BUGOY'S PICKS ep2: Aston's Express

For those who know me, they know that I'm a "meat-man". That's right, this guy right here loves his meat! I seldom take desserts unlike Gee, I always prefer the taste of meat in my mouth than the taste of any sweets right after a meal. Sounds disgusting right? but hell it's just me.

Anyways, while we were out hunting for a new house in Clementi area, we saw this Steak house right smack in the middle of a hawker center along block 331. The signage got me and it seemed like a real-deal steak house. Usually, steak places in hawker areas SUCK. as in big time SUCK. Hawker cooks don't know how to cook meat, even if you tell them "medium-well", your steak would always come "well-done". So I was intrigued by this steak house with a very nifty signage and told Gee that we'll try it on the weekend.

The name: ASTON'S express

Based on my research, Aston's is a steak house that is situated in Catahy mall in Orchard, recently they branched out to the budget crowd to cater to more people and opened up satellite branches in hawker areas named "Aston's Express".

So for our sunday lunch, we went down to Aston's to try out the food.

If you're a steak lover then Aston's got you covered, their menu boasts of lots of steak options.

We ordered the Sirloin steak which goes for 11 SGD, the Honey Bourbon Ribs for 13 SGD, and the Spicy Seafood Marinara which goes for 8 SGD. Each meal comes with 2 sides for your choosing.

The food is excellent! You will be surprised on the quality of the food that they provide even if it's situated in a hawker area.

1st dish, the Sirloin steak!

I had my Sirloin steak done "medium-well" and indeed, these guys know how to cook steak! Now that's Medium-well!

The honey bourbon ribs are awesome and HUGE! The sauce is just right the right amount of sweetness and goes well with the huge slab of ribs! definitely bang for the buck!

And lastly the seafood marinara. The thing that first gotme was the serving size, for 8 SGD, the serving side is huge! it could feed 2-3 persons. But the finisher here is the taste! The tomato sauce is just enough for the whole servings, the seafood was plenty! And the spice was just right, not too spicy for people who does not like spicy food.

Over-all the experience was great! Now I have a place to go to when I need my meat fix.

LIVIN' LOUD! The Kicker EB91 In-Ear Monitors Review

Ear plugs.. ear plugs... during the early inception of this type of earphones I was not a fan. I never took interest, nor was I intrigued since I have my own concerns about sticking something too far up your ears. I thought it was un-heiginic and a little bit selfish, how can you share something that could possibly have someone else's ear wax and stick it up your own ears?

Ever since I had my first sony walkman back in 1995, i sticked to the traditional earphones, the ones that you just put or hang in your ears and not sticking inside your ear lobe. When I was in high school, me and my friends share a lot of music together, sharing the same earphones and swapping walkmans just to share the music that we were listening to. Yes, the basic earphones was perfect for that scenario. But nowadays I think earphones became more personal and "selfish" upon the introduction of ear plugs.

Anyways, enough of my personal issues about plugs, to cut the story short, I recently gave in to this ear plugs "phenomena" and bought my own set just to get my feet wet.

As I was searching around in Courts Clementi, I was confused with the number of options that I have in front of me. A lot of good brands like Audio Technica, my personal favorite Philips, Sony, etc. Also there were a lot of newer brands like the iLuv and all those other stupidly named products who were just riding on the "i" naming convention trend.

As I was looking around, one brand caught my attention, from the bottom part of the store display, I saw a very familiar brand which i believe is a household name for car audio but I never knew that they made ear phones, so I took it and to my surprise, the brand is really KICKER.

 I have a long history from way back with the Kicker brand. When I got my first car for my college graduation, I hooked my whip up with a single Kicker Solo Baric sub woofer and custom box. Man I loved those woofers! the bass was clean and deep.. really deep. So once I saw these ear plugs, the Kicker EB91 Microfit ear plugs, I instantly had a certain affinity for it, but what made the deal much more sweeter was when I looked at the price, it was just 16 SGD! that is just 536 pesos!

Being the cheapskate that i am, I took it immediately and went straight to the cashier and I was very eager to take these babies out for a spin.


But honestly, what convinced me in getting these ear plugs was the small caption on the bottom of the box:

"Impedance-Aligned Micro Driver delivers Lengendary Kicker Bass!". Now that's a very tough claim to live up to! Since I know how good the Legendary Kicker Bass was, no questions asked, I have to test it out!

Let me cut everything short, as I've talked too much already for this review, these ear plugs are AWESOME!! for the price at least. Now let me get into the details:

I won't go into the technical specs since you guys can just use google and search for it right?

Anyways, one thing I like about these ear plugs is that they're quite small. According to the box, it's 33% smaller than the average ear plugs. This makes it lighter and quite comfortable when your wearing them.

The box includes 3 additional sets of plug adaptors to fit different ear sizes for a much more comfy fit for different people. The ear piece itself is made of metal, which I think is sturdy enough to withstand everyday use.

The wire is another thing that I like because it's covered with something like a woven thread that entirely covers the wire for added strength if you accidentally pull it.

Yup, the jack is not gold-plated, for 16 SGD? fuck gold-plating!

Now for the juice! The sound quality of these little bad boys is amazing! I was surprised when I first used it since I am not expecting anything great because of its size and the price.

The first thing I did was to play something bass heavy, so I took my Iphone and played Xzibit's "Get your Walk on". I was blown away by the amount of bass that these little things can deliver! The bass was deep and clean. But of course not as deep as what can hear with your beats by dre's or any bigger head phones, but for ear phone-level bass, this one nails it big time!

For the mids and highs, I played 2pac's "Thugz Mansion" just to test how clean the mids and highs can be with plucked acoustic guitar sounds. The mids were perfect, everything was clear, the vocals were very present, and vibrant. Just perfect. The highs were just enough that it will not be tiring to listen to. High hats are vibrant and not irritating, cymbals sounded balanced and is not obtrusive.

Of course I am not saying that these are the "best" ear plugs ever, I'll get killed by other ear plugs afficionados if I say that, but for the price range of 16 SGD, man.. I think no other brand can beat this at this price range.

So if you're looking for budget ear plugs with awesome sound, then the Kicker EB91 Microfit ear plugs is a must try!

Take it from me, a newly converted ear plugs fan.

Bow.

BUGOY COOKING ep1: Singapore Tapang Bugoy!

One thing I missed from the Philippines is the food. There are quite a lot Filipino restaurants around Singapore, but still nothing can beat the real thing back at home.

One of the dishes that i missed the most is the very reliable Beef Tapa, which can be found anywhere in Manila. A night of drinking yourself stupid won't be complete without eating TapSiLog (Beef Tapa, Garlic Fried Rice aka Sinangag, Fried egg or Itlog) after the alcohol has mellowed down in your system!

So now, thanks to my very good friend, Chef Paulo Prieto (his blog is still under construction http://bogchi.blogspot.com), I was able to get a hold of a recipe of Beef Tapa!

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce the Singapore Tapang Bugoy!

Ingredients:
1/2 kilo of Beef. (In our case since beef parts are scarce, we settled for Beef Shabu-shabu)
Soy Sauce
Vinegar
1 clove of Garlic
Ground Pepper
and the secret ingredient, KECAP MANIS!

Procedure:
1. Mince the garlic.

2. Create a concoction of vinegar and soy sauce. About 1 cup each or depending on how salty or sour you want it.

3. Mix the minced garlic and the concoction on 1 big bowl.

4. Add pepper according to your taste.

5. Add a good amount of Kecap Manis for the added oomph!

6. Once your satisfied with the taste of the marinade, throw in the beef in the bowl and gently mix massage the beef  into the marinade.

7. Make sure that the beef is completely covered or submerged under the concoction.

8. Store the whole thing inside the ref and let it marinade overnight so that all the flavors will seep in the meat.

After leaving it overnight, all you need to do is to fry the beef and you now have the BEST TAPA IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE! hahaha! 

Since I just made this tonight, I'll be cooking it tomorrow, so try it out and tell me how did your tapa go!

Peace!

How to make a poster: Blake Griffin style.

POWER... power.. POWER.

Sorry Mr. Perkins, Mr. Griffin needs a guinea pig.

Testing the blogger app in iphone

Wow! Blogging on the go! Let's do this!

Oggie the Jedi

Loonie's 2nd single: Tao Lang feat Quest

Special thanks to Soulfiesta for this update! hit up http://soulfiesta.blogspot.com for your OPM hiphop updates.

This is Loonie's second single from his coming "I AM NORMAL" album, which I believe is gonna be released under Sony Music Philippines.

Again, Loonie's skill on keeping his words simple, easy to digest but still skillfully crafted is evident on this track. Loonie reminds us to keep pushing no matter how heavy the weight is, and that It's ok to make mistakes sometimes, as long as you learn from it.

Listen up kids!

BUGOY'S PICKS ep1: Nakhon Kitchen

Here's the thing, as most of you might have noticed, the Binangonan Kid is back on the blogging circuit, it's been a while though since I've done this thing again so bear with me! hehe Anyways, since I'm on a roll nowadays with writing then I'll start a new theme with my blog. From this entry onwards, I will be blogging all the good-ass restos/ hole in the walls that me and gee might stumble upon. So ladies and gentlemen, here is the maiden entry for BUGOY'S PICKS!


When: Jan. 29, 2012.

One lazy sunday afternoon, me and gee went down to Bedok to pick up some stuff. As we were looking for a nice place to have lunch, Gee remembered a Thai restaurant that she has eaten at once and wanted me to try. So off we go searching for this "Authentic" Thai restaurant that is surprisingly located at one of the HDB's in Bedok. After a few minutes of walking under the midday heat, lo and behold, we found our destination: NAKHON KITCHEN.

This place is situated on the first floor of Blk 136 in Bedok, you could have mistaken this as a hawker spot but yes my friends, It is a restaurant.

Prices are pretty much affordable, just like eating at a hawker, but the quality of the food is far from hawker standards.

We ordered 3 dishes,

The Pad thai:

 Pandan leaves Chicken

Red Fish in Thai Sauce

Thai Iced Tea

One thing that I notice about Thai food is that their food is very fragrant and aromatic. Thai food has this distinct smell and flavors that can only be found in Thai food, mainly I think because of the heavy usage of Lemon grass in their recipes.

I'm not an expert on the technicalities of food ingredients, cooking etc, So I'll be straight about this, the food was AWESOME! The Pandan chicken was delicious, the Red fish in Thai Sauce was well cooked and the sauce was great, the Pad Thai... The Pad thai... let me say that again.. Tha Pad Thai... was the best Pad Thai that I have tasted so far! And lastly the Thai Iced tea was a good follow up for all the flavors that are mashed up.

The AFTERMATH!

So if you are around the Bedok Area, or you're a foreigner on vacation wanting to try good food in Singapore, Hit up Blk 136 in Bedok and look for this nifty hole in the wall. Every dollar is worth it!

SARAP SIR!