Kenny Rogers Roasters

One fine Friday night after work, Eoin and I developed an itch. Not STD-related, this was more a yearning to do something that had been eating away at as - a failure unrectified due to laziness, the fact that we forgot a bit, and erroneous Google maps entries. It was time to once again... go in search of Kenny Rogers Roasters.

We had twice sought out the golden tones, locks and chickens of the elusive musician-associated-chicken franchise, but despite our best efforts had ended up chickenless. This time, we checked and doubled checked (on both google maps AND the hungrygowhere), and were sure we were heading the right way. Jumped off the train at Somerset, and soon found signs that we were not gonig to be disappointed this time.

Literally, it's a sign.

We headed down to the basement food court, and there - tucked away in the corner for the most possible tension before we found our goal - was VICTORY!

Victory is spelled c-h-i-c-k-e-n.

Got seated, looked over the sing-title themed menus, and ended up choosing a tw-person combo meal, ribs AND chicken. Obviously we had to have chicken (it's not called Kenny Rogers Ribs, that would be weird), but were really glad we got the ribs as well. Outside of the outstanding garlic potatoes, they were the best thing we ate. The food was actully pretty decent - reasonably pricey (but not as bad as an AWFUL breakfast we had recently that I'll have to write about soon... anyway, we now measure money wastage in terms of that breakfast, so at least we didn't pay $50 for eggs benedict with onion gravy), but we walked away full, happy... and feeling accomplished. 

Proof of visit

The kitchen or whatever - the walls were all Kenny Rogers photos and weirdly old lonely planet guides. 

FOOOOOOOOOOOOD. Ribs and chicken. The chicken also had ribs, but oddly they weren't included in the menu listing. Maybe only mammalian ribs count as ribs? This meal was called the Lucille.

Our final order - chosen as much for name (because The Gamble meal didn't look as appealing, and this is my next favourite song), and a Root Beer to stick with the American theme.

We followed up our successful dinner with a night at a music festival. But I'm lazy, so that's for the next blog post.

Fort Canning, Board Game Cafes and Little India

One sunny Saturday, Eoin and I went to a new park - Fort Canning in the city. We caught the train to Cith Hall MRT station, picked up some sushi and 100 Plus-es on the way, and walked up the hill past the Registry of Marriages (ROM) and Registry of Muslim Marriages (ROMM) (apparently a Muslim marriage can't be registered like other marriages) into the park. We walked through th field that obviously used to be a cemetery, because I felt weird about eating raw fish while sitting on someone's grave (the headstones are moved, but we were pretty sure that the bodies weren't), and then went to eat our lunch while providing the same for some hungry mozzies.

After all 1002 of us had eaten, Eoin and I started our wander around the park a bit. It was a sweltering hot day (basically if you can see blue sky here it's going to be hot hot, not just humid hot), but there was a nice breeze up on the hill at Fort Canning. We were surprisingly alone considering that we'd waded through people right outside the park fences. It was lovely and green and shady, and we wandered past the Battle Box (sadly, closed for the day), through the old married officer's quarters and laid on the seats enjoying the coolish breeze and reading our quiz book.

Gate to the old fort. Lovely heavy gate could keep out a marauding force. Who could then take 10 steps left and hop the tiny fence. 

Torn between calling this a Dr Strangelove reference or a Happy Gilmore one. 

What all prop roots want to be when they grow up - the roots were the size of small trees. 

Yeah. We live in the tropics. Sometimes I forget.

It took me like 30 seconds to get that this was a sculpture, not just a chopped up fallen trunk.

We walked back down into the heat past swety tourists heading back up the hill at us, past Doby Ghaut station, and up Princep street to try to find something that had been standing out on our "To Do" list since we found out about it - a board game cafe! We went to Mind Games Cafe (although found another one nearby that we'll try next time). It's not a bad idea - you pay $10-20 and get a few hours of playing one of the many many, many board games they have there and a drink or some food. We had a great time - I got to try out Ticket to Ride, we played some Quicksand game, ?? others???

Eoin deciding on what would turn out to be a hilarious (to me) catastrophe of a fruit tea. Iced black tea with half a tin of two fruits dumped in (with juice). Mmmmmmmm.

Look at all the board games! So much Monopoly!

When we got kicked out of the cafe, we decided it was time for some real food, our long-awaited Indian Feast (and the main reason we'd hung around the city waiting to get hungry again). We walked on up to Little India and started looking around to find the food/restaurant combo we really wanted. Stumbled across the Sri Veeramakaliamman hindu temple that was being re-commissioned (is that what you do to temples to restart them? Something like re-commissioned. Re-holy-ified, anyway) the next day, and was getting all dolled up. Was very pretty as the sun was setting.

Entrance to Sri Veeramakaliamman temple 

Above a side gate.

I've seen something like this in a museum in Udaipur! That was one real silver and this was just sitting by the side of the road, so I'm guessing it's probably not got quite the same intrinsic of culture value.

We ended up finding a North Indian/Nepalese place close to the temple, and had a brilliant feed of momos and dhal and tandoori chicken. With loverly mango lassi. It was so good I didn't get any photos until it was gone. Ahhh, memories of food.

It was great before we ruined it. Use your imagination.