Noodle Doodle, Tanjong Pagar Plaza

Heard about this ban mian stall (#02-04, Tanjong Pagar Plaza). Here's a bowl of dry and spicy mee hoon kueh. Sambal was pretty good tasting and packed a nice heat. Not bad tasting bowl as a whole except for a couple of things. The sweetness to heat ratio in the sambal bugged me and it was a little more sweet than I generally prefer. Prawns were also a little mushy and I did not like that.  

Jungle, Ann Siang Hill

New contemporary Thai food (10 Ann Siang Hill, tel : +65 8389 2258) just across the street from The Corner Grill.

Great medley of flavours and textures going on from their rendition of yum som o; pomelo, candied coconut, toasted cashews, slices of green chilli, kaffir lime leaves, mint, sugar and dried shrimps tossed together. They were all rounded up with a refreshingly sweet lime-y dressing. Nice. 👍🏼

Menu described this as lamb breast skewer. We didn't actually know which cut of lamb was used but it was meat that was layered with fat and it was tender and...just fucking good. The meat was topped with a spicy nutty sauce, pickled onions and mint which lent their dimensions to the already delicious meat. We had seconds after the first skewer disappeared in short order. 👍🏼

Crab yellow curry pretty nice. Gravy was creamy and redolent with coconut milk. Plenty of shredded crab in it.

Also loved their grilled barramundi with something described as laksa nam jim; the latter a base of sweetness and lime with fish sauce and heat layered with mint, onions and other stuff. I didn't taste anything that reminded me of laksa leaf though. Fish was of good quality and tender. Nice. 👍🏼

Some rice to go with all those delicious flavours.

Grilled banana cake and caramel with a scoop of pretty kickass coconut ice cream. Liked the lightly crisp surface on the cake. Yummy.

Kamala Restaurant, Buffalo Road

Kamala Restaurant (662 Buffalo Road, #01-16, tel : +65 6299 1144) used to be known as Sri Kamala Vilas. They rebranded years ago and I never realized that until the past couple of years. It's been that long since we last ate here. I'm venturing a guess that the shop had changed hands to its current owner which had decided to rebrand from Sri Kamala Vilas - a name which has been in this location for easily three decades. Just speculating.

Anywaysss, that's their rava thosai with ghee and egg. Latter's folded in the thosai. There's also curry leaves, peppercorn, bits of onion and shreds of carrot. The last of which was not something I expected to find. This was pretty peppery. Reminded me some of the pepper thosai from Al Mubin. Here I was just expecting literally just rava thosai with ghee and egg.

Tried their new garlic butter thosai because it sounded like it might be good. We were thinking just chopped garlic and butter toasted in the pastry. I mean...garlic and butter, what could go wrong?

Couldn't taste any butter. There appeared to some sort of garlicky sweet sambal in the thosai so it was also sweet and spicy on top of being garlicky. Did not expect this at all. Wouldn't say that I disliked it but wouldn't get it again because the sweetness had derailed an expectation looking forward to just garlic and butter.

Masala tea's milky, not creamy. A little more sweet than I prefer and the masala's a little thin. Note to self : Gotta siew dai it the next time.

Tampoi Ah B Wanton Noodles (淡杯阿B全蛋云吞面), Upper Boon Keng Road

Been hearing about Ah B Wanton Noodles (#01-22, 5 Upper Boon Keng Road) lately so decided to check them out. They're located in the same coffeeshop as Huong Pho. I was thinking that what I had looked different from pictures I've seen online. It was only when I was 2/3 though that I realized that I didn't get any fried lard in my bowl!

Anyways, this was the medium sized white bowl mee kia with chilli. Decent tasting overall with some lardiness and a nice bit of heat from their chilli sauce. Pretty obvious that their noodles were of a higher quality than the run of the mill. Had a nice bite and wasn't starchy or clumped together. Didn't think it was outright impressive as texture went. I'm gonna go with a not bad for this one.

Ordered a bowl of mala wanton on the side. Gotta say I enjoyed the mala sauce. Wanton stuffings were...pretty ordinary. The wrapping was soft and loose. The skins were tearing and sloughing off even when I tried to pick them up with a spoon. Char siew tasted just like how it looked.

Braised pork set from Tonkatsu by Ma Maison

I was lured into Tonkatsu by Ma Maison at Tiong Bahru Plaza by the picture on their menu ☝🏼.

The actual braised pork didn't look quite like the one on their ad. I was imagining sometime like kakuni or the rafute from Nirai Kanai.

Meat's relatively tender. Some cuts more than the others though as a whole, they weren't as much as I hoped they would be. Broth wasn't the sweet dark soy sauce/sake/mirin type. There's something in the flavour that was familiar which I couldn't put a finger to and that bugged me. I suspect it's ginger but I'm not sure. 🤔

Pork's pretty good with some mustard. 

Revisiting Kimukatsu

Back at Kimukatsu. Check out those radioactive green pickled daikon. ☢️

Tried the cheese one today. Couldn't tell what cheese it was but it was cheesy tasting. 😬 Wasn't bad but I'd rank the garlic flavoured one above this.

Had some kaki fry on the side. Oyster was delicious. Clean oyster flavour, meaty and moist under the crispy panko.

Not into their menchi katsu - they're made with a mixture of minced beef and pork and ended up tasting like neither. Will not get these again.

The Coconut Club, New Bahru

We ate at Coconut Club years ago back when they were at Ann Siang Hill. Never thought much of them and the status quo for that impression has never changed but constantly been challenged by the amount of good press they get. So we decided a second chance was in order. I recalled reading about the fried quail nasi lemak at this New Bahru (#01-14, 46 Kim Yam Road, tel : +65 9030 0634) outlet but apparently it's a limited time item which no one bothered to elaborate. Or maybe I just overlooked the memo.

Similar vibes to Ann Siang though I find the name tag Danny condescending and curt. Not an attitude I'd closely associate with words like 'hospitable' or 'friendly'. Reeks of pretence. To be fair, the rest of the crew wasn't that way. They were friendly, earnest even. Now that that's out of the way......

Teh halia's not bad. Milky, sweet and gingery. What could have been easily done better though, was the temperature the tea was served. This was unusually lukewarm instead of hot. And it wasn't at the higher end of the lukewarm spectrum even.

Moment of truth - it's not bad. It's much better than what we had at Ann Siang and we were quite sure it did not taste the same from that time because I pay attention to how much nasi lemak gets salted and they weren't great with that there. This one was adequately salted so the flavour came through pretty well. Actually, the first place that popped in my head after getting a couple of spoons was Lee Wee & Brothers. 😂 Fish was exceptional. Fresh and freshly fried. Love their thick kecap manis.

What's odd here was that we didn't get sambal and had to ask for it. No biggie. Their sambal was nice. On top of the heat, it had a pleasant natural tasting sweetness.

I'm making an inevitable comparison of their seafood laksa to the one at Wild Coco because we had that not long back. Coconut Club's rendition appeared to be smoother and maybe even sweeter. Not as gao. That being said, it wasn't bad. We cleaned the bowl. But in the simple exercise of presenting myself with a choice of either, I'd pick Wild Coco.

Prawns were meaty and tasty. Half the clams in this bowl weren't even open. 🤔  

Queic by Olivia, Scotts Square

A new outpost of Queic by Olivia has opened in town (#B1-25, 6 Scotts Road, tel : +65 8068 5545). I remember getting their smaller sized signature Basque cheese cake from the original stall at Kreta Ayer previously and learnt that the cheese to crust ratio weren't ideal. So we wanted to get a slice here at the original size we had first experienced at Olivia.

Hell yeah it was as good as we remembered it. Though I noticed that the menu now states the ingredient to include goat's cheese rather than blue cheese. Not that it mattered. 😬

Their Stilton cheese cake beckoned with its blurry blue lattices.

Love it. Notice that it was a slice of Stilton over the interior of whipped Stilton creameux that's layered with a brown hazelnut...I don't know what to call that. Skin? Those and some sable cookies with their home made jam. Nice! 👍🏼

Mui Kee (妹記) at their new spot in Shaw Centre

Mui Kee has relocated from their original location facing Pacific Plaza to the inside of the building (#03-09/10/11 Shaw Centre, 1 Scotts Road,  tel : +65 8940 3924). In the spot where Koal/Lemak Boys used to be.

Never noticed this before but there is a snow chrysanthemum red date tea which was pretty good.

Got ourselves a couple of things we liked from the previous visits like their kanpachi yu sheng.

And delicious pan fried bean curd skin.

Tried the dry threadfin belly noodle. One can choose the sauce so I got the beef brisket gravy - which disappointingly didn't flavour the bowl much. Fish was tender, crumbly and filled with a number of sharp bones I wasn't expecting. Liked that the texture of their noodles were thin and pretty wiry; unfortunately it also had the lye water flavour. I didn't dislike as a whole. It just wasn't as enjoyable as I was imagining.

Pig's trotter noodles from (New) MacPherson Minced Meat Noodles (麦波申肉脞麵)

Back to try the pig's trotter noodles from (New) MacPherson Minced Meat Noodles we noticed from the last times. Those trotters were pretty decent with relatively tender slip off the bone meat. Tenderness varied on different parts but I thought in general, more tender would have made them more impressive. It's too bad the braising flavour didn't permeate the meat as much or otherwise this would have been awesome.

A dinner at Ananda Bhavan

Getting dinner at Ananda Bhavan. Snacks, chaat and thosai.

I've been wanting to try banana baji for a while and haven't been successful. For one, I don't know much places to get them and the other reason would be that they don't seem to be available all the time. Finally got some here. These weren't so much bananas than they were plantains coated in gram flour and deep fried. There's no sweetness and the texture was like potato or yam. So not something like goreng pisang like I imagined.

Got a serving of podi idly. These rice cakes were freshly steamed. Piping hot and you could taste that they had just gotten off the steamer just recently. The podi wasn't as aromatic nor as exciting in flavour as those we've had in Podi & Poriyal, Komala Vilas, Murugan Idli Shop or MTR. Probably not the fairest of comparisons but it was what it was. 

Rava ghee masala thosai - yummy this one. Thanks to the ghee, the pancake was both crisp and buttery. Not to mention also the delicious array of chutneys on the side. Left one has mint and I think ginger. Love the orange one.

The dahi puri made it to our table last because of a couple of screw ups. They gave us a samosa chaat the first time which we had returned. The follow up was a dahi puri that had coriander which I had been explicit on their omission. Third time was fortunately a charm for them. Anyways, I love these things.