Mushroom burgers and star potatoes from McD

Some recent burgers from McD. The left was the Creamy Mushroom Triple Cheeseburger and the one on the middle was the Creamy Mushroom Double Deluxe. We kinda got confused thinking that the triple would be bigger than the double but that Double Deluxe had bigger patties. Obviously, we had overlooked the "deluxe" in the name.

Think of them as the quarter pounder versions. The ingredients were pretty much the same except for sesame seed buns and larger patties which also appeared to be more moist. Those star potatoes were star shaped hash browns.

Re-revisiting Merci Marcel @ Eng Hoon Street

Been some years since we were last at Merci Marcel at Tiong Bahru.

Got the sweet potatoes & lentils hummus thinking it might be sweet. They weren't. 😬 Tasted like regular hummus packed with cumin flavour and a different texture. There's supposed to be coconut milk in the hummus which I never detected.

Love the roasted feta with the pears, both poached and fresh.

Pleasantly surprised by their beef burger. Meat's nicely caramelised, still moist on the inside and not destroyed by marinates/herbs. Good saltiness coming from the Parmesan cheese and crispy Bayonne ham. Those toasted sesame on top of the buns were nice!

Cauliflower trilogy - had these at Club Street previously. Still so delicious.

Not bad orange confit & cardamom cake.

Jalan Tua Kong Lau Lim (惹蘭大公老林), Tanjong Katong Road

There's a number of Jalan Tua Kong, some with associated 'Lim' noodles around. Did I even make sense? 😂 Of the limited ones I've tried, I'm ranking this one (248 Tanjong Katong Road) as the best.

This bowl appears to be what I understand as Teochew noodles, not bak chor mee even though they're pretty similar and lines get blurred over the years. Pretty generous amount ingredients and I love those Teochew meatballs - which are a mixture of minced pork and fish paste if you didn't know. Would have been great if there wasn't some of those kansui taste in the mee pok. That being said, it's not a deal breaker.

There's a bunch of other "local delights" which looked pretty decent. Got ourselves some butter sugar toast. Will definitely consider coming back.

Revisiting Santi's

Mixed feelings about them like the last time. Didn't get what I wanted because the actual menu wasn't what they had on their website. They explained that the site wasn't updated but the current menu as been around for about a week now. Add four days more to that as I'm writing this because it's still the old menu online. 😬 Getting lackadaisical vibes from this place. 

Anyways, this was their smoked miso leek rigatoni. Both leek and miso were... subtle. Not getting any of the sharpness from the leek and I might not have known it was miso in the sauce if not for the menu.

This was the mortadella panuozzo - pizza sandwich thingy. Was looking forward to the one with Parma ham but that's from the old menu. This definitely could have been better. 

Too little slices of really thin mortadella inside which were overwhelmed by the other stuff. Stuff like some Lao Gan Ma-ish chilly thingy and stracciatella - which was a pretty good combo actually. I liked this as a sandwich. But I would love to taste mortadella when I order something with mortadella.

French onion soup inspired burgers from Shake Shack

Current limited time flavour from Shake Shack.

In retrospect, doubling the meat kinda detracted from the flavour of those onions. Without the usual American cheese, I also realised that there's actually not much salt on those patties. 😮

The "French onion" flavour was more apparent in their shroom burger. 

Garlic parmesan fries has the cheese sprinkled on and some garlic aioli thingy on the side. These were pretty forgettable if you asked me.

Labobo with extra patty in sesame bagel from Two Men Bagel House

Labobo's the recent flavour of the month at 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, 二十, 二十一, 二十二, 二十三, 二十四, 二十五, 二十六, 二十七, 二十八, 二十九, 三十) featuring beef patties from BurgerLabo.

Love how the dill pickled onions and apple mostarda help cut though the hefty patties with the tangy sweetness.

Hunan grilled chilli pidan chicken burger from Shiok Burger

I was intrigued by the grilled chilli pidan chicken burger from Shiok Burger. Sadly, it turned out that the burger looked little like the picture they used. I expected better so now I know better than to expect better from them. 🙄 *cues rumination on the need for law against deliberate false advertising*

The century egg had texture like fish cake. Odd. 🤔 They were also tinier than what the pictures suggested. Not nearly enough to go round as well.

The product shot featured some intense green looking sauce. What we got was something that had a bit of green chilli in mostly mayo. Kinda disappointing.

Revisiting Suukee Coffee

Let's start this entry with a date and a rant. We were here 24 Jan 2026 in the morning grabbing breakfast.

Not a fortnight back, there were social media posts about Suukee Coffee's CNY limit time items. Like their orh nee bak kua toast and orange kopi o which I was kinda looking forward to. And the sambal carbonara chee cheong fun. They were out of the orh nee bak kua toast today and CNY is still 24 days away.

The CNY promo started more than a month from the actual event and they ran out of bak kua in two weeks? 🤔 Laughably, I even see the unimaginatively over-abused word 'viral' used on them. 

From my lens...

• they suffer conflicting information on their opening hours
• depend on "crowdsourcing" to share their menu online instead of providing their own
• aren't exact responsive when you message them
• it would be nice if they'd indicated somewhere that some things are lunch only instead of needing us to find out from the ordering kiosk

Some priorities just aren't there.

End of rant.

That orange kopi o, didn't expect them to serve them hot. Nice.

Love the matcha orh nee toast. Nice green tea flavour with the creaminess from the yam puree.

OG orh nee toast also not bad. It's the one you can taste the yam the most.

Decent spam omelette toast...spam's kinda small here.

What's great about eggs here (at least for me) was that they crack them for you. Just like Ya Kun. But the eggs we got today were watery. So unlike Ya Kun, they don't discard the poorly done ones.

One week later......

Managed to get their orh nee bak kua toast this time round. I like the sweet smoky flavour from the bak kua that came through even though that meant that the orh nee was mostly relegated to just a creamy texture in the background.

Matcha butter toast was not bad. Wished the butter was bigger/more distributed.

Finally got to try this sambal carbonara chee cheong fun. First thought that came to mind was the lao gan ma chee cheong fun from Surrey Hills. That one was better. This didn't taste as nuanced and packed less heat though I wouldn't mind coming back for them. No it didn't taste anything like carbonara.

Got a curry chicken kolo mee. The curry needed salt. From this, one could surmise that Suukee either i) had no idea what they were serving ii) are poor judges of whether food was delicious. Or perhaps both.

There was just about enough for the noodles to soak them up. Those tau pok in the curry might have been thrown in at the last minute because they were dry-ish inside and did not absorb the curry at all. The rendition of curry chicken kolo mee from Traditional Sarawak Kolo Mee beats this hands down.

Orange kopi o ice's not bad.

Mutton French loaf toastie from Jiakali

I noticed the French loaf toastie on their menu the last time we were here and came back to try them. Curried mutton, slaw and melted cheese sandwiched in French loaf. The flavour of the curry was dominant and because of that curry, I could only taste a little bit of the slaw and almost nothing of the cheese despite the portions. The gooey texture was there though.

If I had to describe, this one felt almost like some sort of pulled lamb sandwich. Those chunks of mutton in it were tender. 

M&T, Guoco Tower

I've been curious about M&T(#01-12 Guoco Tower, 5 Wallich Street, tel : +65 8948 9242). I've mixed feelings about the food. What we had felt like it came from a kitchen that's been given instructions/recipes to cook rather than being one that has experience with French food.

Goat cheese salad was not bad. Properly tossed, sweet cherry tomatoes and all. My gripe was that the goat cheese tasted weak.

There's a croque au bleu which is a croque monsieur made with Comté and Fourme d'Ambert. The lack of punch (from the lack of quantity) from the latter was kinda disappointing.

Grassfed beef burger with Fourme d'Ambert was also disappointing. Patty's kinda dense, lean and was not particularly beefy tasting. Fries were mostly hollow...like they're shells of actual fries. 

Not much of the Fourme d'Ambert in it as well. We've had better French blue cheese burgers.

'Kevin' in plain bagel from Two Men Bagel House

December special 'Kevin' from 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, 二十, 二十一, 二十二, 二十三, 二十四, 二十五, 二十六, 二十七, 二十八, 二十九). I know I mentioned MYOB the last time but the monthly special gave me a pass on that.

Their product shot looked a lot better though. Tasted the ham, roast beef, rockets, cranberry jelly, pistachio sage crumble. Pretty Christmas-y. I know the cheddar is buried in the melange of flavours and I'm not getting any of the whipped truffle butter at all.

Pretty sure I didn't get any truffle butter in there.

Angus beef burger with bacon and peanut butter from Burger King in Taipei

I mentioned previously about peanut butter in burgers being a Taiwanese thing. Here's another. This from Burger King. Apparently, KFC has a peanut butter chicken burger thingy here too.

Tasted like how I imagined it would. I actually kinda like the creamy sweet saltiness.