A very big 'THANK YOU' to everyone's kind wishes this year :) This is the first time I've spent my birthday away from Singapore and family but you guys have made it truly special.

I'm going to do the posts Star Wars style, from Part III onwards, which is the actual day of my birthday.

I spent the whole day (eating) with Juin. We woke up in the morning and had 鸡蛋面线 (egg mee sua) - a must for me (Hokkien). My mom makes sure every one of us has it every year on our birthday.



Then we headed off to Melbourne city, stopping by the Lindt cafe on the way to DFO:



We are totally addicted to their beautiful macarons. They have got to be the best in Melbourne.

The new DFO at Southwarf is pretty much done. Nothing much special - YET. Waiting for Fossil and Burberry to open and you'll see me there on a regular basis.



I heart window shopping.

We felt peckish after so we decided to grab tea at the new Old Town Kopitiam Mamak.


Satay and bbq chicken wings - my absolute favourite

After that we were absolutely stuffed but Juin had dinner reservations at a Japanese restaurant Takumi, click here for website, Melbourne's only Wagyu beef specialists. This restaurant was recommended by food critic Matt Preston, so Juin decided to give it a shot. We had never heard of it before, so dining there was really a whole swaku experience for us.

The theme of this restaurant is 'do-it-yourself' grilling. There is a hole in the middle of the table and the very brilliant Japanese, as usual, have somehow managed to invent this smart way of smokeless barbequeing. Basically they use a wire mesh on top of a pot of hot coal, but at the bottom there's a fan which sucks the air inwards so it doesn't blow everywhere (oh gawd that sounds dirty).



You really can't judge a book by it's cover because in the day, this restaurant's exterior looks as plain as Jane next door, but its interior is really lovely.

The service was excellent - and all by young Japanese girls too (I can hear some of my male friends gawking already).

Anyway we were greeted by a refresher towel and 3 types of sauces:


One of the sauces was sesame oil with salt - the other 2 tasted good but I had no idea what they were!

Once we ordered, our drinks came really quickly followed by starters:


Edemame beans


Wagyu sashimi


Salmon Carpaccio

Their salmon carpaccio was lovely. There was also kimchi that we didn't get a picture of.

The other thing we didn't get a picture of was their ox tongue. I have to say this is the first time I have tried a tongue of any sort, and to be honest in all normal circumstances I wouldn't have tried it if not for my birthday, so I did - and it was amazing. It was sliced so thinly and the texture was so smooth that if I didn't know, I wouldn't expect it to be a tongue. Anyway, the following are pictures of our food that we had a fun time grilling:


Our tiger prawn and scallops - they were fantastically sweet




Wagyu beef from 3 or 4 different cuts of the cow


This is what it looks like when grilling


This is what it looks like when done

The beef was so aromatic and amazing that when you put it on your tongue, the whole thing melts and you've got to chew it slowly to taste and experience the flavours and sensations erupting from that tiny piece of meat - are you salivating already?!

We had grilled vegetables too (mushrooms, zuchinni & pumpkin) but who cares about vegetables when you're having wagyu beef?!?


Red bean and green tea ice cream

Ahhhh I would go there just for their dessert. Because we had a set meal each, each of us was entitled to a scoop of ice-cream and jelly. There were 3 flavours to choose from: Green tea, sesame and red bean - I like them all!! It's a great way to end a meal - with green tea to wash it down and ice-cream to sweeten the deal.

We ended the night with Juin singing a very out-of-tune happy birthday song and me blowing out the candle to my delicious cupcake from my favourite cupcake shop (because we decided we simply could NOT eat cake anymore).

...and then Mr Geok Lin Yeo called and drove us to The Pancake Parlour for supper. OMG!!! By that time we were too tired and too full to eat, so we ordered drinks whilst watching Mr Yeo woolf down his banana split sundae.

The next day we were on a diet, LOL!!!

I must say that I've never met more people celebrating their birthday on the same say as I have. When I went to collect my free birthday Boost Juice, there was a girl who was doing the same just before me. We just smiled at each other and wished each other happy birthday. Then later at Takumi, there was someone also celebrating her birthday in the restaurant with a huge group of friends.

Aquarians are cool XD