Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger : Year Fourteen

Fourteen years of somewhat random choices of eats shaped by circumstance. Does it end here? まだ まだ!

Of lemons, shirasu and soba...

...and avocados. Wanted to have another go at this before it gets rotated out. I hope it somehow makes it onto the permanent menu though. Such refreshing broth.

Koji Sushi Bar, Raffles City

Have heard about Koji Sushi Bar since their early days at Far East Square. This was their other shop in town (#03-28A Raffles City, 252 North Bridge Road, tel : +65 6493 0122) which also has been around for a bit.

The menu's mainly sushi, sashimi, donburi, small plates and there are options for omakase. The seasonal items or specials go onto board.

Enjoyed their ankimo. Their ponzu jelly wasn't particularly intense so one tasted mostly ankimo. Perhaps that's how they do things here.

We ordered their tokubetsu don which came with a salad and miso soup.

The tokubetsu don from what they mentioned are on limited servings per day. There's a variety of fish, ikura, uni, tororo and an egg. Cuts of the fish were small and so was the portion of uni. Would have liked it better if it were served with vinegared rice than the regular one they used for this.

Braised pork rice from Kim Kitchen Braised Duck

Tar pow-ed braised pork rice from Kim Kitchen Braised Duck. The braised pork in question was pork belly - with a caramelized spiced soy sauce layer. Not the "melt in your mouth" kind of pork that many birdbrains are wont to parrot. It has a bite - and a nice sweetness from the caramelized sauce. I added pork intestines to this bowl. The only problem I had was that there was too little sauce for the rice and that rice was the dry and beady kind. Gotta ask for more sauce the next time.

Another Jew Kit

We've had the chicken rice from Jew Kit more than a couple of times now so it was time we gave some of their cze char items a go. These guys were easily as expensive as Sin Hoi Sai.

Got sui gao soup. Not the kind of dumplings I liked. Texture wasn't so nice because there were no prawns or any water chestnut that I could tell. Definitely not one of the better sui gao around. Soup wasn't fantastic either.

Their lychee sweet and sour pork came in balls. Sauce had some lychee flavour but was otherwise not one of the better ones I've had. IMNSHO. Lychees were good though but I wished that they had included more of them. This rendition of the pork was soggy. I'm not sure if it was because of delivery or they were just that way.  I suspect the latter.

Roselle prawns. Nice. Never had prawn balls done with such a sauce before. Would have been more crisp if they were freshly served but the roselle sauce made up for it. Such fruity sweetness....oh, pretty sure there's a lot of sugar in there but that didn't stop it from being tasty. And expensive too.

I liked their sambal kangkong. Their sambal rendition was one that found agreeable. Reminded me of those I had from a long time ago. But the portions were pretty small. #nostalgia Great pairing with the white rice though. Speaking of which, their rice wasn't dry - enough moisture yet beady.

Roasted chicken from Tiong Bahru Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice

So it took us three years to come back to this stall. Got the roasted chicken option this time round just to compare. It's not one of the better roasted chicken I reckon. Not a bad one but not impressive as well. Maybe I'll try the fried lemon chicken one the next time or just stick to the boiled chicken. Today's salted vegetable soup was piping hot and delicious. Note to self : no need for their chilli the next time, dark soy sauce is good enough.

Skirt & Dirt, Tiong Bahru Food Centre

A new stall Skirt & Dirt (#02-66 Tiong Bahru Food Centre, 30 Seng Poh Road) has opened up in the food centre selling burgers. The selection's very curated - if you catch my drift. They've a cheese skirt beef burger that features a crusty "skirt" of cheese on the burger. That crusty cheese was nice and salty. Meat patty was an okay effort but it's basic and not particularly beefy. Nothing that I'll be looking forward to. 

If I had to compare the meat, I'd say that Hammee's does it better.

Lolla this year

It's been a while. Every time we come here to eat, it feels like they're more expensive than the last time. Or we're paying for more food. Or both. But so far, we've always walked away happy.

Tonight was the first time we've been seated in their pretty dungeon in the basement. The past two visits have always been at the counter.

From the specials - burrata with grilled soursop. I liked it. The grilled soursop with all its sweet tanginess took the place of what might have normally been balsamic vinegar. And it worked.

We've always liked their squid ink pudding with uni. It's a little more chilled than what we remember today. More chilled means less wobbly and flavour is also less pronounced. When life gives you overly chilled squid ink pudding, just wait it out for a bit.

Patagonian prawn tartare - nice sweet prawns. The green stuff in the middle was a dill something and those strips were preserved orange peel. The latter tasted like Chinese preserved plums.

That's their steamed crab lasagna. Lasagna with Hokkaido scallop mousse (I thought it was egg white) and chunky crab meat in between along with some lemony butter sauce. This was so good. Lots of chunky crab. There was an almost delicate but very present crustacean flavour.

Nicely done rack of lamb. No nonsense marinate to the meat, just salt and pepper like we like it. The brown stuff tasted like some jus reduction. The blob was parsnip puree. Think it had cream and vanilla in it. Loved it.

Some crusty duck fat fried potatoes.

And then we chocolate-ed ourselves out with their steamed chocolate pudding. Rich stuff.

Penang radish cake from Malaysia Chiak at Great World

Got this radish cake (char kueh kak) from the Penang Carrot Cake stall at Malaysia Chiak. I can definitely see the differences from the local variety (chai tow kuey). This plate had a lot more crispy bits of lard, plenty of chopped spring onions and plenty of bean sprouts. The local rendition doesn't have as much fried lard, usually a token handful of spring onions and no bean sprouts.

The radish cake were shaped into triangles wedges. Hmmmmm... it's not bad though.

Ru Ji Kitchen (如記小厨) (the one next door)

That's right, this was the stall next door (#02-29 Holland Drive Market & Food Centre, 44 Holland Drive) from the Ru Ji that sells fishball noodles. This one sells ba chor mee. It tasted very similar to the mee pok from the fishball noodle stall. Apart from the mushrooms, minced pork and vinegar, it might have been the same. 

There was something else that seemed missing. Can't put a finger to what that might have been but I think I like the fishball noodles better.

35 days whisky dry aged Black Angus ribeye from Collin's

We have eaten at Collin's once. In a coffeeshop stall. Chicken chop and pasta thingy. Chicken chop had soggy skin and the pasta wasn't salted. Shitty food and I'm beyond mincing words here. We decided to give the restaurant outfit (#B1-106/107 Great World, 1 Kim Seng Promenade) of Collin's another chance because some people have insisted it was good and maybe it was just that particular stall that had lousy food. Here we were and that's their 35 day whisky dry aged Black Angus ribeye.

What's whisky dry aged? Haven't a clue. The meat was supposed to be tender and better flavoured as the ageing should have done but it wasn't well flavoured because the marbling wasn't so good in the first place and fat is flavour. What greatly disturbed me were a few things.

• Why the fuck did they al taglia the steak without asking?
• The wait staff did not understand the word 'marinate'. We had to cycle through two of them before someone gathered the initiative to ask. I find it shocking that a restaurant selling meat failed to answer a query on marinade because they didn't understand what the word meant.
• Business too cheap to educate their staff on what's on menu and then selling shit that your wait staff have no fucking clue about.
• Salting and peppering the meat is apparently not a thing here
• So the restaurant thinks they're in the league to work with dry aged meat and didn't think it was worth the effort to hire people who know how to handle the meat? Come on, trim the bloody sinews away.
• Do away with the fancy tile plates. The big steak boys don't do it. Fancy plating implies that you're overcharging not because of the quality.

Hmmm....the peach Earl Grey had one piece of canned peach. Being sweet as it is with so much ice meant to me that there's a truckload of sugar in there. Din Tai Fung upstairs has better ice Earl Grey. 

Ham & cheese toastie from The Providore

Finally got to try the ham and cheese from Providore (7 Raffles Place, tel : +65 6533 1352). Not what I had imagined but I liked it. The bread was generously buttered and that helped. Nothing like the hard sourdough from their club sandwich. I was initially apprehensive about the tomato and pepper relish but it turned out almost fruity and I didn't mind them at all. 

Finished up with their chilli hot chocolate. I've been trapped in the repetition of getting this (and maybe a couple of times of their masala chai latte) because I don't know what else is better or worth drinking here. Maybe I should try asking the next time if they can make this spicer! :D

Healthy Soba IKI, One Raffles Place

Found out about this shop (#04-47 One Raffles Place, 1 Raffles Place, tel : +65 6438 6022) from social media not too long ago. Apparently they've been around for years but I haven't heard of them until recently. What appealed to me from their menu was that they had a variety of cold soba - something this country has a dearth of considering that we're under sweltering heat most of the time.

Got a set which came with one mini rice bowl, a soba and tea. This was the lemon soba from their seasonal menu which I knew I had to get. Shredded chicken, daikon oroshi, some sliced okura and lemon in a chilled tsuyu. Very nice and perfect for the sweltering heat that I was talking about. The broth didn't have a similar smokiness like the one from Tokyo Soba and the lemon didn't match the citrus fragrance from the sudachi bowl from Keria but hell yeah it was still enjoyable.

Picked the mini rice bowl that had shirasu and avocado for my set. The only rice bowl option that was only available as part of their set and not available for a la carte in normal size (but then again, maybe I should try asking the next time). I also knew I had to get it because shirasu. And maybe avocado too. This was so good. Warm rice with the saltiness from the fish. 

That chilled lemon dashi broth was so enjoyable. 

Miz Japanese Restaurant, Kampong Bahru Road

Miz (17 Kampong Bahru Road, tel : +65 6225 5761) is a hole-in-the-wall-ish Japanese shophouse eatery I was introduced to a year ago. Didn't take any photos then so here's some from a recent revisit. 

The restaurant serves a variety of commonly seen Japanese food here and function somewhat like a diner/izakaya minus the kushiyaki. Minus frills to so one can also understand why their food and beer is very affordable.

They had some aburi otoro on the cheap(er). Not bad actually but I totally didn't understand why they had to include minced ginger on top.  

Miz has surume tempura. If you didn't already know, surume is a Japanese dried marinated squid/cuttlefish snack. It's salted and also sweet from sugars that are added in the preparation. These are tempura-ed versions of them. Enjoyed chewing on these.

Sashimi was not fancy but pretty decent quality. Maguro's not that great but salmon was better than I had imagined. The hamachi came in thick slices. If I had to critique, the hotate were to thinly sliced. The restaurant even agreed to fry the heads of the amaebi for us.

Sweet tamago. 

Their mentaiko mushrooms were yummy. Portobello caps filled with mentaiko mayo that were grilled/broiled. Juicy and umami.

I've gotten cosier with natto in recent times so that's a natto maki there. I think that was vinegared rice they were using in that maki.

Garlic butter udon was kinda nice. The chewy noodles were chilled and the garlic flavour was pretty well moderated.

Wouldn't recommend the curry udon though. Curry's thin. Improved to the point where I found it addictive as a drinkable broth after adding shichimi but I still don't think it made a good curry udon.

Teriyaki chicken was surprisingly tasty. Chicken was the frozen variety and the sauce was very generic teriyaki if you catch my drift - but it wasn't bad.

I like their shishamo. They don't look very fat but they were filled with eggs. The fish was also well salted. Had seconds

Grilled teriyaki squid was a little chewy and for some reasons, a little gingery too. Meat was a little chewy. Didn't enjoy it as much as the chicken.

That's hamachi kama. It's not bad per se but we've definitely had better.

Beer's $5 a mug during happy hours. Sapporo on tap or Orion from bottle.