Chess gang meet-up (Mar 09)

Jia Chuan is back for a two weeks break. As per usual practice, it was the perfect excuse to meet up for lunch and chess! And seeing as Hon's birthday was merely a week ago, we decided to include a belated birthday celebration for him!

Esmirada Orchard was chosen as the venue from an initial shortlist of three. I was quite excited to eat there as I hadn't been there before. It helped that I had read about their lunch promotion with Citibank, which means that we could get a good discount for our meal! :D

The plan was to meet at Orchard MRT at 12 to get Hon's birthday card signed, before he reaches at the 'actual' meeting time of 12:30. Shi Qin was pretty late, and we were initially worried that he would spoil our plans by being later than Hon. Thankfully, our worries were unfounded. Hon was over 10mins late. When queried, he gave a very interesting response:

"I was late because I left my house late."

-.-" Oh. Wow. I resisted an urge to laugh out.

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The metal cover of the menu. I like how the rust gave the restaurant name a nice highlight.

I was quite impressed by the decor at Esmirada Orchard. The instant I stepped in, I was reminded of Hogwarts Castle in the Harry Potter movies. If only they had used chalices instead of glasses.

We were disappointed to learn that the Citibank cards discount only applies to their ala carte items and not for the set lunch. Nonetheless, most of us decided to go for the set lunch. I had a two-course set with a main course of roasted chicken and warm chocolate cake and walnut maple ice-cream for dessert.

The chicken turned out quite burnt, and I had to spend quite a bit of time slicing / chipping off the charred bits. Otherwise the taste was good. I loved the crispiness of the potato wedges, though they were a tad too salty for me.

Unlike the main course, dessert was great! The warm chocolate cake was delightfully sweet, and combined well with the ice-cream, while the walnuts provided a good juxtaposition of textures.

Hon's birthday cake was yet another chocolate cake. It lost out to Esmirada's offering, but was still good. By then, everyone was pretty full, and being the cake-lover that I am, I was glad to have more of it. ;P

Non-sequitur: The three lychees in each glass of Cher's Lychee Martini were pierced with one of these plastic sword. Very interesting!

Lunch was followed by some browsing and shopping at Borders, before we proceeded to Cairnhill CC for our long-awaited chess session!

(I ended my day with more cake during my grandma's birthday celebration at night. No, it was not chocolate cake.)