巨林美而美, Yitong Street @ Zhongshan District, Taipei

Breakfasts at 巨林美而美 (No. 127, 1 Yitong Street, Zhongshan District, Taipei). 'Breakfasts' because we came here more than once.

We had sandwiches with 3 meats. Custom order not from their menu.

Dan bing with onion. This sorta reminded me of prata.

Radish cake. Not bad tasting. Like the crusty surface.

Bacon, cheese and chocolate sandwich. Not bad tasting. Also obviously not on their menu.

Peanut butter, egg and bacon sandwich. Another custom order. Peanut butter's a little thin.

Coffee's from a machine. Not the old school kind I thought this stall would have. A little thin for my blood for morning coffee.

Tea was likewise thin. Don't think they use milk here as well. Maybe creamer.

A few days later......

Tuna, bacon and egg sandwich. Custom order. The tuna seemed to be a little sweet but otherwise tasted like how I imagined it.

Radish cake with chilli. That chilli packed a bit of punch from the both heat and garlic. This combination with a molten yolk fried egg rocked.

Another time......

Ham, cheese, fried egg and strawberry jam. I could barely taste the ham or cheese.

A breakfast in Taipei

First breakfast in Taipei. Random breakfast shop along Bade Road in Songshan District.

Warm soya bean milk (豆漿).

Some dan bing. The top one has cheese in it.

And luo bo gao. Flavour's quite nice.

Got a breakfast sandwich with cheese, ham and egg. There's some stuff in it which I assume passes for mayo. Sandwich was kinda dry.

Family Mart stuff in Taipei

Here's some of stuff we had gotten from Family Mart over the past week. First up was this brand of papaya milk where the flavour reminded me specifically of those Hawaiian papaya with creamy yellow flesh.

Chocolate and cream cheese sandwich. It was what it was.

Pistachio flavour's present for sure but I was hoping that it'd be a bit stronger.

The tea eggs were pretty good tasting. I've had more of these in the past week+ than I normally do in a year usually.

Not nice. Apple jam thingy wasn't particularly apple like.

Pretty sweet, had plenty of watermelon flavour but couldn't taste much of tea. Not good.

Has pineapple flavour. Interesting but won't be getting again.

We spent a while trying to figure the flavour out. It tasted like a mala broth minus the heat. Flavours unusual for sure but couldn't quite reconcile that with stinky tofu. Wouldn't get it again.

Sparking yuzu coffee. I had initially thought it was just sparking yuzu. Not bad. If they had used a stronger espresso, it would have rocked. 

Coffee's sour but I was thirsty and the fizz made it better. I don't mind drinking this again.

Choon Hoy Parlor (春花馆), Capitol Singapore

Choon Hoy Parlor (#01-84A Arcade @ The Capitol Kempinski, 15 Stamford Road) is by Dylan Ong of The Masses - the latter has incidentally relocated from their old premise at Beach Road to just next door to Choon Hoy Parlor. Story I read was that the restaurant was opened by Dylan in honour of his mother and that it bears her name.

The menu in broad strokes includes classic styles and updated takes on what's commonly regarded as heritage/traditional Teochew dishes. Have been curious since I first read about them.

But first, a Pandan Coconut Highball. Which is alchemised from pandan essence, 海之蓝, coconut water and soda. Took a few sips to get used to it and after that, I kinda enjoyed it. Not sure how to describe this.

Started off with some pork trotter aspic with a dip they aptly named garlic chilli zhup. The aspic didn't wasn't one of the more memorable ones I recall having but it also wasn't bad at all. The garlic chilli zhup was nice - aside from the two named ingredients, there's probably vinegar?

That's the roti bakar - coffee butter and salted egg kaya with lumpfish caviar on toasted bread. Those lumpfish caviar lent a bit of seafoody flavour, so they weren't just salty. Nice.

Mocha prime pork ribs. A lot more delicious than the description on the menu which mentioned Vietnam inspired egg yolk espuma. Sauce was a creamy caramel smokiness that could have passed off as a velouté of pork floss (肉松) or bak kwa (肉干); if you could imagine that. Meat from the ribs were chunky, pretty tender and fell off the bone easily. That and those crushed pistachios.

Found their assam stingray moreish. Good quality ray, great savoury tanginess from the tamarind broth accented by ginger flower and pineapples! 

Morel Silkie chicken consommé's pretty good. Flavoured also with cordyceps and sweetened by red dates.

These was called Taiwan dou miao & taugay. Haven't had dou miao that looked like these before. There's salted egg yolk and anchovy powder to intensify the savoury garlicky flavours. Great stuff with rice. 👍🏼

Speaking of rice, there's one with lard and soya sauce called A Lil Lard, A Lil Soy, A Lil Love Rice. It's been znged with fried lard, fried garlic bits and light soya sauce. So delicious with the garlic chilli zhup from the pork aspic. Super with the assam broth from the stingray. Also awesome with the dou miao & taugay.

We finished with their Trio of Orh Ni. A bit of a misnomer since the main blobs were the paste of purple sweet potato, pumpkin and yam. That's coconut ice cream on the side.

French toast from Ah Seng (Hai Nam) Coffee

Got some homely tasting French toast from Ah Seng (Hai Nam) Coffee while waiting for Mr Batang Fish to get ready for the day. It might not be apparent from the picture above but there's already butter and kaya in between the slices of egg soaked bread.

Luxe with hash brown in blueberry bagel from Two Men Bagel House

Something's off. I didn't seem to be enjoying this Luxe from TMBH ( 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) as much as I thought I would. Maybe I'll just milestone this and move into the MYOB for a bit starting the next time. I see that the Forged Gras is part of the protein option these days. 😏

Shashlik Restaurant 10 years later

It's been about a decade since the last time we were here. Seems that time wasn't our last after all. Depending on how one interpreted that last post, it technically it still is because we didn't have any shashlik today. 😏 

The restaurant's ownership has been passed down to the sons of a previous co-owner. Things have changed a bit.

While the restaurant looked mostly the same, it also did look a little sharper.

Bread's as good as I remember. It's soft. And warm so that it melts the accompanying butter nicely.

The sweetness from the bread paired so well with the pat of salted SCS butter. Additional serving of bread and butter after the first complimentary one are 60 cents each. Because it was so good, we paid for it.

Borscht/borshch was not bad - with an extra scoop of sour cream. Beefy and tangy, smoothened by said cream.

Wanted to try some stuff that we've never had before. Like their stuffed portobello mushrooms, which were topped with minced chicken and I think bacon bits, slathered in a cheesy tasting milk sauce.

Finally tried the egg millionaire after seeing it on their menu for so long. It's chopped up hard boiled eggs with bacon and a bit of cheese that were baked in their shells. They taste exactly like how one would imagine them.

This was their baked fish in mushroom sauce. Menu states halibut. In a mushroom béchamel sauce. I'm not sure I can relate from the flavour of the sauce but it was creamy and not unpleasant as a whole. Did not taste bad.

What unexpectedly turned up as a pleasant surprise was their beef stroganoff. Tenderloin strips with a savoury brown sauce and soft melted onions. According to the menu, that's basmati chicken rice there but I couldn't quite tell. A little pricey methinks but it was delicious.