Christmas eve dindin...

Because it's my first Christmas away from home, and because the last time I celebrated Christmas with someone special was five (or was it six?) years ago, I really wanted to make it more memorable.

Thanks to Google, I found two good choices - Carousel at the Royal Plaza at Scotts and one of the restaurants at the Meritus Mandarin.

Both had good reviews. I called both dining venues. However, since it was just a few days away from Christmas eve, both restaurants were already fully booked.

A little more Googling and I was led to a restaurant at the Pan Pacific Hotel.

It seemed like a really good choice.

I had no idea whether the food was good, but I was confident that the venue was going to be super. So I decided to go ahead and book a table for two.

Saturday night. Pg Boy came from another appointment. I came from my home. We agreed to meet at 7PM at Suntec Convention Center.

Close to 7PM, I get a text from Pg Boy that he's running late. It's Christmas and I was really excited for dindin, so I just stayed cool. I called the restau and they were more than happy to hold the table for 30 more minutes.

Christmas can still be saved. Haha!

By 730, Pg Boy arrived. We walked to Pan Pacific right across the street. We got into the lift. Someone already pressed 37. I moved really close to the window to get a good view of the city during the ride up.

The lift doors opened and we were at our destination - Hai Tien Lo.

I thought it was a really nice restau. After giving my name to the reception, we were led to our table. I asked for a table that gave a nice view of the city, and I was really glad that they granted my request.

Haha! I dunno if it was because of the formal setting or what, but it felt like we were on a first date. I felt nervous, and was a bit tense. Haha! We were back to our usual selves once the food was started to be served.

The starter was a deep-fried prawn with wasabi mayonnaise sauce and barbecued duck. Soup was braised shark's fin with fish maw and chicken. There was also spare ribs with seafood spring rolls, followed by poached white cabbage with baby abalone in shark's bone broth. Since it was a Chinese restau, rice had to be part of the menu. Hehe. The main was Wok-fried rice with scallops and eggs.

The dessert was really good, too. Chilled cream of pumpkin with rock melon and ice cream. At first, I wasn't so sure about the idea of pumpkin but it turned out to be really nice.

So did the whole dinner experience.

I was actually grateful that I didn't get to book a table with the other restaus. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been as nice and romantic as the one we had. Things do happen for a reason, yeah.

Really memorable.