About Daniel&Esther

daniel & esther

Daniel works in the consumer electronics industry but hopes to one day own a cafe. Like most Hainanese men, he can whip up a storm in the kitchen and is constantly invited to other people's house parties... to cook for them.

Esther works for a major airline by day, and bakes incessantly by night. Trained as a chemical engineer, she puts that knowledge to good use - by reading package labels to see if it's good for you.

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Recipe: Spaghetti Vongole

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

It was a lazy Saturday morning at the nearby wet market when we chanced upon some really plump-looking clams, with tightly closed shells (indicating they were alive). Thinking of the half-opened bottle of white wine in our refrigerator, we promptly decided to get a kilogram of these bivalves to make spaghetti vongole for dinner.
After doing [...]

Basilico: Food An Italian Mama Would Be Proud Of

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

Esther and I have been very impressed with Basilico at the Regent Hotel ever since our first visit some months back. However, the pictures we took during the first time turned out really poor so I didn’t bother to blog about it. When we went back again this afternoon with our friend Jen in tow [...]

Melbourne: La Porchetta

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

Whenever we’re in Melbourne, there’s one place my brother and I always hit for pizza and pasta. If you’ve ever been to La Porchetta’s, you’ll know it for its great value-for-money and down-to-earth Italian fare. When I was studying here, we used to go there almost every Friday weekend after church cell group (strangely enough [...]

For Really Good Tiramisu: Cafe Puccini, San Francisco

Monday, November 26th, 2007

Esther and I were incredibly hungry by the time we got from San Francisco Airport to our accommodations at Hotel Boheme, so we decided to eat nearby the hotel. Our friendly hotel receptionist directed us to Cafe Puccini, which was located just across the street from our hotel.  Esther had compiled a list of eating places from [...]

Food Tasting at Grand Shanghai

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

We recently went for our food tasting session for our wedding banquet dinner with our families at Grand Shanghai Restaurant. Esther and I had picked the place for its superior ambience – which is spectacular at night – and the restaurant’s rather impressive Chinese food.
The menu we picked was seafood-heavy – 5 of 8 dishes [...]

Review: Ricciotti Italian Deli & Pastry

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

I have certain expectations when it comes to modern Italian-Australian cuisine, especially having lived in Melbourne, Australia for almost five years. I even lived for two years just a few streets away from Melbourne’s famous Lygon Street, the city’s Italian food mecca. We’ve been to Ricciotti at The Riverwalk before, and it’s a pretty fair representation of the laid-back [...]