the garden slug

UPDATE: Sold out! Thank you for your orders and for passing & sharing the news around. Our Christmas Take-home Trays orders are now closed.

We are booked out on Christmas Eve, and have limited seats for Christmas Day.

New Year’s special coming soon.

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If you’ve missed our Christmas Early Bird special, fret not, we can has special for Le Late Birds because we discriminate not whether you come early or late. OK that sounds a li’l bit dodgy but NVM MOVING ALONG.

Introducing – Le Internet Special. Specially hand-coded for those who love all things Internet, and like me, who’d rather order anything & everything online (books, underwear, stationery, food.. not necessarily in that order) than get off our bum bums to do anything IRL.

Le Internet Spécial comprises a special price of $355 (u.p. $390) for any 6 homely, hearty, Christmassy courses.

There is also À La Carte if you, dear Internetizen, would like to get just a couple of things for that pot luck you’re forced to attend you’ve been invited to.

Also! Sekret surprise – We are picking ONE winner to win a sinfully tender Pork Belly Slab (1.5kg) braised for 6 hours in milk & spices, with savoury caramel sauce. (You may have already had a taste of it in one of our specials the past few weekends.)

Just an idea of how it’s packed – in a sturdy aluminium foil tray that’s easy to transport, stack in the fridge (in case there are leftovers but we SRSLY doubt it), and dispose of.

The best thing about this baby is it can be served warm or cold. I personally suggest it served as a cold-cut. All 1.5kg of it. Sprinkled with lightly-toasted sliced almonds, slumberly nestled in a cosy bed of garden salad. I know there’s no such word as slumberly but is not like anyone noticed. If you did notice, then 10,000 POINTS FOR GRYFFINDORRRRRR!!!

Say it with me, baybeh. Sexeh Pork Belleh.

Sho sexeh we had to make a video.

So, where were we? Oh yes, Le Internet Spécial and how to win a Sexeh Pork Belleh. All you have to do is:
1) share this Facebook post and
2) leave a comment on the same Facebook post telling us what you would like from the The Garden Slug brand in 2013.

Remember you need to share & comment to be eligible. We will select the winner without bias through a carefully programmed neutrality system (it’s called “randomness”) on Monday 17th Dec afternoon and announce it on this here Facebook page.

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Addendum
Thank you Nicholas of Furry Photos for the lahvly, unsolicited jingle… -_-
Love you too. Hey!

The lights at Orchard Road do not lie. We all know what’s coming up soon. Everyone’s (well, almost) favourite time of the year.

While reindeer dash through the snow, we chuckle as we go through some of our old Christmas posters.
While the sleigh bells ring, we are.. reminiscing.

We opened shop on 8th December 2006, and it’s highly possible we didn’t have time for a Christmas poster that year. Can’t seem to find the 2007 poster either.. can’t even remember if we had any. But we had a good chuckle looking through the posters from the last four Christmases.

2008 – Virginal.

2009 – Discovered the magic of “Frames” in Photoshop.

2010 – A very talented Slugphile named Scookys dropped out of the heavens and offered to help us.

2011 – An ode to Jobs – we went all “Apple” with a clean, lean, minimalist look.

2012 – Lots of fresh, young blood with fresh, young ideas in the Slug team this year.

Our Christmas Take-home Menu 2012 and order form will be launched very soon. We may not post on this blog very often, however the best way to get “insider information” (if you’re not already) is on a few not-too-well-known platforms Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

UPDATE!! Click here to view & download our homely, hearty Christmas Menu 2012.

Pink-themed boardroom meetings were the order of the day.

Would you like a bit of The Garden Slug at your next home party or office meeting? Tell us when you’re planning to hold the event, number of guests you’re expecting and if you have any dietary requirements. E-mail justask@thegardenslug.com and we’ll get back to you within the day (or two).

Last week we were blindfolded and brought to a dark, dingy little shop called mani•cur•ious. Everything in that last sentence is true, except for the blindfold bit. And the dark, dingy bit. And.. um, maybe it was two weeks ago.

Anyhoo. Mani•cur•ious is not a curio shop but more like a curious little shop that curates curious little things. Kinda sorta. O aren’t you impressed with our wordsmithyness. And they also do manicures. Get it? Mani-Curious! 41 Beach Road, that’s where they’re at.

What were we doing there? We made some food and assembled them on shiny trays. This sort of activity is known as “food catering” in some parts of the world.

In first world countries, food catering activity is usually supported by a deluge of colourful photographs, also known as “food pr0n”. Unfortunately Chris Slug is a lousy iPhotographer. We just coined that word a minute ago. An iPhotographer is someone who takes photos using an iPhone. We so witty *chucklesnorts*

Anyhoo. No combination of photo-editing iPhone apps could save these pictures, but we did our best. Increase Exposure > Saturate > Vignette Blur. Voila! *self-amuse*

Catering enquiries go straight to a Slug Robot called “Auto-responder”, so you’ll know your e-mail was well-received. Or well, received. Eventually the e-mail does reach the eyes of Chris Slug and he swears on the life of his iPhone that he’ll respond as soon as he can. Which means in one or two working days. And by working days we mean normal people’s working days (like, Monday to Friday those kind).

Often we have requests for customised cakes for birthdays and events. Rather than put a huge design on one cake, which eventually gets “destroyed” and cut up into little pieces, we thought, Hey wouldn’t it feel a little more special if each little slice of cake could have its own complete design..?

Enter the party cake of all party cakes – The Garden Slug’s One-of-a-kind Customised Cakes.

What we do is print the design (with edible ink! made of vegetable dye! they’re edible!) on edible icing sheets (they’re edible too!). Be it a corporate event or a private birthday party, send us your design and we’ll give you a cake that’ll really, um, take the cake.

As for the cake itself – everyone knows you can’t go wrong with chocolate. The dark chocolate fudge squares are a big favourite across the board – multi-national companies, non-profits, Hello Kitty aficionados and let’s not forget, even Adam Lambert fans love chocolate. So yeah, ask for the dark chocolate fudge squares.

E-mail us your design and give us at least 5 working days to process your order.

E-mail: justask@thegardenslug.com

If you have yet to see our sexiest Christmas Take-home Kit brochure yet, it’s probably because you have yet to see it.

You also haven’t seen this brochure probably because we have yet to advertise at bus shelters, on taxi doors, the side column of your Facebook page, or a half-page of a non-glossy magazine.

So why haven’t we put out bus ads? No budget lor. Whatever profit we have for the year went into buying a pine tree.

The decorations are mostly gifts from people who took pity on us, Sharon Slug’s mother included, upon seeing a bare pine tree in our shop.

Also, bus ads are impersonal. In true Sluggy style, we prefer to tell you things ourselves, as we’ve been doing for the past five years.

Some of youse may have received a personal, cheery e-mail from Sophia Slug with an attached order form. Like Slugphile Nic here.

If you are at our humble li’l shoppe, you may pick up a dead-tree copy or two of our Christmas Take-home Kit order form at our newly set up Retail Therapy Shelf (more on the Retail Therapy Shelf soon.)

Bendy cardboard arrow and artwork by Mishal Slug.

Alternatively, if you’re quite savvy with the usage of this newfangled device called a computer, you may want to peruse the save-the-trees version of our order form.

It gets better and easier every year for you and for us, because we have the Facebook, the Twitter, the Posterous, the Flickr, and the Tumblr (actually we have two of the Tumblrs). We love all those online platforms like we love our bosom buddies.

Speaking of bosoms, if you are the one hosting a cosy Christmas do at your home this year, make sure you carve yourself a sweet piece of turkey breast. Because you deserve it.

The Garden Slug’s Christmas Take-home Kit 2011 ~ pared down, simplified, quieter, but still & always will be, created with only you in our hearts and minds.

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The Fine Print:
• Come pick up your order from our shop – we’ll give you 1 bottle of Sommerton Shiraz Cabernet on the house.
• Free delivery for orders of $385 and above.
• Last order for Christmas Take-home Kit is 20 December 2011.

Just in case you were thinking we were too lazy (and/or brain-dead) to come up with a proper (and/or witty) title for this blog post. You are absolutely right.

Sekretly, iz an SEO trick. But nevermind that.

Anyhoo.

Many of youse have asked “Hey it’s been five years now, what are your plans for expansion? Please please please open a branch at Woodlands/ Hougang/ Bukit Timah/ Malaysia/ India/ Siberia…”

If you know any of us at all, you would know we are simple Slugs. You would know we weren’t looking to be billionaires (with great money comes great responsibility and great stress). You would know all we wanted was a comfortable place of our own, where we can serve rustic, hearty fare, and make people happy. You would know how we put our heart (and soul and blood/ sweat/ tears, yes even after all these years. Hey it rhymes!) into our food, our service, our staff selection, our smiles. The idea of branching or franchising, to us simple Slugs, makes us worry about the dilution of our heartfelt-ness in everything we do.
 

It would be silly of us to completely rule it out though (so you Slugphiles in Woodlands/ Hougang/ Siberia etc etc… may still have hope) but for now, we’re putting the idea of ‘branching out’ into our “Someday/Maybe” folder. ((And boy do we love our parentheses today))

Expanding we are, though, just not quite in the direction one might expect. We may not have officially announced it (but, um, I suppose this counts as an official announcement?) but sekretly, in the background, we have been working very hard on our Catering arm.

OK la, it’s not such a big sekret. It’s just that our blog posts haven’t quite caught up with all the events we’ve been catering at. We have been engaged for many a happy house party, corporate event, and product launch. We might blog about the entire process someday (which we find absolutely thrilling #food_nerds_r_us) from menu creation, to logistics & layout planning, and how we draw up all our blueprints on re-used A4 paper.

We cannot have done any of these without our wonderful team of Young Slugs — (just so you know, Old Slugs = Sophia, Joseph and Sharon. Everyone else are Young Slugs, regardless of mortal age.)

Meet some of the newer additions to Team Slug Power: introducing Mishal, Mathew, Havard and Simin.

Grabbing a quick bite before transforming into Professional Butlers at the Adidas x Stella McCartney launch at Marina Bay Sands, 6 October 2011 (which was supposed to be the point of this post. Sorry it took quite a bit of waffling before we got here. Hehe)

Our smart-looking Slug Butlers, er, butler’d around with trays of savouries, sweets, and beverages.

A tray of savoury characters.

Another tray of savoury characters.

A tray of sweets.

Replete with beverages to suit (almost) every taste ~ Bersano Conte Baldino Prosecco, Santa Vittorio Still Water, and a TGS-made refreshing iced matcha tea with a hint of yuzu citron

Mishal Slug looking sweet as the Savouries Butler

Havard Slug looking hemsem as the Beverage Butler

And not forgetting our hardworking Kitchen Slugs who slave away in the kitchen, reproducing all the canapés we serve at such wonderful events.

More catering photos and blog posts to come. If you’d like to find out more about what we can do for you re. catering, contact our Director of Food Communication & Design, Sophia Slug at sophia [at] thegardenslug [dot] com . She is quite the friendly, dun worry.

Meanwhile, we update quite the regularly on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous and Flickr. ‘Coz we geeky like that, yo.

So… if you’d paid attention to the last blog post, you’d know we have tickets to some very exclusive, currently-sold-out SIFF tickets. We are giving away 4 tickets in total:
2 x tickets to Look At What The Light Did Now
2 x tickets to El Bulli: Cooking In Progress

How might you get your grubby paws on said tickets?

In true TGS style, the topic of the competition will be completely unrelated to the prize tickets.

So… we wanted to be evil and make you guess what we are going to put into these chinese noodle box-esque receptacles.

But then we thought, nah, evil is so not us. ‘Coz in true TGS style, we like to make our competitions easy-peasy.

Also in true TGS style, we like to prattle on quite a bit before we get to the point.

So! Here are two different sticker designs that we came up with for the chinese noodle box-esque receptacles, in which we are putting our pasta creation for the SIFF opening film ‘Red Light Revolution‘.

Sticker A                                                    Sticker B
 

The idea here is that we are punning on the word (xìng fú ~ meaning happiness/ contentment). The word we are using on stickers A and B is pronounced the same way; and it means contentment in sex/ good sex.

This is to tie in with the movie which is basically a risqué comedy dealing with the sexual mores and sexual liberation in modern day China.

Witty hor? O, we’re so pun-ny and so witty, we kill ourselves.

Anyhoo.

We’ve already picked one out of the two sticker designs.

So! Here’s what you do!

Simply guess which sticker design we are using for our noodle boxes! EASY PEASY.

1) Type your answer in the comments box below. (Type either “Sticker A” or “Sticker B”.)
2) One answer per person, pleaze.
3) Closing date: Tuesday 13/9/2011 @ 11.59pm (like, today, yo.)
4) Winners will be contacted via e-mail. Please use a real e-mail address so we may contact you, the potential winner of awsum movie tickets, for further personal details. We will get in touch with you before the end of the week.

The first 4 correct guesses with legit e-mail addresses, will win 1 ticket each. And no, you cannot choose which ticket you’re getting. Hurhurrr…

OK – Ready, steady, GO!

SIFF (Singapore International Film Fest) is supported by the generous contributions of its sponsors and the audience of film fans which has enabled it to bring the best of cinema to Singapore for the last 24 years. Whether you be film buff or non-film buff, we hope you will support this non-profit organisation (they has charity status, might we add), and perhaps open your world up to a wonderful film or two.

We wuz there for the SIFF press release on 25 August 2011. We can has many pictorial evidences!

battered potato stuffed w/ mozzarella & buttered mushroom

foreground: crisp brioche w/ tomato & olive confit, topped w/ wild rocket
background:
• little cubes of apple crumble topped w/ cinnamon sugar
• bittersweet dark chocolate brownies double-dipped in french chocolate

clockwise from top left:
• pan-seared tofu & broccoli skewers w/ a chunky peanut sauce
• smoked salmon served w/ a spiced dill mustard by side
• tri-coloured petite chicken kebabs w/ a hot hickory sauce by side

Ze spread!

Nothing spells films better than, er, f-i-l-m-s. *snort*

In all seriousness though, The Garden Slug is grateful for the honour and privilege of being a Silver Sponsor and caterer for SIFF events this year.

“Like” them on Facebook.

Coming up next — ve vill be there for ze gala night / opening film @ Shaw Lido on Thursday 15/9/2011. Many excitements!