Getting (Park) Benched. This is the end...

...for the moment. They're gonna be closed for renovations and the last weekend was their last service. Word from them was that the menu is probably gonna be changed when they reopen. So it might be a last chance at what they have on menu. Until then, no more PBD.

I've been wanting to try their double cheeseburger. Not two stacked patties like one would normally think but across a French sub roll. There's American cheese, lettuce, tomato, bread & butter pickles and a burger special sauce which might not have been special but didn't get in the way of the other ingredients.

I liked it. Should have come for this sooner. Loved that the nicely charred beef patty stood out in the sandwich amid the other ingredients. 

Their roast chicken BLT was unexpectedly refreshing for a sandwich - roast chicken, seaweed tartar, bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado and lemon aioli in a sesame potato bun. Liked their seaweed tartar and that most of the salt came from the bacon.

Will be looking forward to them reopening again - whenever that might be.

Lombardo's, Duxton Road

Lombardo's (15 Duxton Road, tel : +65 6970 9470) from Amsterdam opened here in late 2019. Made a name for themselves offering Singapore's most expensive burger for $250 a pop for a limited time - wagyu, foie gras, lobster, freshly shaven Italian truffle and caviar between 24k gold buns. That sounded ostentatiously vulgar even as I typed it. 

That episode is now recent history. I came to try another limited time burger that they came up with. Something with durian.

These were their crab croquettes. I normally wouldn't have bothered but noticed the picture on the menu that featured the innards. Was packed with crab meat. We asked and they confirmed so we ordered. If you asked me, these were crab cakes rather than croquette. Not bad. Nicely fried and not overly greasy.

Picture on top was taken from their site for their durian burger. I wouldn't say that it's a burger that'll normally make me do a double take but the durian intrigued me.

This was how it looked without 美图. Pickles and tomatoes were underneath the patty - a patty which was decent and short of outstanding. Black Tap is better but I do like their buttered sesame buns.

What I assumed to be the durian puree/sauce wasn't as plentiful as the product picture suggested. But it smelled right. Definitely durian taste in there and it did not taste weird at all with the beef patty. The flavour wasn't overpowering or even very strong but there was enough of it that you knew it was there.

I think most of their burgers look similar. This one was lamb with goat's cheese. Not bad. No sauce for me next time. Nothing special about their special sauces just like everyone else's.

Lime zest fries were okay-ish too. It had that flavoured crusty surface that tasted like twister fries - with the lime zest of course. 

Revisiting Jia Wang Cafe (佳旺)

As happenstance would have it, a consecutive sambal fried rice dinner. This time from Jia Wang Cafe. Since the last was just the day before, I had to compare. I thought the sambal flavour was pretty similar so it's a tie with that. Lao You Ji's rendition has little shrimps that this one doesn't but this one has ikan bilis. The char siew bits also seemed a lot finer here so one won't be getting much of texture from those here. On the whole, pretty good. Loved the molten yolked 荷包蛋. That's an add on.

The mui fan (烩饭) was a bore though. There's decently quality ingredients but those couldn't save it from the bland gravy. I guess this would be a measure of how their hor fun would taste like and we won't be getting those for sure. Hillman Restaurant still takes the cake for this dish for now.

Tried their black pepper sliced fish. Not a bad rendition if I might say. Pretty generous with the fish slices in spite of appearance and they did a savoury pepper sauce that I found agreeable and wasn't gloopy.

Revisiting Lao You Ji (老友記)

Tried Lao You Ji's sambal fried rice this time round. Not too bad methinks. There were bits of real char siew and little shrimps in it. Sambal had a bit of heat. 

We ordered their deep fried prawns (炸虾球) thinking it might be good. Was disappointed when they served the dish after seeing the horrifyingly thick batter. We ate the prawns after scraping those off. Some of the meat were tender while others were a little dried out. This put into perspective the type/quality of fried prawns which I've never given much thought to before and made me appreciate the rendition at Sin Hoi Sai so much more. This was a bad call.

That's steamed egg with chunks of century eggs and bits of salted egg yolk. A triple egg steamed egg dish if you would. For some reasons, I was thinking that this might be like the one at Uncle Sim but I guess it just wasn't. Didn't taste bad but we also couldn't find anything outstanding about it.

Revisiting Ting Heng Seafood Restaurant

Here's us back at Ting Heng Seafood to try more of their dishes. Before the food, I want to air some thoughts. They were out of some of the items on the menu which we only knew about when we asked. Would have been nice if they would inform us. No biggie.

What's worse was that they processed a dish which we had ordered where they didn't have all the ingredients. While the crowd they had to deal with might be a reason that they've forgotten, I expected better since these guys aren't new to the business. But maybe, it is because they aren't new that they're this way. Who knows?

End of rant.

This was supposed to be chicken and pig's liver in claypot. Until the dish was served and we realized that the livers weren't in and we asked that they admitted that they had run out of pig's livers. Not exactly an ingredient that I would expect an eatery to run out of barring poor planning. We were more disturbed by the fact that they never bothered informing us. We wouldn't have ordered this haphazardly chopped up boney chicken dish otherwise. Dish was garlic-ky, savoury and didn't taste bad. Just a lot of bones in the chicken.

Tried their steamed scallops and tofu. We've had something similar at Yuet Lai Shun in Hong Kong a couple years back. Yuet Lai Shun did it better. The scallops here were sweet and the tofu was quite nice but the sauce that made the dish had ginger which marred the experience for me. I only wanted the black bean sauce experience.

The one item I really liked this time was their Hokkien fried rice. It's similar to the one we've previously had at Tian Tian Seafood. This one had fish and kailan which the rendition at Tian Tian didn't. The sauce was much lesser but it had a more intense flavour. Gripe? This was a serving for two persons. Supposedly. $15. Kinda pricey and portions were kinda small for two.

The Hokkien fried rice was good with their cut chilli's though.

Revisiting Jing Hua Xiao Chi (京华小吃)

It's been years since we were last here at Jing Hua Xiao Chi (京华小吃). We're glad to find out that their 锅贴 were still delicious and of a standard above many.

They've introduced cheese and rosemary 锅贴 into the menu. These were actually quite nice. One can definitely taste both the ingredients in the pot stickers which didn't overshadow the stuffings. I'll put these under the same class as their regular 锅贴.

I remember liking their blanched bean sprouts in minced meat sauce. While I'm sure the taste hasn't changed, they didn't seem to be as good anymore. It's me, not them

They have an edible fried rice. Not something they're good or even decent at. While the they have ingredients like lup cheong/or was it bak kwa and edamame which many fried rice don't, the flavour was unimpressively bland. Didn't even look forward to finishing it.

Tried their spicy and sour noodles which was their soup thrown together with noodles. It's neither very spicy nor sour until one has zhng-ed it up with extra chilli oil, vinegar and pepper. Then the soup becomes delicious. Not a fan of their soft noodles.