Supermarket shopping was an exciting part of my BKK trip lol! Our Airbnb apartment had a kitchenette so we could cook. :)

My friends and I mostly went to the Gourmet Market, which sounds Cold Storage-y but feels more like Fairprice Finest I guess! This one is at Siam Paragon. By the way, they have this trolley safekeeping service where you can leave your groceries there for free as long as you collect it back by 9/10pm! How convenient. 

They have like not-cheap fresh fruit juices everywhere ooooooh.

Plus they have Sweet William chocolates!!!!!!! Wow Singapore only has white chocolate and milk chocolate so far I think.

Lol I saw this on the first day and it was expensive so I just took a photo (because if you can't buy it, you photograph it, right?)

But then I went back on the second last day and bought them. They are expensive - 380 baht (S$16) for the chocolate spread, 182 baht (S$7.70) for each of the large bars and 128 baht (S$5.40) for the small bar.

But I really don't regret buying them! The chocolate spread tastes like sunflower seeds, which is interesting. There's like this taste where I can tell that it uses stevia, but I'm fine with it! I like the consistency and it drizzles well on food. Like this:

The white strawberry chocolate (chopped in chunks above) is really yummy! The strawberry bits are chewy. And the dark chocolate with orange didn't taste cheap. I used to hate orange chocolate because my only encounters with it were in the form of cheap milk chocolate (that teachers give out on special occasions lolol). But this is good!

There's also lotsa gluten-free alternatives! How surprising!

Many different kinds of fruit juices! Many of them are 100% juice. Like if it's strawberry juice it's 100% strawberry juice. Only in Thailand o_o

There's also this All Coco booth in the middle of the supermarket selling coconut juice, coconut slushies, coconut pudding (?) and...

Coconut ice cream! I didn't try it but I'm quite sure that it's all vegan!

There are many brands of curry pastes but this is one of the few that's vegan (i.e. without shrimp). Mum cooked the yellow curry yesterday and it was good!!

This is vegan too but I bought the previous brand because that was a couple bahts cheaper hehe. Oh and I couldn't find either of these brands at the other Gourmet Market I went to, so if you see them just buy them!

This was what I got on the first day. Eww horrible nighttime lighting.

Lol and there's like a whole row of soymilk/cow milk and somehow I got this one which mixes soy & cow's milk?!?!!?!? 

-_- My friend brought it home in the end and she said that it was really sweet.

Anyway the food lasted me quite a while surprisingly. I brought the packet of sunbutter from home.

This is carrot bread from Veganerie!

Got more things from the supermarket below the apartment! 

The watermelon was so sweet! Oh yeah and the coconut juice is not bad too! My friend pointed out that it tasted like yogurt. o_o Okay it kinda does

Dinner one day.

Added the vegetarian green curry to the packet of mixed veg, two carrots and some tofu.

And ate it with the 15 baht (S$0.63) bowl of rice. You must be thinking that it probably doesn't even taste like curry anymore. You're right! LOL.

And then for dinner another day. Had veggie ramen with this gluten stew haha sounds gross.

This ramen is vegan certified and all! I bought back a pack of 5 though I know that it's sold somewhere in Singapore hehe.

Why did I take photos of instant noodles cooking?

Because it's my first time in years eating instant noodles!! :D I think I put like 1/3 of the seasoning and it was good enough!

The gluten stew was SUPER salty and oily! Luckily I didn't cook it with my ramen. I had to pour away the sauce and rinse it in hot water o_o But the texture of the mock meat and the mushrooms were not bad.

My friends got lotsa things from the aisles of chips & crackers, and I found something great there too! These are popped rice crackers yum!

I think it almost doesn't qualify as junk food.

There's like 4 flavours I think. One is cheese if I remember correctly, so I just tried the other 3. The tom yam one looked promising but was kinda lackluster, and the sea salt one tasted boring, but the seaweed one was really really good!! My friend thought so too! It was 2 packets for about 50 baht ($2.10). I should ship some back next time lol.

This photo is of my snacks on my flight back to Singapore. Haha the buns (baos) look awful here but they're quite good! They're from the convenience store outside the immigration area (?).  The pink one on the right is taro and it's not bad. The green one is green tea red bean, which I like a lot!! The matcha fragrance was not as little as I thought it'd be. It's about 12 baht ($0.50) each I think. Great to clear your coins!!! Once you go in there's hardly anything cheap to buy. I bought a 110 baht of Thai jasmine rice but it tasted normal. Lol I think it's more worth it to buy 10 baos and have a bao party in the plane.

I never knew before this trip that chips become like this in the air! Oooooo

That's all for this post! I spent more than 20% of the money I brought on groceries haha! But yeah, the supermarkets make me feel like I can live comfortably in Bangkok.

(And somehow through the trip I revived my feel to Instagram food ^^;)

I was in Bangkok for an eating-and-shopping trip with my friends from the 5th to 9th March. Dragged them along to this vegan bakery cafe haha! :)

They've got many wonderful reviews on HappyCow!

It's located at Mercury Ville, which is connected to Chidlom BTS. How convenient! 

You can't really find on the maps and this mall is quite ulu. It's right at Exit 5 if I'm not wrong!

Their plating and food photography is so pretty!

Ice cream!

Cakes!

They sell bread too and I bought the Carrot bread which was the last one available. 

There's 4 really thick slices and it was SO GOOD. Fluffy and chewy and slightly sweet.

We ordered 4 items in total.

This is my Strawberry Cheesecake Frappe (165 baht = S$7). I could taste some cream-cheesiness in the whipped cream, but there were too few bits of cake in this. I was hoping for chunks but I think there's only cake crumbs on top!

It was not bad, but the whole pink ice-creamy part tastes the same and once I was done with the whipped cream (which I really liked the texture and flavour of), the rest was boring. ._.

The melted ice cream/smoothie was good to add to the Blackberry Bar though.

The Blackberry Bar (135 baht = S$5.70) was DRY. :( Like when you poke your fork into it, it crumbles apart. My friends ordered it but I ended up finishing it for them because they didn't like it! Maybe if it was topped with a scoop of ice cream it'll be better!

The crust supposedly tastes (not comparing texture) exactly like the base of a pineapple tart, according to my friends. o_o If that's true then it's impressive that they made an oat-y vegan version of it. I don't remember pineapple tarts tasting like that though haha.

My friends also ordered the Fruity Delight Waffle [Large] (195 baht = S$8.30), with strawberry and chocolate ice cream. The waffle was kinda crumbly. I think those at Brownice taste better too ._. Also the strawberry ice cream supposedly taste exactly like Brownice's hahaha.

Here's my Pizookie (165 baht = S$7). It's a hot-pan pizza-cookie if you're wondering what that name meant! I chose Sweet Potato ice cream on top - the colour and texture looked really promising but since I can't remember how sweet-potatoey it was, it musn't have been that wonderful. The cookie is hidden under all the ice cream, fruits and chocolate sauce!

It tastes kinda gingerbread-y, and it'll be too dry and tough if not for the ice cream and fruits! Again, I really like the whipped cream! I used to hate the non-vegan ones!

So, the food at Veganerie weren't as fantastic as I'd expected them to be, but there's so many I've not eaten. I think what I most enjoyed was the Pizookie and the top half of the Strawberry Cheesecake Frappe LOL. I'd love to try every item on the menu - looking at the photos now I really wanna eat some of their cakes!!! I like that they have so much variety of food, and their plating and ambience is good. ^^ The pricing is reasonable too. It'll be great if they also have savoury desserts! If they had a branch in Singapore that'll be wonderful.

Veganerie

4th floor

Mercury Ville

Chidlom

Open daily 10am-9pm

My grandma goes to eat at Eight Treasures often with her temple friends! (The Buddha Tooth Relic temple - a major tourist attraction - is located just at the left.) She's been wanting to bring my family there to eat for a while, so on the 4th day of Chinese New Year, we went there for lunch.

Lol I took this photo to show my aunt where it's located - on the second floor by the way. There's lotsa tour buses along the road!

They have the CNY menu, which unfortunately didn't have the 8 treasures soup and hor fun that my grandma was raving about.

Hehe grandma intently ordering.

This is the Heng Hua Noodles [Medium] ($18.00). It was yummy! Soft and smooth, with the crispy bits of seaweed.

Spinach with Wolfberries Soup [Medium] ($15). The ingredients are quite generous and they added in tang gui too! They said that they don't use MSG, but my grandma can taste that they use the vegetarian mushroom seasoning.

Yam Ring with Vegetables ($25). They've got a fruit option too which sounds quite interesting! The yam ring was super good omg when was the last time I ate this?? Maybe 4 years ago. 

It was a bit on the salty side though, especially the pieces of mock meat.

Ginger Monkey Head Mushroom [Small] ($15). It wasn't especially memorable but it was not bad I guess. Eat too much will get sick of it.

Honey Sauce Veg Pork ($15). Honey!!!!!! Lol I didn't really look at the menu so I didn't know it was honey. Anyway I didn't really like this. The 'meat' part is like veg luncheon meat and the 'fat' part is like konnyaku-ish and yet reminds me too much of the real thing. Lol.

When I went home that day, I saw that Clicknetwork's Food Porn had a new video on Eight Treasures! Haha. They talk more about the food and the cooking methods. And actually almost everything involves the magic that is konnyaku.

Lucky Yu Sheng ($28.80). Usually we have this at the start of the meal but we left it to the last so that my aunt could participate, since she came later. If you don't know what this is, it's like an unhealthy Asian salad that has raw fish.

Things (1/2 bowl oil, 1 bowl plum sauce, cinnamon, pepper, fried crackers, sesame seeds etc.) are poured on the raw/dyed veggies on the plate, while auspicious things are said. 

And then it's ready to be tossed.

I still have no idea which 4 word phrase corresponds to which ingredient. But nevermind, there's now an app for that LOL.

Everyone uses their chopsticks to lift it up while saying more aupicious things and well wishes for the new year ahead.

And then it's ready to eat! Lol the slices of mock abalone.

My family all felt that this tasted very good - much better than the non-veg one from Cold Storage they had during our reunion dinner. ^^

Overall, it was a really good meal! Although some of the dishes were on the salty side, we didn't really feel thirsty afterwards. Many dishes had mock meats but it's fine once in a while. We'll definitely be back with my grandma to try some of her recommendations! :)

(Oh and there's this Well-dressed Salad Bar at level 1, just below Eight Treasures, owned by the same company. It's like a Western-style salad bar. I'm quite surprised that they have eggs in their salad. Because Buddhist vegetarian food doesn't commonly have eggs.)

Eight Treasures Vegetarian Restaurant
282A South Bridge Road
S(058831)
Phone: 6534 7727
www.8treasuresgroup.sg