! Argh! It was 210pm and we were fast running out of options. We did a quick search and ‘settled’ for Chikuwa Tei at Mohamed Sultan which was a 10 mins drive away. I am so glad that we were ‘forced’ to try this restaurant. At $25, their Chirashi sushi bowl is a real treat! Value for money with generous slabs of very fresh sashimi. They also had a very good variety of bentos and sides and we have decided to include them as one of our go to place for good jap food. 🙂

All in all, a very good start to 2015 yummy wise 😉