District 10 - Ambience To Chill

District 10
Suntec City Mall
Central, Singapore
September 2015

The countertop in District 10 is a showcase of all things butchery. And seems like a movie set straight out of the movie Saw. Its bespoke butcher's block is cleaver-ready for any hungry customer's specific request.

Watch out! The saw with its sharp edges longer than your arm's length hangs by the side...

You could really imagine these lights fizzling out any time!

That looks like one nasty cleaver! Careful with the neck...


Bad reviewers will be quartered and weighed...

Well... that is until you realize that the owners and staff here are really fun people!

Here's resident chef, Luca Pezzera, with a huge smile, and owner, Serena there with the rest of us enjoying the light-hearted atmosphere...

Wines

To perfectly balance its dry-aged meat concept, District 10 brings in a wide selection of the finest reds and whites, including Zonin Wines hailing from vineyards in north-east Italy. Founded almost 200 years ago, the Zonin family vineyard has its roots in Gambellara, a wine growing region in the heart of Veneto. The house produces a wide range of wines, many of them from varieties native to the regions in which the grapes are grown.

A welcome to the event by Francesco, with his baby pink suit...

To start off the evening, the Zonin Prosecco, a sparkling white was served. Deriving its name forom a little hillside town near Trieste, the must is split into two batches - half of which undergoes an initial fermentation, while the remaining half stored as unfermented must. Unlike the traditional fermentation, whereby the second fermentation happens in bottle, the house uses the Charmat Method where the second fermentation takes place in a large closed pressure tank.

The result is a pale, straw yellow sparkling wine with subtle green hues. Merlion Wayfarer especially likes the pleasing fruity notes with an aromatic citrus finish.

While sampling the reds, the fascinating story about the origin of the Black Rooster for the Chianti wines was shared.

In Medieval times, Florence and Siena went through many bloody battles over who should rule the hills of Chianti. In fact, so much blood was shed that they finally decided to settle this once and for all, and came up with a rather unique way of doing it. They decided that two horsemen should depart at the same time from Siena and Florence and travel towards each other. Where the horsemen met the borders would be drawn. As it was a challenge to synchronize the start off times, unlike in modern days, they decided that the crow of a rooster would define the departure time in each city. 

The Sienesi chose a white rooster and fed him well the night before, hoping that a well-fed rooster would crow with more determination and strength. The Florentines, instead, chose a black rooster and kept the poor bird hungry - hoping that a hungry rooster would get up and crow earlier. Indeed, the Florentines were right. Their rooster was up well before dawn crowing desperately in demand of food and their horseman started riding much before Siena's horseman.

The Florentine horseman made it to almost 12 kilometres outside the Siena walls before he was met by his counterpart. This claimed, practically, all of Chianti for Florence and established the black rooster as symbol of Chianti up to this day.

Fermentation is allowed to progress until the wine has obtained 7% alcohol. To preserve the grape's natural sugar content, refrigeration is used to give the wine its unique sweet and fragrant characteristics. A golden wine results, with intense scents of peaches and exotic fruits.

Top off the evening with a Cafe Latte - 

Served with full-bodied beans and a double-shot espresso base...

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The Final 1 Season 2 - Live At The Capitol Theatre

Capitol Theatre

City Hall, Singapore

October 2015

The second season of The Final 1 premiered on MediaCorp Channel 5 on 5 July 2015. It is a Singaporean reality-singing competition programme created by the director of Hype Records Ken Lim. Taufik Batisah and Lim returned for their second season as judges, and were joined by new judge Jaclyn Victor who replaced Kit Chan. 

Contrary to the previous season, the public would not be allowed to vote for their favourites and play a part in deciding the contestants to advance in the competition. The judges would instead be the ones making the decision to eliminate contestants from the competition to ensure those "getting through to the next round will be only purely on their vocals and talent". The public would only be allowed to cast their votes when the competition is left with the final two contestants to decide on the winner.

In the finals held at Capitol Theatre, the top 2 contestants - Charlene Su and Jermaine Leong were pitted against each other. Merlion Wayfarer was there to watch the live performance.

The elegant classy environment of the Capitol Theatre...

 The pre-show Emcee informing the audience of the Do's and Don'ts for the live recording...

How the stage looks like from the circle seats...

Jermaine with her passionate rendition of "Over The Rainbow", the song that won everyone over...

Heartfelt and to the core...

With her win, Jermaine takes away the S$50,000 cash prize and a contract with local music company Hype Records. 

  

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Starbucks - One Tree For Every Bag

The Fullerton Waterboat House
Singapore River
September 2015

Brewing a great cup of coffee is both and art and a skill, made with passion and precision. This evening, Merlion Wayfarer was honoured to be able to attend a Coffee Seminar at Starbucks. The event was held at Starbucks' 100th Store at The Fullerton Waterboat House.

To give this historically-rich building a modern take yet preserve its maritime history, this iconic outlet sports a nautical-themed interior and is the biggest fully air-conditioned store in Singapore. Pillars in the store are decked out with ropes while counter tops feature round edges inspired by the elegantly curved facade and curved balconies of the building.

The Starbucks Coffee Seminar starts with a seat at a table. 

Placed on your table is a platter containing these items:
A cup of water, a cross-section of lemon, a slice of lime, a few petals of star anise,
some cinnamon sticks, bits of yellowish lemon zest, an orchid and some rose petals...

Half-cover your coffee brew with your pal. Then smell each item. Open your palm and take a deep breath. Can you tell which flavours and aromas are in your coffee? Each coffee-producing region of the world is known for its own unique beans.

This was the first time that Merlion Wayfarer experienced the Starbucks Slow Bar with a manual Bali brew from the Clover machine.

Starbucks Reserve coffees are made from rare and exquisite beans which have been hand sourced from around the globe for their unique flavours. The Bali Vintage Klasik is described as "sweet lemon and caramel notes with a nutty finish". According to the label, what makes this coffee distinct from its Indonesian neighbors is the processing method. Balinese coffees were traditionally fully washed and dry-hulled, a style yielding exceptional quality, but so labour-intensive that many farmers moved to faster processing methods. Now three villages have returned to "vintage" processing. The result is a coffee with familiar washed Indonesian herbal low notes, yet with floral and citrus sweetness not found in coffees from this region.

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It is said that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz purchased the simply-named start-up Coffee Equipment Company after trying a cup brewed by a Clover machine and declaring it to be "the best cup of brewed coffee I have ever tasted". In fact, this outlet is the first in Singapore offering a split-bar concept with a Clover machine where coffee lovers can fully experience the depth of each blend.

The result is not the kind of coffee you add milk or sugar to, and it sure does not begin with anything instant. Don't expect your drink in 5 minutes. Not even 10. Be prepared to spend at least half an hour here at the Slow Bar to enjoy your cuppa.

Coffee is loaded from the top of the machine into an electronically-controlled piston,
with water from a tap above added.

The process is indicated on the display, right down to the exact second.

After some stirring and brewing time, the piston pushes the coffee "cake" upwards, 

with a 70-micron mesh drawing the grounds up to the top of the machine.

At the same time, a vacuum sucks the coffee itself out of the bottom, into a waiting container.

The immediate consequence of the Clover machine and its precision may not necessarily better coffee, after all, coffee tastes can be quite personal, but instead more attention to coffee. By creating this rigorous laboratory-like precision brewing environment, the Clover machine encourages baristas to explore the nuances of different beans, where and how they were grown, dried, sorted and roasted. Coffee drinkers can now customize their coffee to taste (more citrus blends anyone?) by making minute changes to brewing time, temperature, and quantity of water. And coffee can now be described with the width of wine palate vocabulary.

Another option available at the Slow Bar - The French Press, comprising of a narrow cylindrical beaker, usually made of glass or clear plastic, equipped with a metal or plastic lid and plunger that fits tightly in the cylinder and has a fine wire or nylon mesh filter.

Pourover coffee starts with (freshly) ground coffee, a filter, and a filter holder, often called a "pourover dripper". At the most basic level, pourover brewing involves pouring water over and through the grounds to extract the coffee flavors into your cup or serving vessel.

It's not that simple. Firstly, the water is not just poured directly into the cup at one shot. Instead, brief breaks between each "pour" are required.

Pourover brewing continuously replenishes the liquid surrounding the coffee grounds with new, fresher water. This promotes a faster, more efficient brew with each fresh pour extracting more from the surface layers of the grounds. Pouring one stream of water, rather than from a few little streams results in a brewing environment a few degrees higher, just from reducing the surface temperature loss from those narrow water streams. 

Start by pouring at the centre of the cone, and working your way out to the sides in a circular motion. One of the major byproducts of roasting coffee is carbon dioxide gas. When the coffee grounds are doused with hot water, this gas is able to escape and it bubbles out. The problem is that if carbon dioxide gas is going out, water is not able to get in. Hence, the need for regular pauses.

Just enough brewing water is poured to wet all of the grounds. Then stop and wait for about 30 seconds to let the carbon dioxide escape. The coffee grounds will then swell and expand, resulting in what coffee professionals call a "bloom."

The shiny "crystals" simmering on the top of the coffee...

From now till September 2016, as part of the "One Tree For Every Bag" initiative, Starbucks will distribute coffee trees to farmers who have been most impacted by coffee rust, a plant fungus that damages millions of coffee trees around the world, making it harder for farmers to produce high-quality coffee for the entire industry. Do your part to support the coffee farming community by purchasing a bag of coffee today.

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