Even more pasta and pizza from Zazz Pizza

Back at Zazz Pizza much faster than I thought we would. We were offered a couple of shots of grappa on the house at the end of the meal. I wonder if they remembered our faces. 😱

Pleasantly surprised by their pomodoro sauce for their meatballs. There's cheese and garlic flavour in it that mellowed the sour from the tomatoes. Meatballs also had a molten cheesy centre. The meat was marinated for flavour and while it wasn't bad, I'm usually more of a more is less kind of person when it comes to beef.

Pretty good seafood linguine aglio olio there. I'm getting a bit of garlic and something that might have been a savoury seafood stock - I cannot be sure. But we liked it enough to lament that there wasn't enough noodles. Prawns were sweet and mussels were plump. I think the point has been made.

I've been wanting to try their Parma pizza because of those pomegranates that they sprinkled on top. Added some tanginess in that which doesn't happen in most Parma ham pizzas. The crust was exceptional today. I liked how chewy it was beneath the crusty surface. Pizza where I'd gladly finish the cornicione. That's why we keep coming back for their pizzas. 

Chocolate sorbet to finish (and affogato too!). The texture was just a little bit creamy and didn't feel so sorbet to me though. 

Xi'an Famous Food (西安名吃), Toa Payoh Central

Not to be confused with Xi'an Famous Foods. This one (#01-518, 190 Toa Payoh Lorong 6, tel : +65 8693 8921) is singular. 😂 We've known of their existence for a while and I have been wanting to give them a try since.

We had pumpkin millet porridge. Gruel-like consistency with a light pumpkin and grain sweetness. Not bad if you're looking for something less intensely flavoured or if one is under the weather.

One of the things I wanted to try from them was their rou jia mo (肉夹馍). This one was stuffed with pork stir fried with cumin and onions. The bun had a dense and dry 包 like texture similar to those from Huang Tu Di Xi’An Delights (黄土地西安小吃) and the defunct Xun Qin Ji (寻秦记) than the pastry types at Qin Ji Rougamo (秦記肉夹馍). Loved the cumin-y meaty bite in the strips of pork. I'd eat this again.

The other dish I was curious about was their biang biang mian. The flat noodles looked like they were made from one single long strip. Noodle texture was a little chewy.

The tomato sauce made it tangy and the chilli didn't add much heat. Not even after I put in a couple more spoons of them but those had a nice nutty aroma. Wouldn't mind eating this again but I'll be looking forward to try something else first the next time.

Revisiting Old House (老屋)

It's been like half a decade since we've last/first visited Old House. We've always wanted to come back for another bowl of their white lor mee but look at what we ended up with now that we are. 煮炒. The vibe of the restaurant seemed to be different from what we remembered as well.

Ordered coffee. Drinkable stuff if you want local coffee here.

Their stir fried eggs and garlic chives were nice. I meant it was one of those 'I could eat just this with steamed rice' kind of nice.

Don't really know what's the proper name for this dish but their menu calls it creamy pork chop. Or 奶香豬扒 if you're reading it in Chinese. It's not creamy and I think milk powder might have been used. Kinda like the buttery pork ribs that a lot of people tend to order at a particular stall run by two chefs. Haha. This one was not bad tasting.

There's charcoal tofu in oyster sauce - black on the outside, grey on the inside. Menu mentions that the tofu is made in house. Not a bad tofu dish.

We were surprised to see truffle roast duck on the menu like what a number of the atas Chinese restaurants are doing in recent years. This one was just a little bit truffle-y. Meat was relatively tender and the roast was pretty decent considering that these guys aren't roast specialists. It's one of those dishes which was mai hiam buay pai.

Those sweet curried crumbles from the pork chops above were pretty damn addictive with rice. Gotta have rice with all these dishes.

Chilli messy and fatty at Tiong Bahru Lee Hong Kee Cantonese Roasted

I asked for fatty char siew this time at Lee Hong Kee. First time I've ever specified actually and it's better than the regular char siew that they normally give if you didn't tell them. Went a little drizzle happy with their chilli sauce there. Heh!

A Noodle Story, Guoco Tower

A Noodle Story has a stall now at the basement of Guoco Tower (#B2-32 Guoco Tower, 1 Wallich Street). The Amoy Food Centre stall is still undergoing renovations I hear. I wanted to eat this again to see if my views of them had changed. This was the medium sized bowl - I don't remember what size it was that I had previously. The first thing that I missed was those fried prawns wound in potato strips. It was replaced with a regular battered prawn. 😢

The bowl is built for maximizing umami. The thing that had gotten to me a little was the sweetness in the sauce of the noodles that I wished wasn't there. But it's their sauce. Otherwise I think I'm understanding it a little better. Not much has changed - their noodle texture was still wiry as I liked them. Those delicious wantons in soup were packed with meat and shrimp - flavoured with sesame oil and I thought I detected a hint of ginger. Soup was also not bad tasting.

More mazesoba-ing at Menya Kokoro

Has been a while since we last ate at Menya Kokoro.

Don't bother with the curry croquette. It was sweet and tasted more like pumpkin than curry. The order came with two croquette but we only had one which was curry. The other was the regular croquette. Probably a mistake but we didn't really like it and it wasn't worth the feedback.

Triple cheese mazesoba was good. Pretty cheesy. I'd eat this again.

Truffle mazesoba had ramen for noodles. The truffle flavour came from truffle puree and with that expectation set, it's also not bad tasting. I liked how the sharpness from negi kept it from being monotonous.

Since we had leftover sauce from both bowls, we folded in the rice together. Truffle triple cheese rice! Umai! Gotta try it to know it.