Nam Nam Noodle Bar, Wheelock Place

Here's a mixed beef pho from Nam Nam Noodle Bar down at the basement of Wheelock Place. Since I have not had pho in Vietnam before, I have no real basis for comparison except for those from the local Vietnamese joints. The broth was disappointing. One could say it was a little bland. Coming from Annam (and by that virtue, Les Amis as well), I had expected better. Sure the tripe was tasty and the miserable portions of sliced beef were nice and pink. But the briskets were rubbery and tough that I couldn't eat them at all. Is this how pho is suppose to taste like?

I would also recommend a pass on their Viet "drip coffee".  It didn't taste anything like it. I'm not sure I could bring myself back again even if I was curious about the bahn mi.

Smoke Shack, Republic Plaza

the New Yorker

I have been wanting to try the sandwiches at Smoke Shack (9 Raffles Place, #B1-06 Republic Plaza, tel : +65 6557 2214) for the longest time. Due to the cosmic alignment of their operating hours and the place that I work, it was impossible for me to. Then chance presented itself one day.

I suppose I had been expecting to be impressed rather than just thinking that they weren't bad. I wouldn't mind eating them again if the opportunity presented, but we weren't left with "I need to come back again and soon".

Honestly, these guys are indeed on of the better sandwich places along with what I remember of Simply Bread. Sadly as well. Brewerkz still takes the cake for their pastrami fillings to date.

the Reuben

Nasi Lemak Kukus, Upper Thomson Road

It's amazing how difficult it can be to find good nasi lemak rice these days. Most vendors today have either succumbed into sloth or subscribed to the religious fear of cholesterol resulting in their food becoming downright bland and /or mediocre.

I'm not saying that Nasi Lemak Kukus (908 Upper Thomson Road, tel : +65 8222 9517) falls in either ends of the spectrum. I think they did a pretty decent job being somewhere favourable in between.

Their rice was moist and fragrant with coconut. They also had a very decent & savoury sayur lodeh and treated the ayam goreng in the correct manner that the meat wasn't overly dried out and fell off the bone with relative ease. I enjoyed their mutton rendang too, though their dry and very chewy paru goreng really wasn't my style at all.

I guess what else was attractive of from them was that we got to serve ourselves (free flow of rice?) what we wanted and there were options for the sides. Their appeal altogether so far has gotten me to drop by twice. But all that came with a cost as well since it didn't cost anything close to cheap for their food. Still I think this stall is doing something in the right direction.

Wok to Walk, La Rambla, Barcelona

We were to an extent, pretty amused by this dinner of Chinese food from a chain stall in Barcelona. Wok to Walk (95 La Rambla, Barcelona, tel : +31 02 06250721) does Chinese stir fried noodles and rice takeouts in those iconic little paper boxes. I don't think that people in China use them too, but I could be wrong. It was for the first time in our lives eating with them.

How this place worked was for the customer to select their choice of carbs from a small variety of noodle type or rice, followed by additional ingredients and then a sauce of choice. The bar of ingredients looked like something from a pizza place, but most if not all Chinese food places don't even provide options with such variety. This did and in a way, was great. Before anyone scoffs at them, we had seen real Chinese cooking videos uploaded by tourist from the streets of Beijing and they cooked exactly like those street hawkers in China!

In any case, the food was actually reasonably tasty. No surprise considering the consistent queue that this joint generated even off the peak meal hours. Their hot sauce was expectedly a little milder than I had in mind, but the options of chilli that one could help themselves with resulted in a respectable heat more fiery than any chilli char kuey teow I've ever had.

I normally avoid faces in photos, but I thought these guys that were sweating behind the bar churning out endless orders of stir fried noodles looked amusingly bored.

Casa Guinart, El Raval, Barcelona

We walked by this location (La Rambla, 95 Barcelona, tel :   93 317 8887) a couple of times and noticed it because it looked notches better than most of the eating places in the vicinity. We remembered it because it was just across from a Chinese food place that looked interesting. Not to mention too that it was located just beside Mercato San Josep where a certain very popular Bar Pinotxo can be found.

The other thing that piqued our interest was the progressive direction of the food which seemed not in abundance around this region. Food that looked a little more fun, welling from traditional roots.

We had some crusty bread rubbed in tomato and olive oil. Fruity from the oil and refreshing from the cold tomatoes that were stained onto the bread. It was a nice refreshing start for a meal.

Grilled squids from House Guinart were excellent. I would have preferred a little more char, but I guess the meat would also have turned out less tender than they would have wanted to serve.

Next came a platter of beans sautéed with diced jamón. The flavors came from probably a splash of vinegar and the smokiness of the ham that was cooked together with the legumes, brought together by some salt.

We were given a rather unusual knife for the food. The sharpened side was the straight side, not the curved. Most of the other people here still used the blunt curved end to cut their food.

We ordered seared chutoro to see how Casa Guinart treated them. The taste was decidedly very oriental with soy being a base note for the flavour. The insides of the tuna belly were fortunately still rare.

The tapas sized house burgers from Casa Guinart looked pretty interesting. Not sure what went into them but they weren't as beefy as I liked and it was probably due to the heavy handed fruity/tart flavour that the makers tried to put in them. I'm thinking it had to do with the onions, grain mustard and possibly the crystalline globules which I hadn't a clue was what. It was all a little too jam like for something that had beef and didn't have enough of the cow as balance.

The only thing that was truly disappointing came in the form of their baby lamb ribs. I was thinking grilled rather than breaded and deep fried since the menu mentioned nothing about how all their food were prepared. It just said baby lamb ribs. The flavour of the lamb were non existent and we were mostly chewing breading off bone that was fried in oil that had been sitting in the fryer for quite a while. We left it mostly untouched. The best part of this dish was their super airy aioli which was for dips.

These guys handled feedback quite graciously and didn't bill us for the lamb

Would I come back? Probably. For some other things that I have yet to try.

Kapadokya, Rambla del Raval, Barcelona

It was a Sunday. Many of the restaurants weren't open and we weren't interested in shops trying to rob us off more money than what it cost back home to eat paella. We had missed the opening hours for Suculent because we found out too late and in the end, ran into this really nice spot for kebabs (Rambla del Raval, 15, Barcelona). Just a 15 second stroll across the road right from our hotel. It seems that the Raval district is filled with kebab joints and I hear that they're pretty good.

It also didn't elude our notice that the name of this joint was a variant of Cappadocia.

The food here was affordably priced, good but not out of this world. Portions were also hearty. Just what we needed after a series of disappointments from the dearth of options. If I would gripe, I only wished that their doner kebabs came with lamb options. But I wouldn't. The juicy köfte was skillfully spiced with enough flavors that didn't threaten the flavour of the lamb. It was such a pity that we only had one meal here and didn't have more time to explore the other similar joints of the neighbourhood.

My first taste of tapas in Barcelona

We stopped by this place, Cerveceria Baviera (La Rambla 127, Barcelona) right in the midst of the Ramblas. Touristy?  Sure, very. Atmospheric as well. Some of their bites were pretty good though. The food was grounded, old school and a tad pricey; but I didn't really have anything else to complain about. They were plenty on the options which was what drew us in initially.

The grilled gambas were very tasty and so were the peppery blood sausages. The deep fried strips of potatoes coiled around shrimps were pretty good too.

Osteria Bancogiro, Campo San Giacometto, Venice

This was our last dinner in Venice before flying the next day to Barcelona and was also unplanned. We were initially at St Peter's Square gawking at the eye widening prices of the Murano glass chandeliers (the diabolic ones were very beautiful!) and decided to let fate handle our dinner as we headed on foot to the Rialto Bridge. Just so that we could tell everyone who asked that we had been there.

Bancogiro (Campo San Giacometto, 122, I-30125 Venice, tel : +39 041 5232061) was one of two that we shortlisted near the Rialto Bridge. The menu looked quite appealing and the proprietors were rather helpful even though they had their hands full in the cicchetti bar. Which was packed and looked very very tempting by the way. Alas, we skipped it and headed upstairs where they were kind enough to seat us before dinner started.

The menu looked more forward thinking in contrast with what they served at the bar which looked more down to earth. Still, the ingredients that they were great and we were really spoilt for choice from all the options.

We decided to start with cuttle fish stuffed with curcuma (a genus of plant where tumeric belongs) spiced ricotta. The flavour of the ricotta stuffings were interesting and contained a hint of what my brain processed to be ginger. Everything else was fine otherwise. What wasn't described on the menu was the mille feuille of sliced eggplant and yoghurt potato mash that served as a bedding for the thinly crisp cuttlefish. The potato mash was awesome!

Antipasto number two was a sea bream tartare and smoked tuna with a raspberry and xérès sauce. The flavours here tasted quite Japanese from the soy and those flower bits that they added on the edges actually provided a "floral tea bouquet". Assuming that one didn't just leave the flowers alone as just decoration. Fish was definitely fresh. Raspberry and xérès sauce was quite tart.

I was not surprised that I didn't get sick of pasta after having them for so many days in a row now. Pasta here was so good. Here's a cocoa fusilli with wild boar ragout, cubed pears and sheep ricotta. The fusilli was pretty tasty with the cocoa curtaining as a background aroma. The pears provided breaks in the umami bed of flavors from the boar ragout, but most of the cheese was lost in translation.

Then, a black tagliatelle with king prawns with sage pesto. While I think I liked this, I also preferred the similar rendition over at Vecio Fritolin where the ink flavour was prominent and the scampi tails were much sweeter.

From the meats, came a pork loin that was described as cooked in low temperature and stuffed with Gorgonzola cheese and nuts. Nuts were probably crushed and mashed into the cheese. I'm not too sure though which type of the blue cheese that they had used. A lot of the saltiness from the Gorgonzola wasn't even present. I felt the meat would have benefited with more salt to taste and a sear for caramelization would have done wonders. 

Tthe scoops of mash they had served with this pork loin were exactly the same yoghurt potato mash that was from their stuffed cuttlefish. Have you ever experienced feeling stuffed and yet wanting to stuff more food into your mouth? It was like that here.

Here's a last dessert for the last dinner in Venice. Of an innocuous looking chestnut muffin in a hot spicy chocolate hazelnut sauce. And the sauce was - wow, packing a respectable heat from the spiciness. Done so in a good way that worked with the rest of the sugars. Since this wasn't anything close to the run of the mill sauce for dessert, I'm entitled to one use of a superlative here. Best dessert spicy sauce ever!

Al Vecio Forner, Dorsodura, Venice

It was only by happenstance (again!) that we came across and had lunch at this osteria (Campo San Vio, Dorsodura 671/A, Venice, tel : +39 041 528 0424). Story went - we were trying to get to a particular water taxi stand to reach a gondola point. That stop happened to be under repairs and we had to go one stop further and then cross a bridge to trek back for a ride which we were getting late for. The gondola ride service was kind enough to postpone our ride to a later timing and we had time for a leisurely lunch. End of story.

The food looked pretty atypical much like we expected when we ordered. I had finally gotten to try the Venetian styled livers which were essentially stewed with onions (heart cloggingly rich and delicious by the way) and grilled polenta. The latter reminded me a little of chai tao kuey. It all tasted fairly homely and basic.

fegato alla veneziana

grilled vegetables

more baccala, three ways

a tiramisu that was much better than the last

The best fritto misto in Venice according to Mark Bittman

If Theseus had to navigate like we had to reach Vecio Fritolin (Calle della Regina 2262 - Sestiere Santa Croce, 30135 | Calle della Regina, Venice, tel : 041 522 28 81) from the hotel via his method through the labyrinth to the minotaur, his ball would have run out of string. Seriously. 

My incompetency with directional mapping in the early dark of Venice's autumn aside, I had discovered this osteria the night before while valiantly trying to navigate my way back to the hotel. The place had for reasons attracted my attention so I walked in and asked for a business card and promptly made reservations the next day after taking a peek at their menu.

candied almonds?

Mark Bittman had once written a number of years ago in NYT that this restaurant (which dates back more than a couple of centuries if what I had read were true) had the best deep fried seafood in Venice. I was pretty sure he hadn't eaten in all of Venice, but the point was not that. It was just that this was an opportunity to put the words of a food channel celebrity to the test and see if we share the same taste. Heh!

To start, we tried their deep fried crab and artichoke which were in season. As tasty as they were, I thought a little salt would have gone ways in making them taste better. No complains about the crispy little crustaceans and vegetable though.

The first of the two pasta we had was an egg spaghetti with baby squids, black cabbage leaves and garlic cream. Venetians are really subtle with the garlic thing. I tasted more of the squid in the sauce. Still, I thought it was pretty good until the next pasta arrived and impressed me off my feet.

Vecio Fritolin's black tagliatelle was an amazing. Redolent with the flavour of squid ink like we've never had in pasta before. Paired with nicely boiled cauliflower and fresh sweet chunks of scampi tail to boot. I'd recommend this in a heartbeat to anyone and I only wished that the portions were double of what they served.

The item to order here as recommended was their platter of deep fried seafood and vegetables. We had noticed that it was on almost every other table. Even on the one just next to ours that freakily ordered exactly the same items as we did. I suppose it was all very decent fried seafood. Again in need of some salt to elevate the flavors. It's also a first time that a large amount of fried stuff I'm eating were babies of the actual seafood.

But anyone that thinks that what they did here is amazing (Mr Bittman!) needs to visit Porta Porta for comparison.

Dessert was a very innocuous but wonderfully robust and creamy saffron creme brulee that I would order again if I ever get the chance to come back.