A recent bowl of Janggut laksa

Haven't had one of these in a while. They looked a little less curdled today. Which worried me a little.

Fortunately the taste stood up. Still delicious. Makes me want to get another bowl as I'm typing this.

Back at Ricciotti

I ate at Ricciotti an age ago. Yup, that's right. All the way back when this blog began. Never been back since and it's different from what I remember. The grocer section is gone and there's a bar at the front now. The seats indoors were nice and shady. The place was quiet on a weekend afternoon.

The menu described the Polpo to be octopus braised in red wine with confit tomatoes and pine nuts. This tasted like tomato and cream, not red wine. Didn't detect any pine nuts. Octopus was not bad tasting. Kinda overpriced for the tiny portions and ingredients but since it's in that part of town, I shouldn't expect otherwise.

Tagliatelle alla norcina was nice. This rendition was creamless compared to the creamy one from Etna. Sausage was chunky and the quality of the house made tagliatelle was great. One could just tell from those firm textures. Nice one.

Got ourselves pizza with Paleta Iberica de Bellota. The draw to this one was actually Gorgonzola and pear. The jamon tasted stale. Ironic since the process of making the ham required air drying and aging for at least 18 months. Just one step from turning bad. Which I thought was sad because I kinda liked the whole pizza with the Gorgonzola and pear.

The walnuts were definitely expired. We told them. The wait staff looked like she didn't know how to react to the feedback. 😔 This restaurant has obvious quality issues. Maybe that's why they're quiet on a weekend afternoon.

Chicken rice from Seng Kee Chicken Rice (新奇鸡饭)

I mentioned I'd be back to try the chicken rice at Seng Kee Chicken Rice so here's it. 白鸡尾 with roast pork and egg. Pretty decent. Chicken thigh was quite meaty. Rice was flavoured lightly but sufficiently so and was good pairing with the garlicky chilli sauce; works with or without the chilli if you asked me. Roast pork was also decent - just don't expect melty fat and crunchy crackling here. These guys are old school and competent. Not S ranked but definitely something one could go to with regularity. This stall good for both this and their laksa.

Toasts and coffee from Great Nanyang Heritage Cafe (大南洋)

Tea break at Great Nanyang Heritage Cafe. The hot hor ka sai (gao and less sweet) here was thick and pretty good drinking.

I learnt today that the coconut in their coconut coffee included the the fruit's milk and juice. Might be my first and it's actually pretty good - a much lighter tasting alternative to regular milk. 

Sugar butter toast was disappointing. The peanut butter from the peanut butter toast at Oriental Kopi was more buttery than this. That said, I'm also over 99% sure this pitiable yellow stain wasn't butter. Sure did not taste like it. 👎🏼

Peanut butter toast here was passable though it's a pale shadow of the one we had at Oriental Kopi.

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. 🤔