Crab and seafood at Jumbo!

Here's this weekend's food post, JUMBO! every Singaporean knows what Jumbo is, it is THE place to get your crab fix =D so to end my week, we headed over to cellebrate my cousin's birthday!

Address: www.jumboseafood.com.sg/

1206 East Coast Parkway

i'd suggest making a reservation, or risk waiting a long time! about an hour on weekends, weekdays should be alright..

I LOVE CHILLI! and they have great sambal, which is unusual because usually only nice zi-char places have good sambal. so this went really well with, erm, everything. the prawns, the fish, the crab, and even the peanuts. 

So the first wave of food finally came, the food wait was alright, though I was getting peckish. Crispy chicken was the first to arrive, which is basically roasted chicken with keropok (fish crackers), to be dipped in the salt and pepper mix. clean, fried but not overly oily. i like how the skin is superbly crispy. now i know why it said 'crispy chicken' on the menu. be careful though! some other chicken thingy on the menu is chicken skin, and not chicken meat but squid! its a wannabe-chicken dish! beware!

Then, was fried baby squid! I always like this, it's crunchy and crumbly, sweet, and has that burnt grilled squid taste!

Third was sweet and sour fish. The flavour is nicely mixed because you can taste the tanginess but isn't really sour. cuts through the sticky sweetness of the sauce, which compliments the fish well. The fish was fresh and juicy, very soft and and the clean freshness definitely went well with the thick sauce.

Cereal prawns! though they are buried under the cereal HAHA! and you can order them deshelled, so you don't have to peel them =) easy eating! the prawns were done just right, springy and juicy while the cereal was light and sweet, one of my favourite dishes. 

Lastly, before the arrival of the crabs, was fried rice! The food was sort of filling me up already so the rice was a nice filler-upper before the crabs came since crabs arent really tummy filling. it satiated my appetite so i could slowly enjoy the crabs hurhur! the rice had salted fish in it and was very fragrant, moist but not too oily, which was nice because i tend to get a sore throat if i eat too much oily crap. I don't like the carrots and peas nonsense, which this fried rice didnt have, plus-points ++ there!

Dum-da-dum!

The crabs came! we ordered two big ones, black pepper and chilli crab!

I prefer the black pepper crab because it's cleaner to eat, no messy gravy, the chilli crab usually leaves my hands gravied-out, haha! im a messy eater 'cause i have to eat every little bit. yums! the pepper was definitely strong, which made the crab very tasty, yet the sauce was dry so the meat was firm, moist but not wet, and the meat had a sweet aftertaste, after the pepper flavour wore off =) yums!

Then was man-tou, fried bread thats sweet and crunchy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. I like eating this plain, but my mom likes dipping it in the chilli sauce! =) the chilli crab was slightly more wet and messy to eat, but the gravy was really yummy, infused with the crab essence hehe, i guess it was more like drinking gravy with crab bits in it haha! very chunky. sweet and not as spicy as the pepper crab! but definitely unique.

ALTHOUGH...it was super bizarre. a video of one of the chefs killing a crab and chopping it to pieces as it was still alive and wriggling was very disturbing. the crab looked like it was in such pain! yep. as.we.ate.our.crab. LOL and my mom said she watched the video a bajillion times because it was on a screen infront of her HAHA

So ends the seafood dinner! there wasen't any air con but it was cool and breezy and we could see the sea (see the sea...) from where we were. Was kind of crowded and the service was kind of slow, had to call and ask twice to take order, to get water, and the lady kind of walked away to get whatever it was before we could tell her the second thing we wanted, and the place was so noisy that we were shouting across the table initially, got quieter later on. =) 

Overall, good food at a reasonable price! yay!! so full now...

Spector. :S

 So there i was, all excited to catch Spector! with Kevin and Patrick! whheeee! The concert was sponsored by topman, and the guys from Spector were decked in collared shirts and blazers, very classy. SO I HAD NO IDEA WHO THEY WERE! (so shoot me, i live under a rock"-_-) but yes, their music, i was told, was indie electronic pop.. and here i was thinking Ellie Goulding mmchi mmchi bop-up-and-down kinda music! So, Spector is a 5 piece band from london, very old school looking, with hair slicked back, thick framed glasses, and described as a fuse between the Strokes, the killers and Frank Sinatra. To me, they sounded like Foster the People after the cold war. old. very old. i'd call it classic. if you're into geeky looking indie bands, this is it.

Okay, now begins the slam. because i feel the performance was a let down. If you detest angst, and are seriously peace loving, stop reading here. "-_- to read on bout how the concert wasen't that great, read on!

So one wierd thing was that, the lead singer Frederick Macpherson kept singing to himself, and combing, yes combing, his hair on stage the way you would during the hippy-belljar-bottom-jeans era. kind of odd to be combing your hair like "Grease" in the middle of a song duncha think? but his hair was melting. he was sweating. must be the thick jackets. His vocals weren't impressive either, and I could only make out two phrases out of the entire night. The first was "what you wanted was not what I wanted" from a song titled "what you wanted". It repeated over and over like Bieber's "baby baby baby oh". you really can't miss it. The second was "shimmy down yea shimmy shimmy down yeah" which turned out to be "Chevy thunder Chevy Chevy thunder" from a song called, you guessed it, "Chevy Thunder". Heard it on the radio and I was wondering how come i was listening to Gold90fm. nope. I wasen't. To me, their music didn't really have anything unique, other than it recreating old music. abit like they got stuck, time travelled or something.

His stage presence was terrible. he was just hopping to and fro by himself, sweating (which looked quite gross. WIPE IT DUDE! you're dripping. and singing to himself. he looked rather like he was acting and looking good on stage, which isin't a crime, especially not if you're a band travelling the world. pretty cool, but there was zero connection. if you think it's just cus i wasen't a hardcore fan, most of the crowd had their arms crossed, and no one was dancing even though the drums were banging off, at most, some people were swaying/bobbing. So I know it's not just me.

"hey guys. you are the best crowd ever, we love singapore. it's gota be the best place we've been to"
zero excitement in his tone. said it a couple of times, really slowly. LIE TO MY FACE WHY DONT YOU! and the cheering wasen't that loud. no one really screaming. which is surprising because everyone there looked ready to rockout! half the crowd looked more 'rockstar' than the band. a suit doesn't make you cool just because you are wearing it.

This guy was probably the saving grace, he was playing keys, a synthesizer, and a guitar (not simultaneously) and he was pretty good-looking. killed my boredom for some parts when the songs sounded like a broken record. 

Another distracting factor was the cool laser lights, though they were abit blinding when they were shining into my eyes. more for clubbing. Overall, I think the concert vibe was lacking, the mixing was kinda bad because it sounded pretty messy rather than clear, which isin't the venue's fault because other bands have had great sound coming out. not sure, but this band just didn't do it for me. Music that I couldn't hear properly, and zero stage presence was kind of. empty. and then it ended. and the venue emptied out pretty fast, no one called for an encore, which makes it the first concert this year I've been to that people haven't asked for an encore! yup. 40 minutes and it was over. did i mention they were late?

okay. done ranting. heard their youtubes and on radio, they arent that bad, but nothing spectacular. got me thinking. perhaps they represent an image that people can identify with? so that's good then. music is sometimes more than just the music and skill, and about an image, an identity. kind of like Kitty Brucknell who's in my opinion a Lady Gaga wannabe =) which is cool too.