k r i s a n d r o

Tucked away behind the busy Orchard Road is the lesser known sister of the Pan Pacific Hotel chains, the Pan Pacific Orchard. Now that I have tasted the great food at the signature restaurant, 10 at Claymore, I think the lesser known sister should have a chance to revel in the limelight.

After a little poking around the internet, it seems like 10 at Claymore has been quite popular for it’s buffet spread and so I was quite curious when I was invited down by Citibank and the 10 at Claymore folks to try out food from the à la carte menu. I was also joined by 7 other bloggers: Chester, Veron, Keropokman, James, Walter, Jeneen and Claudia.

Seeing that the restaurant expected us down, I won’t talk about the excellent service that the staff showed as there but without any biassed opinions, the food served to us was great! Pardon me for not packing vocabulary like a food connoisseur does but you have to believe me when I say the food is great, considering that I hardly get excited over food much.

I forgot whose idea it was to share food around like Thanksgiving instead of ordering mains for each of ourselves but I think everyone enjoyed eating chunks and morsels of food from the variety that 10 at Claymore served us that night.

If you every make your way down, do try the Thai Beef Salad from the appetiser section and for mains, do try the delicious Oven-Roasted Bonito Cod.

Oven-Roasted Bonito Cod with Honshimeji Mushrooms, Pea Sprouts and a Garlic Shoyu Sauce ($29)

Now, if you have a fat wallet and/or has a thing for beef, I implore you to spend it on the Blackmore Wagyu Beef Tenderloin. It is 200g of Wagyu Beef goodness that stirs my gastric juices as I am typing out this blog post. Even Veron who isn’t much of a beef person, enjoyed the tenderloin of Marbling score 9+.

“What MARBLING SCORE?!?” you might ask? Well, I was clueless also and apparently, a benchmark marbling/marble score of 1 to 9+ is given to Wagyu beef which grades it on the amount of intramuscular fat that gives the famous Wagyu it’s famous juicy texture. Need I mention that the best grade is on the high side?

Blackmore Wagyu Beef Tenderloin (200g) 600 Days Grain Fed – Marbling Score 9+ ($100)

Yes. It costs $100 and I swear that I didn’t knew of the price until someone pointed it out to me on the menu. Truthfully, it’s not something that I would order if I had to pay because of the hefty price tag but it’s worth every cent! The meat was juicy and the generous portion is good enough for most folks. I had it medium-rare so as to fully savour the goodness of the meat but I think it’s also extremely delicious served medium. Anything more cooked than that and I’ll go over and kill you myself…. and eat the remainder of the Wagyu beef you ordered….

10 at Claymore has a few promotions if you are a Citibank card holder:

• Valid 1st Aug 2010 – 30th Sep 2010
  Get 1 complimentary THE CLAYMORE (which is a steak) with any order from the grill menu.
  Get a 2nd grilled item from the grill menu for $10 only, with any order from the grill menu.
• Valid till 31st Dec 2010
  • 15% off total bill

Pan Pacific Orchard
10 Claymore Road
Singapore 229540

[Disclaimer: Citibank is a client of my company and the food was kindly sponsored by the restaurant. My opinions of the food are of my own and are not influenced in any way or by anybody.]

Dog owner was found! Thanks for helping out to spread the word and all the offers to adopt her!

My Mum found this female brown/white Shih Tzu loitering around Blk 462 Jurong West St.41 today.

She seems to have just went for grooming judging from her short and neat fur and trimmed toenails.

If you are the owner of this lovely dog, or if you know the owner of this Shih Tzu, please call me at XXXXXXXX.

• Brown/white Shih Tzu
• Brown Eyes
• Very friendly
• Found at Blk 462 Jurong West St.41 on 5th June before 11am.

Do help me spread word of this guys! Somebody must be missing this dog a lot.

p.s. She seems to take a liking to me. My heart ached a little when she curled up under my chair just like Junior used to do…

I just posted the picture below on Twitter, Plurk & Facebook to ask if anyone knew what these are for.

And these are the couple of interesting guesses I got from the peeps online…

LOL!

These are actually “adhesive buttons” called TackOnz from a company called LiquidXcape. What they do is to replace the common way of securing racing bibs onto tees using safety pins.

The problem with safety pins is that they damage the tees, are difficult to put on and dangerous (SHARP PINS!!!! HELLO???). If your safety pins are rusted, it will even stain the event tees.

With TackOnz, the problems above are solved and it will just leave a small nipple-like mark on your tee after use which will apparently go away after a wash. It also addresses a problem that I suspect a lot of people would have like me – I am damn anal about making the bib parallel to the horizon base of my tee. Safety pins are such a pain in the ass when it comes to aligning the bib.

I wanted to test the TackOnz for my Adidas Sundown Marathon race but if don’t already know, I am out injured. But, from what I can tell, it is extremely secure and I don’t see it dropping in the middle of any race unless the race involves wrestling with a grizzly bear with PMS.

TackOnz comes in a package of 6 buttons and is retailing at $12 per pack. It is available at New Balance Concept Stores in Singapore. Discounts are available for bulk purchases (That’s how I got mine thanks to the folks at SGRunners).

More info can be found at LiquidXcape’s website.

I’ll probably do an update if I ever get fit enough to enter my next race. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll find a PMS-ing grizzly bear.

I started joining long distance races only last year and signed on for 3 of them so far: Singapore Bay Run 2009 (21km), Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2009 (42km) & Adidas Sundown Marathon 2010 (21km).

A couple of weeks before Singapore Bay Run last year, I was out with flu for a good 3 weeks and struggled to complete the whole of 21km. I didn’t even go for the Standard Chartered run because of a persistent hacking cough that lasted for 3 months before the race.

The Adidas Sundown Marathon 2010 is just this Saturday and guess what? I have been out injured because of a suspected inflamed tendon in my right foot that has been plaguing me for the last 3 weeks. Did I trigger this injury from training?

Nope!

I got it from chasing down a bloody bus because I wanna get home earlier to run!

Yes. That is my foot and the x-ray scan of it. No. HP Touchsmarts does not do x-ray scans but they sure make a useful backlight to see film like that.

I know that people always have an impression that I am pretty fit and *ahem* I think that is not far from the truth. *cough cough*

But I am and have been quite injury prone throughout my life and while I embark on this long distance running phase of my life, it seems pretty apparent that my injury woes continue to bug me like a persistent STD. (Not that I have one…)

KuKuNehNeh claims that I am cursed from running and told me to stop signing up for races because SOMETHING ALWAYS happens right before the races that displaces me back to square one sometimes even when I was training very hard.

Am I cursed?