Moo Moo Burger from Vittles

For $10.90, this burger is pretty decent stuff. I was pretty surprised by size of it when it was served and it's not often that I'm taken aback by the size of the patty of most burgers. Vittles at Sembawang Cottage, across the road from Khatib Camp is apparently a pretty new diner that does western chow at very affordable prices sans GST and service charge. This would put it up in the good books of many people since most places that do actually charge for service don't actually deserve a small fraction of it. This place works somewhat like Cafe Cartel where you write your orders on a chit and bring the chit up to the counter for payment and then you wait for your orders and help yourself with free popcorn.

Back to the burger, it's really quite a decent attempt here despite it not being the best one around. But at the price, this is something I think is worth checking out if you like big meat. Big hand chopped patty meat (250g of it) with onions, sauteed mushrooms, real bacon, cheese and lettuce on a lightly oat encrusted bun that probaby uses the oats for decorations rather than anything else. The beefy patty definitely a noticeable up from the kind that you get from Botak Jones and certainly has potential still, for improvement. One main gripe which is a personal thing here is the barbeque sauce which is something that I really do not understand about in burgers. Doesn't make it taste any better for me and if there is a need to break the monotony of the taste in the huge patty, aged cheddar works as well. I'd be willing to throw in a dollar or two more for a better cheese option. With an egg, it'll give the Epicurious burger a big run for it's money. Do take note again, that this burger is really huge. Remember not to dislodge your jaws if you're eating with your hands.

Watershed Wine Dinner @ Senso

Watershed as I've learnt is one of the few vineyards that resides in the region of Margaret River down in Australia. This wine dinner - a collaboration of WineBOS and Senso, as you may have surmised from the name is accompanied by various wine from Watershed. I'm not knowedgeable about wines, but I do drink it and preferences at this point of time is purely dictated by the tongue. I know what I like or not based on the taste, and very little else despite having attended wine appreciation. The differences between the new and the old world doesn't quite settle in me and I haven't quite gotten the grasp of the varietal of grapes that are used for various wines. So I hope you're not expecting me to engage in the subtleties of the drink. But for those that might be interested, I do have the listed course and accompaniement of this 5 course dinner.

Poached crabmeat salad with avocado, orange and green apple with Sambuca dressing served with
Watershed Sauvignon Blanc/ Semillon, 2006

Rigatoni pasta with braised rabbit in tomato sauce with Taggiasche black olives and fresh thyme served with
Watershed unoaked Chardonnay, 2005

Traditional Carnaroli risotto with braised duck and Italian porcini mushrooms served with
Watershed Shades, 2004

Braised veal shank "Ossobuco" served with mashed potatoes, rosemary and lemon Gremolata served with
Watershed Cabernet Sauvignon/ Merlot, 2004

Chef's selection of cheese served with
Watershed Shiraz, 2003

The food was pretty much as I had expected, but some factors fell flat on the overall satisfaction. It was so uninterestingly expected without much notes that the cheese was actually a point of highlight of the 5 courses. Those cheeses were really quite enjoyable for me and to think that it was probably something that required the least preparation.

There were a few items that I thought could have been improved. For one, the rabbit in the rigatoni tasted pretty much like fish and the braised shredded duck meat of the risotto tasted flat rendering it almost unidentifiable as duck. This poached crabmeat salad seems quite overdone and brought up more than a faint reminder of a unremarkable trout and crab roll from Bontá. To top that, we didn't even get a real ossobuco. It wasn't even the whole piece of the lamb shank with the bone. What that came up on place was just part of the meat from the shank. So that made the only justification to the price tag of the dinner, the generous pours of the wine.

A Superfamous wagyu burger

There's a place down at Chulia Street just beside the OCBC building near Raffles Place done like a cafe in a small park call Superfamous. The cuisine reads like fusion/Australian and I'm not sure of the actual differences between the two. Perhaps it can just be described as largely European with some Asian accents. Anyway, I dropped by for lunch prior to an appointment and decided to try out their Wagyu burger. Now I'm just wondering, since Wagyu is a breed of cattle, does it mean that there are those that do not go through the fattening treatment process or is something like Grade 1 really affordable? This one is priced at about $24 dollars and after knowing how places like One Ninety or the defunct überburger charges for a Wagyu between bread, this does smell like a different beast. Pun intended.


Honestly, I've definitely had better. Better and less costly, with the Garageburger from Wine Garage coming on top of that list of cheaper and better. Similar does the Wild Rocket Burger fare. Sure, those aren't wagyu but they were certainly much more enjoyable then this which happens to be meat that I felt is marinated almost to death resulting in a sweetish herbish flavor to the patty. That to me isn't enjoyable for a beef patty. It could do with flavors, but it still needs to retain the beefiness which this particular one didn't quite carry. I would have preferred sauteed onions rather than the caramelised ones that was used. So the end result is a slightly pepperish/sweetish taste that reminds me faintly of cheap black pepper sauces.


The upside of the lunch was actually the seared tuna salad which comes with rather delicious seared tuna slices with a very generous helping of greens with olives and quail eggs. The portions of this is unexpectedly bigger than I had expected. I'm not too sure what was the dressing but I thought I detected sesame sauce and vinegrette.

Burritos, enchiladas and magaritas...

These Mexican stuff seems to be my recent craze lately, so you unfortunate readers will have little choice but to bear with it since this is my blog. Hahaha! No, really, I do dig the food here and it's really quite funny how little of them I've had until recently, which pretty much started from that night at Cha Cha Cha. Now that I'm pretty enamored with Café Iguana, I've decided that doing a late Sunday lunch at this place might be in order since it would be probably the only time, I get to look at everything that I'm eating in clear daylight. At Clark Quay, serving tasty food at very reasonable prices in decent portions means that people will just come back, again and again. You can bet everything, including your bottoms, that this will not be my last time. Back to the main deal, it's a lunch that I'm doing with my brother, so we wisely stuck to a single order of a starters of an ancho dusted calamari, along with a shredded steak burrito and tuna enchiladas.

calamari

These are just regular fried calamari, which are good for bites while waiting for the rest of the food to arrive since they are appetizers, but these arrived really just shortly before the rest of the mains did. The calamari here have a soft/soggy batter coating. The ancho dusting is probably a really like dusting of the spice, so I didn't quite get the taste. The base of the plate comes with a stronger tasting, saltish and garlicky sauce of sorts which turns out to be quite good for the calarmari.

burritos

I didn't think that burritos were so large, but here's one. The commonly used word to describe this would be, hearty. And truly it is. The insides are basically filled with the choice of meat from the order, and more of the black beans and cilantro rice. I think this place will probably mark the beginnings of me not rejecting those vile herbs since the flavor of the cilantro here is fairly mild and bearable. In fact, I'm starting to find it quite acceptable in the food, but I suspect that this place will probably be one of the rare few that I'll eat them and not complain. The salsa-ish mix of cheese, chopped tomatoes and onions do their bit in appetizing the roll and breaking the monotony of the taste of the wrap. All in all, it was good and as I mentioned earlier, hearty.

tuna enchiladas

The last time I had enchiladas, the skin was softer. This time round, I definitely see more crisp and it does look a little like prata. So more black beans and rice which I'm definitely not complaining about at this point of time. There's the saltish fried black tuna wrapped in the tortilla skins and topped with melted cheese and the tomato/onion things. Pretty damn good and I must say that I like this.

Crab tang hoon @ Geylang Lorong 37

Heads up, this is pretty good stuff there. Located right at the entrance of Lorong 37 of Geylang, this coffeeshop known as Ya Kwang Dai Pai Dong does some pretty damn tasty tang hoon stir fried with whatever special mix of sauces and stock to produce a very tasty and flavorful dish, accentuated with the flavor of crab. The tang hoon also comes up to be in a very vibrantly springy consistency and is a bit thicker than the usual ones that are normally seen that tends to be harder. I found it really enjoyable slurping them in to have them slither down the throat. The place looks to be selling some pretty delectable looking kuay chup right at the front, however it also contains a kitchen at the back where the owner is able to whip up some of his specialty seafood dishes. This crab tang hoon is just one of it. Since we were there, we decided to take on one of this recommended steamed fish head in bean sauce and try out the kuay chup.


The steamed fish head wasn't too bad. Though I must say that it is the tasty bean sauce that does most of the trick for the dish, imparting the large bulk of the flavor. Apart from the very noticeable freshness of the fish, this is basically a very regular steamed fish head. It wasn't bad at all, but it probably isn't something I'll see myself coming back for. I'm not exactly a big fan of fish head unless there is something truly exceptional in it for me.


The kuay chup offerings in this place is very enjoyable. The mixed dish comes with braised duck, and some pork which I thought might have been pork trotters, braised egg, tau kua, the regular intestines, salted vegetables and fish cakes. I definitely can see myself ordering this again should I come back.

New York in Mexican

I'm having quite a bit of fun exploring Mexican food lately and this is something which is called a New York Steak ($21.99) from Café Iguana. This comes under a section which is labelled Tequila Grill which features lime marinated meats that is finished with a spicy tequila glaze. The steak sits atop a stick of grilled vegetables that's lying on some sweetish poblano scalloped potatoes. It turns out that this steak is pretty good for the medium rare that I requested. The lime marinate does come through in the meat in terms of flavoring, but I couldn't quite make out what the tequila glaze much. What I thought was good about this is that the marinate and glaze was sufficient to be noticeable, but wasn't too strong a taste which allowed the flavor of the beef to still be tasted. There's also a decent char on the surface of the meat to ramp up the flavor. This is definitely a thumbs up here. The faith that I have in this place is slowly starting to build up, so that means that I will probably come back again for the food.

Café Iguana, Riverside Point

I'm beginning to understand why this place (30 Merchant Road, #01-03 Riverside Point) is often crowded. Just like Brewerks just down the river, the food is pretty affordable and margaritas are at half price up to 9pm and after 12am. The crowd is so consistently present even on weeknights, that reservations can only be made up to 7 in the evening. It definitely took me a while to start coming by to this place, but I do foresee more instances of returning back for the food which I personally think is not bad. In conversation with a new Korean friend, it seems that the standards of the Mexican Food at Cafe Iguana seems to be quite similar to that in Texas. With less grease in them. It's also much cheaper there of course, with their proximity to Mexico. Like in Italian food in Italy, Mexico has cuisine that tends to vary in various aspects, depending on which region of the country it hails from. Not being the expert, I can't really pinpoint anything of the origins, but I guess it's probably enough to be generic of Mexican food. Are there any good or better ones around here?

quesadillas ($2.99)

These quesadillas come pretty cheap and freshly baked. There is still a bit of the crisp freshness on the tortilla skins which are filled on the inside with cheese and mushrooms. This definitely makes a good beer snack for the taste and cost.

shredded beef mini chimichangas ($7.99)

The mini chimichangas here come with the option of either shredded chicken or beef for the fillings inside. The initial impression of them are that they look pretty much like cut up Old Chang Kee curry puffs that comes accompanied with guacamole and sour cream dips. They're also a reminder of the kolkatta shingara which I've had at Mustard down in Little India. Thick crispy and fried skins of flour with fillings. They're not too bad and it fills you up quite a bit. And I feel inclined to think better of these puffs against Old Chang Kee for the latter's diminishing quality coupled with increasing prices.

camarones al diablo ($14.99)

Babelfish told me that the name of this camarones al diablo translates to "shrimps to the devil". The easy relation to the name would probably come from the sweetish spicy sauce that comes with the shrimpss. The sauce which the shrimps are sauteed in is suppose to include habanero chile, capsicum, ginger, cumin and lime. The sauce has a pretty good balance between being sweetish and spicy at the same time, so it's not something that packs a strong kick if you're expecting it. On the sides are more...quesadillas. This kinda makes the dinner pretty filling with all the flour and cheese from the earlier arrival of quesadillas.

green chile stew ($12.99)

For $13, this makes a pretty good main course. I was initially quite skeptical of the corriander that I remember being mentioned in the rice, but it turns out to be alright. I personally find this nutty tasting stewed pork with rice and beans (which taste better than they look) to be pretty good and the portions are enough to stuff you up.

Back in Kazu

I'm not too sure why some of the photos that I take from Kazu tend look worse than usual. Not that it is a deterrence for me from coming back to visit again and again. The menu of the place has seen some small changes over the previous visits to what it offers today. No, I'm not refering to the seasonal items that rotate throughout the year with their exotic delicacies. Some of the regular items that are being offered now comes in sized portions - which was not available such options previously. The old prices for those said items are now tagged onto the smaller potions. Some of which, are smaller than the original ones (single size portion available only) that was previously sold. That means that while you get the option of getting larger portions of your favorite items, we also see an upping in the cost of eating here when you compare it to how things were months back. Now that was a bit confusing.

short neck clams cooked in butter

These clams aren't as buttery as those from Sushi Yoshida, but are pretty tasty along with the salty broth that is filled with golden mushrooms. The portions, I felt are a tad small.

salmon milt (sperm)

This item seems to be seasonal on the menu and taste like something I've had before in Chinese mixed fish soups. The pinkish appearance on the exposed sections of the cuts indicates that it is not fully cooked. The texture of the salmon milt is akin to a harder tofu, but I couldn't really taste much of it when eaten with the ponzu sauce and mildly spicy grated radish.

foie gras

fatty pork with apple

I'm not sure if there is a change in the preparation of this pork with apple, but I they did come with some mashed apple sauce the first couple of times I had them here. And that was definitely much better than these ones without.

prawn and scallop wrapped with bacon strips

shimeji mushroom in pork belly

chicken hearts

lamb chops

beef and cheese roll

squid ink rice

The squid ink rice comes quite heftily priced at $20 for a small pot. A pot of it has enough to fill 2 bowls so you can do the math on how much it costs, per bowl. The squid ink flavor is very apparent in the rice which is mixed with some mushrooms, vegetables and bits of squid. It wasn't bad, just another one of those items that wasn't spectacular.

grilled whale tongue

This grilled whale tongue is something from the seasonal menu. It is also something I probably will not be ordering again. The taste is not bad by any means. It's just unremarkable and it's probably good just to try them out. The meat has a fatty texture pretty much like satay, but the fatty portions are tough and chewy instead of soft. In fact, it was chewier than the beef tongue. Apart from that, it isn't really identifiable as any form of other meat.

japanese sweet potato

These Japanese sweet potato take some time to grill, so it's good to have them ordered early. I'll probably be making an order of this sweet fragrant roots everytime I come by here. Hot and buttered, these will make you hot and bothered. Lol.

grilled beef tongue

Kazu's tiramisu

Cha Cha Cha, Holland Village

I've been hearing some good things from various friends about this Mexican restaurant located just across the road from Wala Wala and next door to a competitor place El Patio. Cha Cha Cha (32 Lorong Mambong) does seem to have a healthy crowd going for it even on weeknights and I thought the food was actually not bad. The portions do come a bit small for the price they charge for the food ($15 for what you see up there), so one main course isn't really going to do the job. Even for this combinados (if I remember correctly) item which allows you to pick a duo of either a enchilada, taco (soft or hard) and a fajita. I found the ground beef for the soft taco to be quite little and I'm sure it does not cost that much to be a little more generous since the rest of it are simply a corn flour shell , a bit of cheese and vegetables. I was quite sure of reading about refried beans, which turns out to be the tasty beany mash on the side. Still the food goes down pretty well and the satisfaction factor was there. I'm still getting the hang of the names of Mexican food here, but I think I'd probably be an enchilada person. The crispy things don't really work out for me most of the time.

Z'en, UE Square

I think that this place (UE Square #01-75) has quite some potential, just like it's related peer establishment En, just around the block. The biggest gripe over this place that I actually have is the air conditioning. Lol. It really needs to be turned up. That aside, this modern Japanese bar and restaurant certainly whips up chow with standards that I didn't quite expect. This comes from their surprisingly firm and fresh swordfish and yellowtail sashimi which turns out better than I thought it would have in a place like this. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of those. Apart from the regular and traditional Japanese staple fare, the modern counterpart of Z'en really didn't disappoint much at all. Of note, the service is marked by very observant and courteous staff.

pumpkin cooked in butter ($8)

This is just described as pumpkin that is cooked in butter from the menu. I'm not really sure how the cooking is actually done, but it does taste steamed before a very light fry. There is a hint of butter on the surface of the hot pumpkin flesh itself, but I thought it would have been much better if there was a lot more butter. This almost reminds me of the sweet potato with butter from Kazu. Almost.

grilled asparagus in bleu cheese dressing ($12)

The grilled asparagus isn't really exceptional in any way beyond regular grilled asparagus. I generally like them so it's something that I would order. The bleu cheese dressing was a major plus factor that contributed to the decision to try this and the cool thing about this asparagus dish is that it comes with slices of bread which you can mop up the excess blue cheese sauce. The sauce itself does not come as strong as the actual cheese, so I would think that it is quite palatable for those who are not inclined towards the pungence. YMMV though.

maguro carpaccio ($16)

The presentation looks quite fancy and a tad gimmicky for tuna carpaccio. Like En's maguro tataki salad, the carpaccios here are sliced thicker than others. I am guessing that it probably is the way Japanese interpret theirs. It's the same way at Ma Maison with their scallop version. Z'en's carpaccio comes a tad over cooked on the perimeter of the fish slices resulting in a much more cooked taste than desired. On top of that (pun intended), the baked garlic chips in their bursting fragrant flavor contended with the small slice of fish in the sour soy sauce resulting in a taste that wasn't quite carpaccio like in texture nor flavor. I wouldn't say that this tasted bad, it's probably overdone in intentions.

grilled squid ($11)

Decent grilled squid here, however it is quite lacking in the char aspects which I enjoy. The only charred parts were the tentacles which made them the tastiest parts.

unagi chahan ($15)

I must comment that this unagi fried rice turned out pretty well in it's bamboo "trough" container. There is miminal salt in the rice and from appearances, looks to have been cooked with very little apart from oil and unagi that is already prepared in it's brown sauce. The result is a fried rice that does actually contain a noticeable taste of unagi in the rice itself. Despite appearances, the portions aren't too huge and it can be easily finished by a hungry person alone.

sirloin steak seared rare in ponzu sauce ($30)

The need for something really meaty prompted me to order this and at $30, it doesn't come too cheap. I really wasn't expecting much in the way of the sliced steaks, but it turned out pretty damn good in the taste department. There is true and proper searing done on the surface of the beef leaving the inside succulent medium rare. The ponzu sauce didn't overpower the natural flavor of the beef which was filled with yummy fats in the meat. This is quite a pleasant surprise and I would feel inclined to order it again if I do come back.

On the whole, this was a pretty good experience at Z'en. A re-visit in the future would definitely not be out of the question.