Gorge Fest

Last Sunday, the family and I plus Hasnul’s 3 nephews went to Sakae Sushi for dinner… Ooooh… it was best. Not the bestest, but "happening" enough for us to share a few laughs, try out a few new dishes, n basically stuff ourselves silly.

I am a regular at the outlet @ The Frontier, yep, to the extent that a handful of the staff and 2 of the managers recognize me by face. My name? Too complicated I guess for their tongues to grasp. But no matter. Place is great. Food is great.

Back to our gorge-fest (you’ll find out why later).

After spending the whole day lazing around watching the telly and playing computer games till we were cross-eyed, hubs and I decided to make good the promise of bringing the 3 taman jurong boys out for sushi. Yep, I promised one of them this meal after he recovered. So after a nap (me) I decided to get things moving. It was a flurry of activities to get the two kids dressed (Hadyr was running around in just diapers, Hiqma can’t decide what to wear), getting me bum off the bed, getting hubs away from his 2nd wife - the laptop, we were dressed and good to go by about 5pm.Who cares if it was drizzling, nothing could get in the way of me and my sushi. And also Hiqma has been bugging me about "when are we going sakae, mama?" since she got wind of my promise. It was gonna be her 2nd visit there.

So we called the boys to meet us at the entrance of Sakae Sushi @ The Frontier. Cutting a long story short, yeah, we met the boys, got ushered to our seats and proceeded to place our order. Ok, so there were plates with the regular sushis and sashimis on the conveyor belt. Hiqma promptly took down a few plates. While the boys were deciding what to order from the menu, she worked through her plates. I took a plate down and Hadyr knocked back two pieces with no trouble. Good thing I was sitting between him and the conveyor belt, or else he would have taken every plate that came our way. Not that he didn’t try. I think the back of my t-shirt has a few shoe prints to prove it. (read : he climbed all over me to get to it).

So the guys being adventurous but a little cautious, ordered the salmon pasta, nabe ramen and I think one of them ordered a soba dish. Hubs ordered the tenzaru soba. Good choice. The boys had a kick repeating the word "nabe" to the wait staff. All I could do was to hide my face in my hands. The wait staff just looked at them. Wondered what she was thinking.

I ordered two aeroplane meals for the kids. Generous pieces grilled chicken with rice cakes (yumyum), two pieces of sushi, two cocktail hotdogs, and some vegs. Its called the aeroplane cos it’s served on an aeroplane shaped plate. Duh! Comes with complimentary yakult. Only for kids below 12 years old. For me, it must be the cha soba. Oooohhhh…. No visit is complete for me until I have the cha soba. Cold green tea noodles soaked in the dipping sauce and then slurped noisily. Forget table manners, this is simply divine. I can have bowls and bowls of this. I must also have my "hana maki". Vinegared rice, wrapped with slices of raw salmon, with a small dollop of japanese mayonnaise and fish roe. Ooo… heaven. Turns out, Hiqma has decided to be adventurous and give it a try. She loves it. Simply cos it has mayonnaise. She also managed to polish off 4 slices of salmon sashimi. Not bad for a kid who spat it out a few months ago. (That time I ordered a home delivery set). So I guess now I got a sashimi eating kaki. Convinced the boys it tastes great. After taking half a slice, they couldn’t take it. Spat it out. What a waste! Note to self : gotta work on them. Hubs… nah… he doesn’t go for the raw stuff. His tenzaru soba set came with tempura and of course the soba was served on a bed of ice. How to eat? Like that lah. Dip the soba in the dipping sauce and then slurp. Have you ever watched japan hour? Where got they eat noodles quietly? You gotta slurp it, baby! Half of the plate went to Hiqma. There was a raw quail egg also. Now, that I usually skip. So they (the boys+hubs) argued what to do with it. In the end, they broke it on the table. Good thing sakae provide wet napkins.

So apart from the ala-carte dishes, we picked up, I think, about 19 coloured plates and 5 premium plates. The coloured plates are the normal maki and sushi versions. The premium plates were Hiqma’s and my doing. Endless hana maki and salmon sashimi. (but I don’t recommend squid sashimi, tastes like sweet rubberbands). Oh, you must also try the sun maki. Cucumber and some other things (cant remember) wrapped in seaweed and vinegared rice, then rolled in fish roe and then topped with slices of avocado and shredded crabsticks. Ooohhh… so sedap! You gotta taste it to believe it. Another one is the sunshine maki. This is different. It’s deep fried prawn (the ones that cost about $7-$9 a kilo at the wet markets, medium sized), wrapped in seaweed, vinegared rice, then wrapped in thinly sliced succulent mangoes. OMG! Sounds icky, but the taste… the crunchiness of the prawn, with the sweetness of the mango, and two pieces of salmon roe on top… mmmm… just goes together. Pure bliss!

After working through plate after plate after plate, we finally… FINALLY… decided we had enough. We called the wait staff to count the damage done and proceeded to pay at the counter. It was cheaper than I expected, even before they factored in my membership discount (of course I already had the discount card). It was only then all of us discovered that we were a little too full. Gluttons! Step by step, we groaned and walked to the toilets nearby to freshen up, sat for a few minutes at the sofas at the lobby of The Frontier, then heaved our asses to Jurong Point (jpt) to walk off the meal. It was total chaos at jpt. All I could see was peopleand the non-stop tong-cheng-tong-cheng music here, there, everywhere! Then I remembered, oh yeah, the last weekend before CNY.

Hubs wanted to go to Courts and Harvey Norman to suss out the laptops. There were a few that caught his liking, so I guess he’ll be getting his hands on one pretty soon. Boring thing for me. One laptop is as good as another. But I guess salivating at new laptops for him is the same as me doing the "ker-chinggg" at Bodyshop or Esprit or Giordano or World of Sports or just making my ATM card work hard. I got a new water bottle for Hadyr, cos he was biting the flexible straw off of the current one. Hiqma, as usual, "what he have, I also want". Even though her nike water bottle is still doing fine. Heck lah, just get it lah. In pink. Of all colours. Urgh!

Then Hiqma saw the Andersens icecream booth. She wants icecream. Sooo jelak. The ice cream's too milky for me. Suggested Scoopz at the basement. She got vanilla-mint (mint flavour is her current fave), I got old fashioned vanilla with hersheys chocolate sauce (cos Hubs only likes vanilla - boring). Cant eat the whole cup, too full. Needed to share. Can’t remember what the boys had, coz they took too long to decide so I just passed them the money to get their own cups while I went to the back of the shop to sit and enjoy my ice cream.

Overall, it was a nice evening. The boys were already thinking about where to "ketok" us for their birthdays. Thank god it’s still far away in June.

But then Sakae is fine with me. So please remember, if any one of you got the craving to eat sushi or sashimi or ramen or soba, just make sure it’s Sakae. Call me, I’m always available. (",)

A gourmet is just a glutton with brains.

Philip W. Haberman, Jr.