So at 8.30am in the morning, we met at Neeven's house and headed across the causeway together.
A little sidetrack from my story... when we were at the Msian customs, we encountered a little bit of excitement.
When the immigration officer was chopping our passport, he highlighted to me that Caleb's passport was less than 30 days from expiry. My response to him? "Urh... Oh, cannot ah?" And he told me, ya, your passport needs to be valid for at least 6 months before you can enter the country. Uh-oh right?! He asked me where we were going and I said, "Urh, we're just going for breakfast. Eat and then leave already." Immigration officer gives me this strange look. He looks rather uncertain, made a few calls, then he told me that I have to follow him to the office, together with Caleb.That's when I told everybody in the car, time to pray!!!
So, me and Caleb followed the officer to the office. There was a female immigration officer sitting there, so here's the conversation that we had.
Immigration officer: Where are you going? How long are you going to be here?
Me: Eat breakfast... Then we go home.
Immigration officer: Huh?! Singapore got no breakfast to eat ah!?
Me: (quite paiseh now) Urh... the breakfast here nice lah...
Immigration officer: where are you going to eat breakfast?
Me: City Square (City Square is like 2km away from the checkpoint!)
Immigration officer picks up the phone and calls somebody and starts speaking in a string of Malay which I dun understand. I only heard her mention the word "breakfast".Then finally she says,"OK, my boss will give you 5 days into the country. You must leave within 5 days."
Phew! Yeah! Thank God they let us through! And Restoran Amma here we come!
This is Restoran Amma, the highly rated Indian restaurant that ND and the boys raved about. Nice, clean air-conditioned place with delicious and cheap food!
This is the best shot that I could get coz there was a big tree blocking the restaurant's signboard. Anyway, it's not at City Square but next to it.
Now, onto the main focus, the food!
This is Bru, the Indian coffee. The Indians and Cheendians all recommended me this. They said it's really very nice. I'm not a coffee drinker but still I gave it a try. The verdict? It's excellent! I love it and I ordered 2 cups of it! It tastes like Nescafe mixed with some milo, with a nice coffee fragrance and it doesn't leave any bitter aftertaste in your mouth after you drink it. It's really good! I still think about it now.
Next prata... The kids love this. It's much smaller than the ones we get in Spore. About the size of our palm but very nicely done. And it comes with a curry dip and another dip. Can't remember what it is. I think they told me it's sambal but it looks very watery. Regardless, the kids love the dips too! Even Caleb who can't really eat spicy food was dipping his prata into the curry!
Becky, eating like a true blue Cheendian girl. She's very proficient in using her right hand to eat. I was told by the Cheendians that if the Indians see us eating with our left hands, we will get laughed at. I tried but failed. I needed to use both my hands to enjoy the food.
Sarah and Caleb, choomping down prata.
That is all of the individual food shots that we took. After that, the food started coming and we were all too busy enjoying the food with both our hands, so no more photos for a while.
This is round one.
This is round two. See how many more plates we now have on the table. And we were not done yet! I think we doubled our orders after this.
When I first arrived, Neeven asked me what I wanted to order. I was obviously clueless so after a while, he and Raveen took over and started ordering a string of dishes in Tamil.
It turns out that other than prata for the kids, they had also ordered Masala Thosai for us and U-the-pom. Ok, I do not know the spelling of all these fanciful Indian dishes. But that's what I was told. Masala Thosai is Thosai with potato in it. U-the-pom is this big white pancake looking thing with slices of tomatoes. Once we had more or less finished our first Thosai, Raveen and Neeven started calling for the waiter again and they ordered... (Ok, disclaimer, spelling of the dishes may be a incorrect but that's what I think the names of the dishes sound like.)
1) Utheri Kerlom - Fried Chicken with spices. This was EXCELLENT! I think this was a special from the kitchen coz they only gave us 1 drumstick to share and we all thought it was very delicious.
2) Poori - It's brown, it's round, looks like a spaceship and it's empty inside.
3) Idly - It's a flat, round pancake looking thing that's made out of flour and maybe coconut?
4) Plain Thosai - we've got this in Spore but the one at Amma's...much more Yummy!
5) Masala Thosai - Thosai with potato
6) Rawa Thosai - Thosai with spices
7) Rawa Masala Thosai - Thosai with spices and potato
8) Chicken Curry - We all liked this
9) Mutton Curry - This was good too. I'm not too fond of mutton coz of the smell. According to Raveen, Indians are scared of the meat having a smell and they'll keep washing it till there's no smell. Haha, I dunno how true that is but he persuaded me to try and really, there's no smell!
10) Crab Curry - This has a very unique taste to it. I've never heard of crab curry before but it was good.
11) Fish Curry - I liked this too
12) Chicken Briyani - Have you noticed by now that everything is good? Yup, so this was good too. The rice is very fragrant.
Ok, these are just the different items that we ordered on top of our first round of orders and some of these, we ordered a few portions. So, you can imagine how much we were eating! Neeven and Raveen just kept calling the waiter to place more orders and they kept asking him, "What else do you have? What else do you have?" and then, it hit a point where they had to change their question to..."What else have we not ordered?"
Haha... and the waiter's reply? "You have ordered everything on our menu!!"
Ok, yah, scary Singaporeans who are starved of good Indian food. I think with the amount that we ate, they have to give us a super VIP card for it.
This is Neeven, the scary Thosai eating monster.
I can't believe the number of Thosais that he ate. I think he ate about 5 Thosais and on top of that, he ate portions of all the other food as well!
Nat, who cleaned up the Fried Chicken. See how satisfied he looks! But hey, it was REALLY GOOD!
Btw, he ordered lime juice too and like everything else, it did not disappoint.
The many canisters of dips and remnant plates and bowls of curry and thosai.
While we adults were stuffing ourselves silly, the kids were having a jolly good time themselves.
Running up and down the restaurant. Good thing is the restaurant had a long corridor for them to entertain themselves. They made a fair bit of noise but I think the owner closed one eye, given that we were his big time customer for that morning.
Playing the game "What time is it, Mr Wolf?"
Listening to Becky, the "Indian Chief"
Here's Victoria and Sarah. The two of them look very cute together. Sarah first got to know Victoria during Rupen's wedding rehearsal and she likes her very much! When we first met up to drive to JB, she kept saying she wanted to go and make friends with Victoria. Then when we arrived at the restaurant, she pulled ND to Victoria and made sure that he said Hi to her as well.
After all that eating and playing, it was time to go home. We were really stuffed. We ate so much that I was full all the way till dinner time. And the cost of ordering everything on the menu came up to RM136. Given that there were 7 adults and 6 kids, it came up to about S$5-S$6 per pax. Very cheap right?!! The men already started making plans for their next visit!
Very happy, full, satisfied and all ready to head back home.
I think Sarah had a little too much excitement and fun.
She was totally knocked out in the car after a while.
