Quickie Lunch

This afternoon, R and I had lunch together at the Tanjong Pagar Exchange. The Tg Pagar Exchange is basically a retail/F&B space which SMRT managed to squeeze out of the original Tg Pagar MRT Station. It has been completed since 1-2 years ago and is now a popular lunch & 'light' shopping corner near my office.

After walking around to check out the food available, we decided to have lunch at Lerk Thai. The queue at the outlet was very long today with about 10-12 persons ahead of us. But we were seated after about 10 minutes.

(Digression: Where is the recession that everyone is crying about? Commoner's view this may be, but I simply don't see it at all - F&B outlets and restaurants are still perpetually crowded both weekdays and weekends and shops are still always crowded, sale or no sale. So, got recession, meh??)

Anyway, after we ordered, we waited and waited for a long time. We could see from our seat that the 4-5 chefs working hard at the open kitchen were trying hard to get everyone's orders out. The waiters and waitresses moved about swiftly, quite efficient.

The 'individual set lunch' we each ordered tasted ok, above average. And given that there was a discount of 30% off its usual price (which then works out to be $8.50 each), it was quite value for money. The tom yam soup was both spicy and sour - mmmm....! *_*

The coconut gravy in the red curry chicken was very thick and fragrant. The chicken slices were super thin but evenly sliced. I enjoed it completely.

The Mango-Prawn fritters (the side dish available today was not Thai fish cake shown in the poster here) were flavourful but because their 'skin' had already gone soft and soggy, they didn't look or taste as good as they ought to have. Perhaps the chef shouldn't have placed them on the same platter as the Green Mango salad because the salad had generous juices. The salad didn't taste anything like the crunchy green mango or green papaya thai salads served by authentic Thai restaurants; real green mango salads must, you know, have that 'oomph!' about it. How can it be so 'flaccid'?

I ordered a drink which turned out to taste exactly like Ribena. Well, that ribena-like drink helped wash down all the spices and cool down the tongue at the end of the meal.

R and I were done with the food in about 20 minutes. That's pretty much a Quickie Lunch that working people like us have to get used to these days. Sigh, how I envy the elderly ang moh man sitting at a nearby table, eating alone but poring over his newspapers leisurely.