I'm sexy, I'm hot, I'm everything ya not: Happy Birthday To Me!

Yup, today is my Birthday! I'm now officially 25, at the mid point of the twenties range, at an all time low point in life. I can't remember if I've blogged about this, but remember I'm now unemployed and broke. Hmmm can life can any worse than this. Well lets forget about the worrying stuff first can get onto the happy things in life (at least for today). Well last night (actually it was just a few hours ago), my brother treated the whole family to dinner at Imperial Herbal Restaurant.

The Restaurant is at Vivocity, which serves great herbal cuisine. We took a package dinner, which had about 8 dishes (think wedding dinner style) that consisted of a cold plate, sharks fin, noodles, fish, sea cucumber, abalone, and a lot more. The dinner was meant to celebrate his first pay back in Singapore initially, but of course my smart Brother delayed the occasion to include the dinner for my birthday + mother's day. So it was 3 occasion in one. Smart move to save some $$, hahaha. Well dinner was terrific, the food there was superb, and it was most filling. I'm like bloated after the whole thing. We started with the cold dish which was a deep fried frozen cocktail fruits. It looks like a goreng pisang, but when you bite into it, it is like very cold inside. The frozen fruit is just starting to melt, so the cold juice just oozes out when you bite, the mixture of warm and crispy outer layer with the cold fruit is just heavenly. This dish also came with some cold vegetables with some strands of black stuff (I think its seaweed, donno just eat) which was also very good. It was tossed in sesame oil and other kinds of sauces, and it taste great. Then it was the sharks fin soup with crab meat and roe. They also added herbs inside, so it tasted a little different from the usual sharks fin eaten at wedding dinners. Yum-my! Next up was the herbal chicken. The chicken is super tender, the sauce is super tasty, and you can really taste the herbs. The next dish is sea cucumber with abalone and wai shan (I don'y know what is that in english). I don't really eat sea cucumber, because I think its very slimy, gooey and has a fishy, but this sea cucumber is really well cooked. It is not slimy or gooey, you can still bite into it. The abalone is braised then sliced, it taste alright, very tender, not overcooked (think like eating rubber). The best part of the dish is the wai shan. This is some root like plant that taste a little like yam, a little like potato, a little like tapioca, yah something like that. It was fried and cooked together with the sea cucumber and abalone, and it taste superb. OMG, I have never been a fan of wai shan. I do eat it, but I do not particularly like it. Woah, this dish changed my perspective of the plant altogether (later on the desert is also wai shan, absolutely changed me into a wai shan lover now). Then it was the fish. The fish tasted ok, I thought it was a little over fried, but it still does taste pretty good though. And after all that oil and meat, next is the vegetables. It was celery stir fried with mushrooms. After all that heavy tasting food on our taste buds, this dish was a very refreshing change. And the mushroom is really really nice here. By now we are already at 120% full (ie we are already super full), so when the next dish came, which was the noodles, we asked for them to serve only half the plate and takeaway the other portion. But I must say, the noodle is really quite nice. It really taste quite good. Then, it was birthday surprise. Yup, because I was all along expecting the dinner to be for his first pay, so I didn't think my bro will get a cake for me. Orhhhhh, so sweet! Hmmm come to think of it, its been a long time since he did something this sweet for me. But who cares about the past, thanks bro, love ya! Well they bought a cake from baker's inn, luckily they only got a small one. For the cake, I also asked for half the cake to be served (although it was already a small cake). So each of us got a small little bit of the cake. Well we had to conserve whatever space we had in our tummies, there was still desert. The desert was the famous malt strands wai shan (erm I think its translated this way). Basically its the wai shan coated with melted malt. Before serving we were given bowls of cold water, so when the dish came, we had to immediately pull the wai shan and put them into the cold water. So as you pull the wai shan, strands of malt forms behind the wai shan, a very interesting sight. The cold water will solidify the malt to prevent the wai shan from sticking to each other. After everything is in the water, we take them out of the water, and back onto the plate to eat. Oh man, this dish taste good. The malt has a very scented sugary smell and taste, the wai shan is bite size and only very lightly coated, love it! The service at the restaurant is really good, and I would highly recommend anyone who loves herbal stuff to go there for a meal. Great place, great food, great service, what more can we ask for. Thanks to my bro again! Happy Birthday!!!!!

My birthday cake!