Kuey teow 白 from You Yi Minced Meat Noodle (友谊肉脞面)

Kuey teow with no sambal or vinegar from You Yi. Adequately salted and lardy with heat just from the sliced chilli. Nice. What I didn't expect/understand this time round was, why were there fried wantons instead of the regular ones.

Yong Kee Different Taste Hainanese Chicken Rice (勇記不同味海南雞飯), Hong Lim Food Centre

Trying a chicken rice stall (#02-24 Hong Lim Food Centre, 531A Upper Cross Street) I've never noticed previously at Hong Lim Food Centre. They've been around - just that I haven't registered them before.

Got a plate with poached chicken thigh, roast pork and egg.

Pretty decent chicken rice here. Chilli's lime-y, garlicky, a little gingery with a hint of bitterness and some heat. Chicken's tender and rice was adequately flavoured. I think this one was better with chilli than without. Soup has really tender cabbages in it but I'm pretty sure I caught kiam chye flavour. What's not good was the roast pork which had soggy crackling.

虾一跳 (Xia Yi Tiao), Food Republic @ Vivocity

The names for some local eateries have gotten punny over the years. Came across this one at Food Republic (#03-01 VivoCity, 1 HarbourFront Walk). Have never seen/heard of this laksa/prawn noodle stall before.

Pricey big prawn laksa. Somewhere along the tunes of $16 if I remember correctly and portion wasn't exactly big.

Pretty good lemak gravy. Needs a dollop of their sambal because that gravy has a lot less dimension and body without. Their thick bee hoon (粗米粉) was also thinner than the regular type.

Chef Lup Roasted (立师父烧腊), Golden Mile Food Centre

I didn't realise when we ate at Chef Lup Roasted at Lau Pa Sat that the brand was started by an ex-Kam’s Roast executive chef who's had considerable experience under his belt. The first shop that was set up is this one at Golden Mile (#B1-56 Golden Mile Food Centre, 505 Beach Road). 

We had plate of triple roasts with eggs this time round. Char siew was as good as I recall with smokey sweet gumminess from the caramelisation and fat with meat. Not forgetting too the nice crisp on the tender siu yoke and their tender roasted duck breast in herbal sauce which were also exceptional. 

I like their 油饭. Great savouriness in the rice which ended up being both good with and without the sweet/limey/garlicky chilli sauce. That's a nice pickled mustard greens soup on the side.

99° Durian Culture (榴莲文化), Jalan Dhoby, Johor Bahru

Came across 99° Durian Culture (14 Jalan Dhoby, Bandar Johor Bahru, 80000 Johor Bahru) by chance and were intrigued with their durian stuff. Like beverages, nasi lemak...or one can simply just eat durian here. I'm guessing that they're relatively new since we didn't recall seeing them the last time we were in the area.

Taro MSW milk. The proprietor mentioned using durian dust. Couldn't taste durian in it but it was a decent taro milk.

The other drink we had which I was initially skeptical about was their MSW coffee. The coffee looked thin and weak. But hell yeah this was awesome.

The espresso they put it was pretty strong, in spite of appearance, that the flavour of the coffee was well balanced with the milk and MSW pulp. I'd come back for this. 

I mentioned nasi lemak earlier.

This was their MSW nasi lemak. The durian was folded into the coconut rice.

Was bittersweet with a light savoury undertone and reminded me of Peranakan kuehs. Love the discernible MSW flavour in it. Not to mention that they did much much better ayam berempah here than Ayam Gepok Anakmak.

Nishas Indian Food, Mei Ling Food Centre

Mutton murtabak from Nishas Indian Food (#02-34 Mei Lin Food Centre, 159 Mei Chin Road). Old school-ish and not bad tasting. Noticed that there's egg smudged onto the exterior which isn't how they're like usually. Murtabak came with 3 different curries ladled into the plate. I guess my only gripe was I would have preferred the onions to be more cooked down or finely diced. Maybe I'll get them with no onions the next time.

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.