Pasarfish X Chef X, Clarke Quay Central

A bit of quick context.

 

Pasarfish is a platform to educate environmental conservation and local fishery with the objective to promote sustainability in the local seafood supply chains. According to their mission statement, which I quote, their goal is to "To preserve Singapore’s seafood heritage sustainably through outreach and research".

Chef X is an initiative by Far East Organization to allow local home-based/private chefs a sandbox to operate their own commercial restaurant within Clarke Quay Central.

So Pasarfish X Chef X (#03-103 Clarke Quay Central, Eu Tong Sen Street) is....you can kinda connect the dots here.

The current chef came up with some dishes, some of which are of Teochew origins. Sounded intriguing.

Chilled grey mullet with tangerine oil, scallions and chilli. Variation of the steamed grey mullet found in Teochew restaurants/stalls. That tangerine oil tasted much like the sweet & sour sauce used I remember from steamed squids in Teochew porridge stalls which some may know as kek yew. Because the fish was chilled, the meat is a little more dense and less tender.

This was called U-yummy - fish sauce coconut kaya with ti poh (dried sole) butter on pretty good tasting home made bread which I'm not sure if they're sourdough. Lots of umami sweet saltiness from the kaya that came with a layer of smokiness from the butter. Nice and intense flavours.

That's their Fash - a hash with corn and eggs fried in fat from the grey mullet belly with Parmesan cheese. Interesting seafood-y take on the dish. Not bad.

Something called Abu鱼yu Congee. Fish porridge made with fish bone broth with aburi-ed fish. Don't know what fish it was. Came with some XO sauce on the side. Flavour was light and pleasant with a bit of sweetness. I liked it more than I thought I would.

Tobimisu - tiramisu with tobiko. One can only taste the tobiko if it's eaten with those on top of the tiramisu. Otherwise, the amount of roe folded into the mascarpone cheese was sufficient just to add popping texture and little else. Flavour's not as weird as it might sound. Has alcohol.

This was the Fish Fan - a flan made with fish sauce and other secret ingredients which the chef shared and I forgot. Lol. Eggy and umami. That sauce tasted just like the glaze used in the fish satay snacks that used to be popular back in the 80s I think. 😲

Yong Xiang Carrot Cake (永祥菜頭粿), Bendemeer Market & Food Centre

Came to try Yong Xiang Carrot Cake (#01-35 Bendemeer Market & Food Centre, 29 Bendemeer Road) because they have something that's not sold anywhere else.

Said unique item is their stir fried png kueh and soon kueh - both stir fried like their radish cake with eggs. The skins of both kuehs weren't as crusty as I had imagined and the one for the latter was kinda thick. Now that I've tried it, don't think I will ever get them again. 

Radish cake was decent if unremarkable. What I gather was that they've been doing this for a long time and the queue kinda spoke for that. Their style involves chopping the radish cake into small bits. I usually prefer chunkier cuts.

Crab ice cream from Donki

There's bits of stuff in it which were presumably pieces of crab meat. Far to tiny to discern much about them but I couldn't help but to think of crabsticks/sumiri. Definitely some crab flavour action going on and the experience was interesting to say the least. While I can't say that I love it, I'm not against giving it another go just to understand it more.

Re-revisiting The Hainan Story Chapter One

Here's us back at The Hainan Story Chapter One.

I remembered that "rojak peanut jam" toast from the last visit so I asked them for one minus the gula melaka kaya plus butter. Nice. Will probably not find a sweet fermented prawn paste with butter sandwich like this anywhere else in the world.

Munched on fried pork belly while waiting for the orders to arrive.

Curry rice's not bad. Need to ask for extra curry and their unusually smooth sambal belachan which will make inhaling this entire plate a breeze. The latter wasn't as spicy as I would have preferred but it still had sufficient fermented shrimp flavour to pack a punch. Here's where I remind myself to not get this rice set with braised pork the next time. The rest of the stuff on the plate was pretty good eating.

What's awesome was their lamb stew with crispy noodles/sang meen (生面). I figured that since I liked said lamb stew from the last visit and that I'd be letting the sang meen soak in the gravy anyway, this sounded like it made sense and it did. Gotta be the most delicious lamb noodles I've had. For now.

There's an osmanthus lager on their menu and I got it while thinking that it might taste like the King's Garden Ale from Song Fa. It didn't. While the osmanthus flavour was pronounced, I didn't like this as much as I thought I would.

WOW Bistro (威旺美食酒馆), Bencooolen Street

Read about WOW Bistro (#01-02/03, 47 Bencoonlen Street, tel : +65 9654 7947) and got curious because of some of their featured dishes. They're located at the side of the lobby of Hotel Bencoolen. We tried a walk in one Saturday and were turned away because they were filled up. So we made reservations for the next one and it was mostly empty when we were there. Hmmm......

Kwirk Belgian White on tap for $11. Pretty good deal in town. Note to self : can come for beer.

We ordered radish cake. Black one. I expected it to come with cheese but it didn't. Instead there was a lot of coriander on it. Who the hell puts coriander on radish cake? Anyways the wait staff tried to explain that only the white radish cake had cheese.

Really? I wouldn't have known. No one told us. 

The black radish cake was actually pretty good. House made fried onions, a hae bee infused sambal, loads of egg and not excessively greasy. I wouldn't mind coming here for these.

The dish I was curious about was their durian curry fish. I know right? Durian curry sounds kinda out there. But it was also kinda good with a lot of richness, some heat and spices. First in the world they said. I detected curry leaves, laksa leaves, black peppercorn and chilli padi in the creamy durian infused curry. The portions were huge.

While it tasted unusual, I thought it kinda worked. There was sufficient flavour from durian and we even found a couple of seeds of those D24 that they used. Which was awesome while the dish was still hot. 

The pan fried sea bass felt left sidelined even though it was a huge piece. Not bad tasting but my mind was still trying to reconcile the savoury fish with the sweet-ish spicy durian curry.

The other dish that got my attention was their lamb kut teh. Basically lamb rendition of bak kut teh which was something I had over a few occasions in the past wondered if they existed. Now I know it does. There's a rich herbal broth infused with lamb flavour and a herb infused rack of lamb. That fork tender rack of lamb had at some point been on some grill because we could taste the caramelized parts which were delicious.

I prefer the broth to be more savoury rather than the dominant herbal sweetness that this had.

The dish had a couple of cloves of garlic on the side which were....melt in your mouth? These definitely qualified that description. To think of it, they were already borderline melting before they were in our mouths.

Back at The Hainan Story Chapter One

It was sometime middle of last year that we last/first ate at The Hainan Story Chapter One. Food was not bad so we've been wanting to come back again to try more stuff. I've only recently realized that they're open 24 hrs. 

Hainanese styled coffee & toasts are a thing here but I've never had this particular combination of spreads. Gula melaka kaya with "rojak jam" - the latter would probably resonate more clearly as rojak sauce to most. Could taste the flavour from the ginger flower and chilli in there. Not a combination we've had before but I kinda liked it.

We wanted to try their Hainanese lamb stew the last time but we didn't have any more room. We ordered it this time.

Chunks of tender lamb were hidden at the bottom of the claypot beneath the lamb infused gravy that was really good with the rice. For a local Chinese styled lamb dish, I'd rank it tops because it wasn't adulterated with herbs and ginger like what many local Chinese lamb dishes are. Man I'd come back just for this. For some reasons, they undercooked the broccoli.

Chicken satay was not bad. Pretty tender and nicely charred.

There was a CNY chicken cordon bleu made stuffed with bak kwa between the cheese and what appeared to be mille feuille slices of chicken served with the same tamarind pineapple sauce that they use for their satay. Ordered it out of curiosity. Pretty greasy, not bad tasting but also not something I'd get again.

Banana cake was ordinary.

Egg tart's pleasant. I normally prefer something with more volume. This one had a biscuit crust and was pretty shallow but there was enough of the custard to taste them properly.

Open faced sandwich with Nutella, Greek yoghurt and flaxseed meal

This has been admittedly inspired by a gelato we had years ago in Florence. For a few weeks now, I've been using peanut butter instead of Nutella so that works as well.

Don't let the unusual combination intimidate you. It's much better tasting that how it might sound.

Peanut butter, banana and Parma ham sandwich

I used the seedy Everything Butter from Fix & Fogg from the last time. Ham is from Huber's. Banana for its taste and sweetness because the latter helps with the nut butter. The lesson here was not to hold back on the prosciutto di Parma because the flavour from the banana is pretty strong. I only managed to get the aroma from the ham in some bites while for others, it was just a mild saltiness. Overall pretty tasty.