Quackhead with sesame bagel from Two Men Bagel House

Two Men Bagel House ( 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十, 十一, 十二, 十三, 十四, 十五, 十六, 十七, 十八, 十九) have a few duck bagels going on for their specials in March. This was Quackhead in sesame bagel from the Tanjong Pagar shop.

The ingredient list was smoked duck breast, apple arugula salad, candied pecans, horseradish creme and Gouda. While it didn't taste like the combination of flavour I imagined, I did end up enjoying it. Especially so for the sweet candied pecans. Did not taste horseradish anything or the cheese though.

A week later......

Came back a week later to get the same bagel again. The horseradish creme was pretty mild. Still not getting the cheese.

A. Rashid Khan, Ayer Rajah Food Centre

I was recommended A. Rashid Khan (Stall #58 Ayer Rajah Food Centre, 503 West Coast Drive) which does kambing soup, roti john and mee siam. What was worth the recommendation about this particular mee siam you might wonder. There's tongue. 😜 Delicious tender muttony chunks of lamb tongue which are part of options for their mee siam - an "obvious but not obvious to many" combination since it's just part of what they're serving for the kambing soup. There's a lamb ribs option too which I'm keen on for a next time. Gravy's sweet, a little nutty and has a bit of heat from their sambal. Not bad.

O.BBa Jjajang Express, Clementi

These guys (450 Clementi Ave 3, #01-271) are by O.BBa Jjajang. No Koreans running the stall apparently.

Menu has a sacheun jjajangmyeon which looked interesting. Sacheun I'm guessing is Sichuan.

The real McCoy looked disappointingly like some sort of tomato noodles. The product photo was definitely deliberate misrepresentation by O.BBa Jjajang. Their social media picture communicated angry red and burning heat - a hue that entertained the possibility of a base of robust fermented bean in the sauce.

But no. The sauce was sweet and spicy. What jjajang? What fried sauce? In spite of that inherent flavour, it ultimately tasted thin and hadn't the depth from even the regular jjajangmyeon from their restaurant. Felt hollow and unsatisfying. Will not come back.

 Fortunately we could still get supplements from next door.

Madam Lim's Nasi Lemak, Holland Drive Food Centre

I think Madam Lim's Nasi Lemak (#02-1 Holland Drive Market & Food Centre, 44 Holland Drive) is new. Never noticed them before the last time. Rice needs a bit more salt so it's not good on its own. The sweet onion-y sambal was good pairing with it though. What got my attention was the ayam berampah - it appeared to be freshly fried on order and the flavouring on the crisp chicken was delicious. 

Revisiting Xing Long Food Stall (興隆菜社)

Chance brought us back for more zi char at Xing Long Food Stall. 😬

Definitely wanted another go at their steamed fish head in fermented bean sauce. Same opinion of it as before. Great stuff.

I was recommended to try their braised tofu (红烧豆腐). I wouldn't say I'm super familiar with this dish because we don't eat it that often and this did not look out of the ordinary. 

We found an egg lurking beneath the surface waiting to surprise us. What got my attention was the gravy which was rich tasting and filled with a savoury sweetness. Not the cheap starch filled crap that's generally rampant. There was even more sweetness from the cabbage and carrots. While it might not have looked apparent, the quality of the vegetables used was good.

This yang zhou fried rice came about because we saw one from the neighbouring table. While we understood that it might not have been the better pairing with the dishes we had, I wanted to know if it was good and it was. Straightforward with a light smokiness, real prawns, real char siew and without excessive grease. Competently done local rendition of fried rice. 

The Homme Baker, Margaret Market

The cakes from The Homme Baker (#01-08 Margaret Market, 38 Margaret Drive) caught our attention so here's a bunch we tried.

Nicely done auspicious mandarin orange cake. Why so? Judged it based on the vibrant orange citrus flavour from those layers in between the light orange flavoured chiffon cake. This wasn't just cosmetic parlour tricks. That's real orange infusion into a cake. Will come back for more. 👍🏼

Pineapple upside down cake also good. They heated it up on serving. Cake's moist while the texture was rough and crumbly which was the way I liked it. I'm not sure if the almond flavour was part of the ingredients or did it seep in from the maraschino cherries. Either ways, that was nice. 👍🏼

That's purple sweet potato, not yam. Cheesecake. It's not bad. I was hoping for a stronger sweet potato flavour but it's mostly in the background.

The Homme Baker is kinda known for their Swiss cheese shaped cheesecakes. The shells are chocolate and there's bunch of different flavours differentiated by their colours.

This was the T&J Bakwa - the insides are cream cheese, chilli and bak kwa. There were little strips of bak kwa in there. Sweet with savoury followed by an infusion of prickly heat at the back of the throat. Nice. 👍🏼

Mee pok at Jofa Grill

Jofa Grill at Bukit Merah Central also serves mee pok. From a search online, they're listed as Jofa Meepok. They fell into my radar recently because I discovered that they're open 7 days now when they previously didn't do Sundays.

That's a large bowl of their signature mee pok. It's not what I would consider a large bowl but it's loaded with toppings that one normally doesn't get in a humble bowl of mee pok - like prawn paste, clams, scallops, meatballs, fishballs, sliced pork, mock abalone and something they call fish sticks. The latter are fish paste in dried bean curd skin.

Love the firm noodle texture, lardy chilli saucing and generally good quality ingredients. Would have been great if the portions were bigger. 

The prawn paste soup's worth a go too. Definitely getting those gently sweet prawn flavours in the paste. Soup's delicious. I detected garlic and lotus root. Possibly infused with the flavour of all the toppings they use on their noodles as well. Will come back.

The key lime pie from PS. Cafe

This key lime pie from PS. Cafe is like a first love - one that will not willingly allow you forget easily. 😂 It was my first and I suppose it formed my first impression of what a key lime pie should be even though I have learnt since then that it's in the wrong colour. 😂 While I've moved on, it doesn't change the fact that it still tastes good to me and is pretty easily accessible. Will probably remain so until I find someplace equally accessible/delicious. And not expensive.

More cakes from Lady M

So we're back at Lady M again. A year had gone by it seems.

Flavour of the season is sesame tie guan yin (铁观音) mille crepe. Black sesame/kurogoma/黑芝麻 to be precise with fermented oolong tea infused cream. Sounds fancy if you describe it that way. I couldn't discern any of that tea flavour through the nutty sesame. Still nice though.

Strawberry shortcake's light and delicious.

Black radish cake from 忘不了萝卜糕 (Unforgettable Carrot Cake)

Breakfast with a black plate from 忘不了萝卜糕. Let's define what I described as a nice taste the last time a little bit more. It's that same yeasty flavour that we were also getting from Bukit Merah View Carrot Cake. This $5 黑的 was equally eggy but had more sweet caramelization.

Marché in March

Recent trip to Marché. Is it me or have the prices gone up?

The beer battered fish was one of the current specials at the seafood counter. They're using sea bass for it.

Actually pretty good. Fish was very moist and tasted like it was steamed in the batter.

Four cheese ravioli au gratin. Also a current special at the pasta counter.

The recommended way of eating the ravioli is with the toasted cheese and ham in each bite for the salt and cheesiness. The ravioli alone was just creamy with little saltiness and didn't taste like it had four cheeses.

Mango and mascarpone crepe was not bad tasting. They have gotten pretty citrus-y mangoes which paired nicely with the mascarpone cream. 

Anwar's Kitchen, Bukit Merah View Hawker Centre

Anwar's Kitchen (#01-72, Bukit Merah View Hawker Centre, 115 Bukit Merah View) was emanating old school good vibes and had a queue going on so we decided that we wanted some.

Here's a telur (egg) and a kosong (plain). The latter was fluffed up with light bits of crisp - the rest was mostly doughy with a slight chewiness. Which is how I generally like them. The egg prata was totally crispless and was more like an egg pancake. Me no problems with that either. Mutton curry's good. Managed to get some bits of muttony fat which I ate with the kosong.

A couple of weeks later......

Egg onion prata...pretty decent.

Cheese prata. There's a short tale to how this happened. The menu listed a cheese murtabak which I tried to order. The stall asked if I wanted fish, chicken or mutton which made me wonder...did I stutter? I repeated that I wanted the cheese murtabak on their menu. They then explained that the cheese murtabak doesn't exist and is a mistake on their sign and that they can do a regular cheese prata instead. And that's how I ended up with a cheese prata....

Anyways, while it's probably not very visible, it's a whole square of the cheese smack in the middle. Not crispy which I did not mind at all. Not bad tasting. 😬

Will come back again.

More thoughts on No. 25 Minced Meat Noodle

It's been a little over a year since we were first/last at No. 25 Minced Meat Noodle. The stall looked updated with an expanded menu. Their most expensive item on the menu used to be $7.

Today I can get a $13 signature bowl. That's pricing in the same leagues as Tai Hwa. There won't be any comparisons between the two because they're very different bowls.

For $13, the amount of ba chor/minced pork was kinda measly ☝🏻. I don't remember the details of the first time we had it but this one had a solid sambal flavour in the saucing which packed some heat and was deeply savoury. The fried lard (猪油渣) and ti poh definitely added to it. 

Delicious soup with pretty generous amount of ingredients but I didn't expect anything less with what they were charging. Not big on the fish dumpling which I was hoping would be good. They were just a little too chewy. I'm pretty sure we've had generic factory ones that we liked better. Fish maw pieces were kinda small so a lot of mouthfeel was lost. But still good bowl of soup as a whole.