S heard of this IKEA crawfish party from his colleague and insisted we had to get tickets. So we managed to book a table for the 8pm slot on Friday. Tickets were going at $25 apiece, but if you are a IKEA member (which we weren't), you could get a $10 IKEA voucher. Little did we know that registering for the membership was free -- this meal could have been $15 only la.

Our first serving! After that we went back for one more plate of salty crawfish because S liked peeling it. After that we realised we missed out on the dill mayo for the crawfish!? Maybe it wouldn't have tasted so horrible if we had that sauce.. Apparently the Tampines outlet had chilli crab style crawfish also.

After our lunch at Top 1 Home Made Noodles, we made a few stops along the Downtown Line 2 (Botanic Gardens & Sixth Avenue) before heading to our last pit stop: Rail Mall (Hillview). Some of you westsiders may be familiar with this popular food haunt. Home to a few cafes, restaurants and eateries, the most famous place here is probably the prata shop. A short walk away, you'll find an old railway track which is perfect for ootds, potds, wiwts. 

We had earlier wanted to try Soon Huat Bak Kut Teh at Sixth Avenue, but unfortunately it was raining heavily and we didn't want to risk getting wet. So when we found Pao Xiang Bak Kut Teh at Rail Mail we did not hesitate to enter. The shop looks new and we weren't sure if it was going to be any good as it was neither lunchtime nor dinnertime.

On the last day of the free-ride period to commemorate the opening of Downtown Line 2, and with food blogger Maureen's guide in hand, we decided to do our very own food trip. Our first stop was Beauty World Food Centre. With the opening of this segment of the line, Beauty World Food Centre becomes so much more accessible to the everyday foodie. 

If there's one stall you have to try at Beauty World Food Centre, it's got to be Top 1 Home Made Noodles. The stall name speaks for itself -- extremely QQ homemade noodles. Don't be deceived by the lack of a queue: you order and collect separately. To order, you first choose the type of noodle (beehoon, ban mian, you mian, mee hoong kueh, etc.) then the cooking style (soup, dry, chili/no chili) and finally the main ingredient (sliced fish, meat balls, abalone, etc.). Then you'll be issued a queue number and you can go off to find your seats!

Sher had sliced fish you mian (soupy version, $4). Along with 3-4 slices of fish (snakehead), there were the usual toppings. The soup here tasted slightly richer than S's, perhaps because all the ingredients were mixed in. What we enjoyed most was that the egg noodles were cooked just right and had a toothy bite to it.

Another photo of the dry banmian! Sadly, the unsatisfying portions left us wanting more. Also good in a way, because we had room for more food as we continued our Downtown Line hopping.

We wanted to try Hambaobao but unfortunately it was closed that day. We will definitely be back for more!

Alexandra Village Food Centre has lots of great options. However, as there's only so much food two stomachs can handle, we had to make some rather hard choices. In the end, we decided to go for the Bak Ku Teh and Roast Meat Rice instead of the Claypot Laksa and jiao zi.

There's two types of Bak Ku Teh out there in Singapore, the herbal kind and the peppery kind. Leon Kee's Bak Ku Teh belongs to the former category.  Laced with dang gui and garlic cloves, the claypot helps keep the soup hot. We ordered the portion with extra pork ribs ($6.00) and added crispy you tiao ($1) to soak up the flavorful soup. To go with the pork ribs which have been stewed for hours on end until tender, make sure to grab some chili padi and dark soy sauce. 

Next to the Bak Ku Teh stall was a long queue for this roast meat rice. Being typical Singaporeans, we had to see what the fuss was about. We know it looks like a pile of grisly meat and grease but believe us, it is in fact an incredible combination of char siu and roast pork doused in their special braised sauce. For only $3.50 a portion, you also get a bowl of cabbage soup (with pigtail) which helps to cleanse your palate between each spoonful of the sinfully good roast meat.

We will be heading back there a second time to try the highly raved claypot laksa!

Our first trip down to Tsukada Nojo for their famed beauty pot or bijin nabe! By stewing Jidori chicken (Japanese kampung chicken) bones for more than eight hours until the bones completely dissolve, Tsukada Nojo creates these tofu-like collagen blobs which forms the base of your hotpot. The benefits of collagen are supposedly to firm up your skin and reduce wrinkles hence the 'beauty' pot name. More importantly, we heard that the broth at Tsukada Nojo was incredibly tasty and we simply had to try it. But the queue at Plaza Singapura was always daunting. So, when we found out that Westgate had an outlet, and the queue was a lot shorter, we had no reason not to drop by! We reached there slightly before 12pm on a Saturday and we were one of the 1st few customers. 

While waiting for our collagen blob to melt, we went ahead to order one of their onigiri (rice balls, $3.80). This one was wrapped in bacon, drizzled with yuzu mayo and served with a lettuce leaf to appease the vegematics. Be warned, the bijin nabe portion is quite substantial, and you absolutely must slurp up every last drop of soup, so we advise not to order too many onigiris -- delicious as they may be.

To go with your hotpot, you are served a wide variety of organic produce, such as red radishes, yellow zucchini, ladies finger/okra, enoki mushrooms, taupok, baby corn and some leafy vegetables that were very tender and fresh (we were instructed to quickly blanch it because it overcooks rapidly). Which brings us to the service at Tsukada Nojo -- it was impeccable. Each table is assigned a waitress, and ours was patiently explaining the origin of ingredients and how to cook them in great detail. However, we were kind of busy taking photos and not paying much attention to her.. oops.

Before we could start dunking our ingredients in, we were made to try the unadulterated version of the soup, and try a portion of the Jidori chicken, which surfaced after the collagen pudding had melted. The soup was pure and very flavorful, although quite oily to the point of being sticky. The ingredients were nicely arranged in the pot for us (we declared ourselves first timers!) so we could get this lovely shot.

Looks good enough to eat already! Btw our steamboat picture is featured on EatBook's list of 10 steamboat restaurants! Head over to check out other steamboat restaurants that will keep your belly nice and warm;)

We chose the thin egg noodles to accompany our meal (you can choose from three kinds -- thick mochi, thin egg noodle and rice noodle). That is really one huge plate of noodles. We had a hard time trying to polish off everything but we always finish ALL of our food!

Half way through the meal, we were brought some seaweed paste (aww hearts), if we wanted to alter the flavor of our soup. Don't put too much, its quite salty, and besides, the soup is already good enough as it is!

To wrap up our meal, we were each served a stick of konjac jelly on a plate hand-drawn by the waitress using sauces. So cute right hehe. Can't bear to destroy the pretty family portrait:/