Dulukala, Silat Avenue

I remember eating at Dulukala many years ago at Beauty World. They've since moved out to a stall in a coffee shop at Silat Avenue (Kopi Haus, 148 Silat Avenue) near to the old Cantonment Railway Station.

Got ourselves the ayam buah keluak and the beef rendang sets. Each set is accompanied with chap chye and rice. 

Sauce from the chicken was savoury and the rendang sweet & spicy. Just to be clear, there's a load of spices in the rendang but it has little heat. Beef was relatively tender. Chap chye was tender and packed with flavour.

One has to top up for the actual buah keluak as the chicken doesn't come with any. $2 a piece. We also asked if one could just get buah keluak without ordering the chicken. I wished it was otherwise but 不可以. 😏

Black gold scraped from the insides of the nut. These have a flavour which is somewhat like caramelized fermented black beans. Texture's like a little gritty dryish paste. I also seem to detect a subtle sweetness through the flavour density. It's complex.

Some stir fried lady's finger with ikan bilis. These weren't slimy if anyone was wondering. One could taste the smokiness from the charred vegetable with some sweetness from onions and umami from those ikan bilis. Nice. 

Sambal on the side with manageable heat.

Every dish was a rice thief. The buah keluak and sambal alone wiped out most what I had on my plate.

Sadly their chendol was unimpressive. The coconut milk lacked richness and the dessert felt diluted.

Revisiting Hai Yan Fried Kway Teow Mee (海燕潮州炒粿条麵)

So it was bee hoon the last time and kuey teow mee this time. I guess it's just textural differences. Aside from those beautifully fried eggs with molten yolk, there wasn't much else of note. Maybe I'm just not a char kuey teow person. Wasn't particularly impressed by the likes of Meng Kee or Outram Park Fried Kway Teow Mee even though people seem to think that they're great renditions.

Ayam Gepok Anakmak, Ang Mo Kio

Learned of Ayam Gepok Anakmak (#01-877, 215 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1, Ang Mo Kio Street 22) recently and came to try their ayam gepok. What got my attention was the gajus (cashew) sauce which I haven't been seeing around here.

There're a couple of options. One can get it with regular fried chicken and or ayam berempah. This one's the latter. 

Sadly their ayam berempah was lacklustre. The meat was dry-ish and a little stringy even. Remember that this was chicken thigh. The flavour of the berempah wasn't particularly great. Rice was lumpy. Aside from tofu and tempeh, there's also fried cabbage on the side which I haven't had before. Tasted toasty and bittersweet.

I mentioned interest for the gajus sauce. That's accompanied by sambal. One can choose level 0-4 for spiciness with 0 being not spicy at all. This was a 2. And it packed substantial heat. The sauce was akin to a coarse cashew butter - nutty and oily in a good way. Pretty good with the sambal because the sambal has the salt. Any spicier this level and I probably wouldn't have been able to taste much of the food.

Taste Of The Bay at Ming Fa (明發) @ Upper Thomson Road

Came across this at Ming Fa at Upper Thomson. Squid ink mee pok on a limited run.

Basically a 小碗面 with seafood and squid ink mee pok topped with onsen egg and tobiko.

For all the dark intensity, there didn't seem to be any squid ink flavour. Kinda disappointed there. This tasted like regular mee pok.

Soup has half a crayfish, a couple of prawns, clams, sliced pork and minced pork. Ingredient quality was pretty decent. There was a light sweetness from the prawns and crayfish.

They used to shell the prawn for their regular bowl of mee pok in the past. Now it's a slightly bigger prawn with shell still on. 

These fried sotong were part of the limited time menu. The lady at the stall insisted that they were good and that if it happened that they weren't, she'll help me eat them. 😂 She's right, squids were pretty tender under the batter. Came with some lime-y mayo which was not bad tasting.

I remember thinking little of their coffee the last time I was here. Today's kopi peng was actually decent-ish and tasted better than I remember of their coffee. 

Lucky Her Kiao (幸运鱼饺), Horne Road

Lunch at Lucky Her Kiao (88 Horne Road). From what I gathered, this place is run by the 3rd generation of the family that operates Song Kee Kway Teow Noodle Soup at Toa Payoh that has been apparently been in business over half a century.

Was curious about their fish noodles. To be clear, fish noodles are noodles made with fish paste. These were okay tasting - lots of chew and a nice fish-cake-like flavour in those irregularly squiggly noodles. It was mentioned that they were hand rolled so I guess this qualified as artisanal?

In retrospect, I should have gotten this without sambal so that I could better taste them. A little pricey at $18 a portion but I guess artisanal comes at a cost. Probably not fair to compare them to Li Bai so I won't. 😂 I do remember liking the ones from House of Fishball better though.

The bowl of soup accompanying the fish noodles was loaded with ingredients. Amongst them, I found one of their her kiao (fish dumplings) with chewy skin made from fish (paste?) and minced pork stuffings infused with ti poh (dried sole). Because this shop also sold yong tau fu, I was expecting that it's soy bean soup. It's not. Tasted like fishball soup flavoured with corn.

Had some sliced pig liver on the side. Not bad tasting but also not memorable.

Revisiting Diner's Shack

Back at Diner's Shack which we haven't eaten at in a while. Our only gripe at this place was the slow moving queue and the long wait for the food.

Today's fish was sea bream (a.k.a. ang goli). This bowl had added on minced pork and fish roe. The bowl was as good as I remember them from the last time.

Curry chicken's really good here. One can tell from the consistency and colour that it was pretty lemak and there's a bit of nuance to the other spices that were used in the curry.

36 Curry Rice, Bendemeer Market & Food Centre

I remember this stall (#01-36 Bendemeer Market & Food Centre, 29 Bendemeer Road) from the previous time I queued for noodles at Changi Village Cooked Food. Both stalls were directly facing each other with similar length queues. Got a plate of bee hoon with kuey teow today. I prefer Changi Village Cooked Food. The only item I had that was memorable was the kuey teow which had a nice rice-y taste to it. Nothing particularly worth mentioning for the other items.

Nasi lemak & bee hoon meatless from Oriental Kopi

Oriental Kopi has nasi lemak and bee hoon without meat but it's only for breakfast it seems. With one less distraction, we had a chance to tune in just to the santan infused rice. Which I haven't had a chance to since the first time we ate at their City Square outpost. There's coconut, pandan, cardamom and that light lemon grassy flavour in it. Still don't know what are those green beans for. Definitely more complex than regular nasi lemak.

Chef Lup Roasted (立师父烧腊), Lau Pa Sat

Like moth to a flame, we were drawn to Chef Lup Roasted (Stall #04 Lau Pa Sat, 18 Raffles Quay) by the char siew hanging at the front of the stall. This was char siew rice with additional roast duck breast for $8.50. There was a lot more duck than char siew but that char siew was smokey sweet, beautifully caramelized with burnt ends. Duck's pretty decent with that sweet herbal sauce. I like the greasy chicken rice (油饭) it was served with.

Isle Cafe, Far East Plaza

Cai png at Isle Cafe (#02-66 Far East Plaza, 14 Scotts Road). I've seen them so many times and we've finally decided to get some. The basic premise of Isle Cafe is affordable, frills free and decent tasting economy rice. Liked the long beans and curry chicken I picked today. Not a fan of the cornstarch slurried spinach which was kinda bland.

SG61 lunch at Wolfgang's Steakhouse

Lunch at Wolfgang's Steakhouse.

Their beef kut teh from last year's SG60 has made it into their lunch menu item called Taste Of Singapore.

The SG61 special is/was their 60 day dry aged USDA Prime bone in ribeye. Nice and funky, not particularly juicy. Came with the mashed potato/creamed spinach/NY style cheesecake.

Uncle Louis Famous Chicken Rice, Amoy Street Food Centre

Came across Uncle Louis Famous Chicken Rice (#01-02 Amoy Street Food Centre, 7 Maxwell Road) which has taken over the previous chicken rice stall right next to the char kuey teow stall at Amoy Street Food Centre. I remember seeing another branch at Maxwell Food Centre and I was told that there's another at Market Street Hawker Centre.

This was poached chicken thigh (白鸡尾) for two with a couple of eggs and liver. Not bad tasting. Sauce was slightly sweet and full of sesame oil. Meat was tender but not so easily slurped off the bone.

This was probably not the best picture to show that there's a thin layer of chicken jelly neath the skin of their chilled chicken.

Rice was pretty good with and without their garlicky/gingery chilli sauce which packed more heat than I anticipated. I'd take this over Tian Tian.

Labrador Malay Food, Telok Blangah Crescent Food Centre

 

I'm pretty sure I've been to Labrador Villa Food Centre at least a couple of times before they were demolished back in 08. Might have noticed Labrador Malay Food from back then but I don't recall. They've presumably moved to their current spot (#01-105 Telok Blangah Crescent Market & Food Centre, 11 Telok Blangah Crescent) from that point and have been here since.

Got a plate of nasi padang - from top right and clockwise, tapioca leaves in masak lemak, sambal hard boiled, paru goreng and a bunch of...shellfish. I'm pretty sure some looked like cockles. Then there were some that tasted like clams and some others, mussels. Anyways, they were all cooked in sambal with petai. Not much petai in there though. All pretty good tasting.