Vincent's treat

We went for a group lunch today, courtesy of one of my colleagues, Vincent. When asked “what’s the occasion”, all he would do is to smile and say “one year anniversary in Reuters”. Not sure if that really was the reason, but we took it as that. (come to think of it, he’s spoiling the market with this treat! who's next har?)

Lunch was at this nice Teochew restaurant near Hong Lim area. It’s actually walking distance from our Raffles Place office, so off we went at 12 noon – trotting along like on a group excursion.

The food was delicious! And even though it was a bit ‘squeezy’ with 13 people in a table, we had good fun chatting about stuff ranging from World Cup (of course lah! Tonight’s the BIG night man!), betting (arbitrage opportunities anywhere? ) ,horse-riding, food, and movies.

That was when it REALLY became interesting…

Damn! I realized that I missed out a minute and a half worth of X-men footage, which supposedly came after the credits! (if Michael is to be believed… ) And apparently, Prof Xavier didn’t die???!???!! Should I watch it again? Hmmm..

But the real highlight was when Celine started describing the horrid experience of watching “Brokeback Mountain” on the plane, with her kids sitting next to her. She panicked when the screen showed the more, er… intimate scenes. It was hilarious (yeah, and disgusting) when she described how the 2 macho-looking cowboys first cuddled up to each other in the tent, then proceeded to do a tug-of-war, and finally ended up with the “big bang” with one behind the other. *shivers* I know it was the right decision –not- to go watch that movie… "The Story of Ricky" is probably better. (hmm.. come to think of it, I think I watched ‘ricky’ 4 times! Hahahah!)

Back to the food.

The cold dish was nice. I especially liked the ngoh hiang – sedah! Next was the shark’s fin soup, then the goose meat, the herbal chicken. All pretty tasty.

My favourite was the steamed fish - fresh and super yummy! So was the prawns that followed. It was peeled prawns, deep fried and sprinkled with cereals and mayonnaise seasoning.

The 2 vegetable dishes came only at towards the end of the meal, something which I’ve always found strange. Why do they assume that people only want to eat vegetables after they’ve tasted their fill of meat dishes? In fact, I would have preferred to have the vegetable dishes served first, just to “open up the appetite” a little, before hitting the heavy meat stuff.

Then came the fried noodles, which was nice, but a little too small portion for me to judge how good it was, actually. You know, many of these restaurants serve their fried noodles with more ingredients than actual noodles. It's sort of like eating a bowl of mixed prawns, mushrooms, bean sprouts, all mixed with a little noodles!

Finally, the Orr-Nee. I’ve never been such a big fan of orr-nee, but based on the OOhhhs and Aaaaaahhhs reaction from some of my female colleagues (who are obviously orr-nee supporters), it must have been quite well-made. To me, orr-nee is orr-nee.. :P

Anyway, the meal took us almost 2 hours, and was almost like a full 10 course dinner! I remembered Vincent saying something about “giving a simple lunch treat”… if this was a ‘simple’ lunch, I can’t imagine what his wedding menu must have been..