La Zi Ji Crunch from KFC

I haven't had the local KFC in a while and was surprised at the quality of the chicken. It's actually decent. 😬 This was their limited time la zi ji (辣子鸡) styled fried chicken with dried chilli, a bit of Sichuan peppercorn and I noticed sesame seeds. The mala-esque flavour was there albeit moderated for the mass market. It's not a bad rendition. It's just not so spicy. Jollibee's spicy chicken and the McSpicy packs more heat. 

Revisiting Suukee Coffee

Let's start this entry with a date and a rant. We were here 24 Jan 2026 in the morning grabbing breakfast.

Not a fortnight back, there were social media posts about Suukee Coffee's CNY limit time items. Like their orh nee bak kua toast and orange kopi o which I was kinda looking forward to. And the sambal carbonara chee cheong fun. They were out of the orh nee bak kua toast today and CNY is still 24 days away.

The CNY promo started more than a month from the actual event and they ran out of bak kua in two weeks? 🤔 Laughably, I even see the unimaginatively over-abused word 'viral' used on them. 

From my lens...

• they suffer conflicting information on their opening hours
• depend on "crowdsourcing" to share their menu online instead of providing their own
• aren't exact responsive when you message them
• it would be nice if they'd indicated somewhere that some things are lunch only instead of needing us to find out from the ordering kiosk

Some priorities just aren't there.

End of rant.

That orange kopi o, didn't expect them to serve them hot. Nice.

Love the matcha orh nee toast. Nice green tea flavour with the creaminess from the yam puree.

OG orh nee toast also not bad. It's the one you can taste the yam the most.

Decent spam omelette toast...spam's kinda small here.

What's great about eggs here (at least for me) was that they crack them for you. Just like Ya Kun. But the eggs we got today were watery. So unlike Ya Kun, they don't discard the poorly done ones.

One week later......

Managed to get their orh nee bak kua toast this time round. I like the sweet smoky flavour from the bak kua that came through even though that meant that the orh nee was mostly relegated to just a creamy texture in the background.

Matcha butter toast was not bad. Wished the butter was bigger/more distributed.

Finally got to try this sambal carbonara chee cheong fun. First thought that came to mind was the lao gan ma chee cheong fun from Surrey Hills. That one was better. This didn't taste as nuanced and packed less heat though I wouldn't mind coming back for them. No it didn't taste anything like carbonara.

Got a curry chicken kolo mee. The curry needed salt. From this, one could surmise that Suukee either i) had no idea what they were serving ii) are poor judges of whether food was delicious. Or perhaps both.

There was just about enough for the noodles to soak them up. Those tau pok in the curry might have been thrown in at the last minute because they were dry-ish inside and did not absorb the curry at all. The rendition of curry chicken kolo mee from Traditional Sarawak Kolo Mee beats this hands down.

Orange kopi o ice's not bad.

Some new stuff from Murugan Idli Veg. Restaurant

At Murugan Idli Veg. Restaurant (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九)  during lunch to check out some of the new-er items on their menu. I don't know when they were introduced but we noticed them from our last visit.

The reason why we were here at lunch instead of the usual breakfast timing was because their vegetable briyani is only available from 11am.

It's pretty good. Savoury with warm spices and pepper with bits of vegetables like green peas, string beans, tomato, nuts and if I wasn't mistaken, some paneer. Flavourful yet not heavy. It's a single portion per order for this one. Why did I mention it? Because some briyani come in big assed portions that can feed two. 

Came with sambar, korma, raita and some kesari. Sambar was delicious.

The other new item on their menu was their kizhi dosa. From what I found after some brief search, kizhi translates into pouch/parcel/bundle in Tamil/Malayalam. So this was a parcel-ed dosa wrapped in banana leaf and subsequently steamed. They even have an IG reel showing how it's cooked.

Kinda similar to a banjir prata with the gravy soaked in and all. Obviously there was none of the crisp like the regular ones have. There was something between the layers of dosa which I couldn't identify though. Anyways, this one was pretty hefty. Not bad tasting. 

Bona Aroma, Commonwealth Crescent Food Centre

Bona Aroma (#02-66 Commonwealth Crescent Food Centre, 31 Commonwealth Crescent) was another one of those stalls at Commonwealth Crescent Food Centre I've noticed numerous times and kept reminding myself I should give their food a try.

Never happened until recently when I noticed that there's a ketupat rendang which I've never had before. 

Tasted as good as it looked. There's mutton rendang (relatively tender lamb), sambal goreng, an egg and serunding all over some ketupat. This was a medley of savoury, sweetness and heat from the sambal and creamy nuttiness from the rendang. Paru was an add on. Not bad, I enjoyed this. Even though I wasn't getting any aroma from the ketupat.

Josh's Grill, 313 Somerset

We've eaten at Josh's Grill once at Bugis a few years back. Food was decidedly decent. This was our first time at their 313 branch (#B2-15 to 19, 313@Somerset, 313 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6235 0594). Menu seemed a little different from the last time.

There's butter beer - tasted like root beer with melted vanilla ice cream. Non-alcoholic if anyone was seriously wondering.

Tomato soup's not bad. Texture was velvety creaminess and flavour's tangy from the tomatoes. I kinda enjoyed it.

Nice tasting oysters with garlic butter. My only gripe was that these were pretty puny. I could fit 3 of them in my mouth.

Something called cheesy melts fried chicken cutlet - basically fried chicken cutlet with melted cheese. Said cheese was brought out separately in a cast iron pan still bubbling and poured over the fried chicken when they served it. Nice.

Josh's Grill has a series of steaks in their menu under J's Steaks. 250g served on a hot plate with a lightly sizzling pool of what I initially thought was butter. Presumably, J is for Josh rather than the clown prince of crime. 🤡

That stuff bubbling on the plate didn't exactly taste like butter. Don't know what it was. Ribeye has low marbling so it's edible, not great. Meat seemed barely salted. What's not good was the creamed spinach. Those were really fibrous and chewy

Yang zhou fried rice from Jumboree

Back at Jumboree. Got the yang zhou fried rice from the Jumbo zi char stall today. Since it's by Jumbo, one gets real char siew instead of crab sticks or worse - fake crab sticks. It's a competent plate though a little more oily than I prefer. Flavour's decent but nothing in particular was outstanding.