More cai png from Wan Jin Yuan (萬金园)

There's minced pork petai with that got rotated in at Wan Jin Yuan which I've previously not seen. Too bad there wasn't much petai in it. There's some sweetness underlying even though there weren't any onions in it. Gonna be difficult to hold off their fried chicken since they're pretty darn good.

可口鸭, Bukit Timah Interim Food Centre

Chanced upon 可口鸭 (#01-052 Bukit Timah Interim Food Centre, 2A Jalan Seh Chuan) thought that their offerings looked good. 

Ordered kuey chap. The fried shallots and oil that you could help yourself to was so cool.

Very competent plate of braised goods - eggs, large intestines (大肠), duck, pig's skin and tau kwa. All tender and flavourful, notably for the intestines and pig's skin.

Love the rice-y kueh in their uncomplicated savoury broth. Get them with the fried shallot and oil.

21 Fishball Noodles (21鱼圆面), Old Airport Road

Got wind of 21 Fishball Noodles (#01-111, 21 Old Airport Road). This stall is located at an old coffee shop a couple of minutes walk from the well known Old Airport Road Food Centre. It's not in that food centre.

This was the queue at about 9.30am. Never abated throughout the 40 minutes or so we were there.

Got the $7 portion. The size of the bowl of noodles doesn't seem to change. Only the portion of the ingredients in the soup does.

Competent but not particularly memorable. They use the regular large chilli here so there's more bark than bite so to speak.

The thing that was mention worthy were their fish paste items in the soup - fish cakes, fish balls and fish dumplings. They appear to be made in house and were quite delicious. Hidden at the bottom of the bowl were also pork slices which I thought was over tenderised.

鸭皇 (Duck King), Ghim Moh

I remember having char siew from 鸭皇 (19 Ghim Moh Rd, #01-263) years ago. Not to be confused with the popular roast duck eatery similarly named 鸭皇 from JB. 

This was what I was talking about.

Got ourselves a plate of triple roast - roast pork, char siew and roast duck. All nicely done. There was a crunchy crackling on the roast pork, gummy fatty sweetness from char siew and pretty tender duck breast.

Livers, gizzards and eggs on the side.

Sauce on the left was 当归 for the duck - also worked for roast pork. The other brown sauce was starchy and mediocre.

There was another black sauce - I believe it's dark soya sauce with drippings from one of their meats. This in tandem with the 当归 on their rice was pretty kickass delicious. 

Round two of the meats because the first round left us wanting more.

Happy Noodles (快乐面), Lengkok Bahru

This was the coffeeshop that used to house Sim Lim Square Bak Chor Mee, Uncle Peter Hokkien Mee, 6th Avenue Nasi Lemak and once upon a time, Ye Shang Hai Teochew Porridge. Turn over of tenants seems pretty high. Coffeeshop seems to have been renovated and taken over by a new management fronted by the owner of OK Chicken Rice. 

One thing stood out about this coffeeshop. No zhi char and no cai png.

Anyways this was the bak chor mee from Happy Noodles which they called Happy Bak Chor Mee. The mee pok is apparently made in house.

No bad. Sambal's decent. Mee pok texture was pretty good and you can tell it's definitely not the generic/factory variety by the mouthfeel. Mushrooms were totally infused with the flavour from the braising sauce. There's beansprouts but no pig's liver. Nice lardiness in the bowl too. What impressed me were the finely sliced red chillis which most noodle stalls don't do and I hope it's not a one time thing.

A couple of weeks later......

The person running the stall today was a different someone. The bowl was much saucier than the previous time but flavour's still good. Mee kia texture's decent, not soggy. Chilli not as finely sliced as the last time. So it seems that there's some sort of rotation for who's manning the stall and consistency may not be expected here.

Fu He Mutton Soup (福和羊肉湯), Redhill Food Centre

What caught my attention at Fu He Mutton Soup (#01-74, Redhill Food Centre, 85 Redhill Lane) was that they were a mutton soup stall which had pig's blood curd. Never seen anyone done that. But since the lift of the ban on blood was still new, it made sense that there will be eateries that'll capitalise on the availability. 

This order of mutton ribs and blood curd was without coriander and ginger. Broth was herbal but not excessive in my opinion and had a dry sweetness (甘甜) while still maintaining enough savouriness that I enjoyed it. One could even get lu rou fan (卤肉饭) to go with the bowl. Lime-y chilli's great with the lu rou fan.

The ribs - tender and slurped off the bone easily with some fat for that nice mutton-y flavour. Portions were pretty generous. Those pig's blood cubes were just a nice add on. Will come back for the brains.

Supper Inn (宵夜店), Celestial Avenue, Melbourne CBD

This old school Cantonese restaurant (Level 1/15 Celestial Avenue, Melbourne, tel : +61 3 9663 4759) which opens late into the night is apparently an institution in Melbourne's Chinatown. From what I gather, it's been in business for almost half a century.

The portal and the path beyond was filled with scripts from past visitors that attempted to immortalise their visits in very small ways.

We had half a roast duck. The bird was much better tasting that its mundane looks suggested. Fat under the skin, tender even for breast meat and adequately flavoured. Plum sauce was the proverbial icing on the cake if one was into the icing.

A popular dish from their restaurant was their pippies in XO sauce and Chinese donuts (it's 油条/油炸鬼 and a separate charge applies). Pippies are clams if anyone was wondering. These were sautéed in a mildly spicy umami brown sauce with 油条 below. Clams were plump and not bad tasting. The XO sauce didn't taste like the ones that I am familiar with.  

I was looking forward to their blood curd congee. Did not like it. It has a flavour like pig intestines that hadn't been properly processed and that flavour was also present in the blood curds. I was disappointed by it.

There's a special fried rice on their menu which is what many would typically recognise as yang zhou fried rice. Eggs, bits of char siew, prawns, bean sprouts and spring onions. Flavour's passable, not memorable. I think it lacked smokiness or fish sauce. Or both.

There was a claypot braised lamb brisket special when we were there. Sauce was nice and there's adequate intrinsic flavour from the lamb. Would have been great if the lamb was much more tender but it kinda stopped being good there. Pity.

A recent trip to Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle (來興香菇肉脞麵)

It's been a while, more than a couple of years actually, since we last ate at Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle. Prices have gone up by a dollar since then. The big bowl is now $8. This was a 40 minutes wait on a sweltering Sunday late morning.

Seriously got quite irritated with the wait. I guess it was a combination of heat/humidity, crowd and being hangry. 

When all was said and done, it dawned upon me how I've had just almost imperceptibly (even to myself) determined if a place was not overrated. Maybe just one of few of such ways. All that roiling boil pent up beneath the surface dissipated in short order after I've tucked into the bowl. The spicy umami and textures immersing through and shrugging off that previous 40 minutes of vexing sweat.

Regarding Margaret Drive Sin Kee Chicken Rice (新記馳名雞飯) at Holland Drive

I just realised that the other Margaret Drive Chicken Rice branches that used to be around have disappeared except for this one at Holland Drive which is Margaret Drive Sin Kee Chicken Rice. Up till recently, I also hadn't realised that that the name "Sin Kee" was on their signage. 😬 Always though they were just another branch of Margaret Drive Chicken Rice. 

This does make things less murky, at least for me. It's the stall that I've been eating at since their days as Sin Kee Famous Chicken Rice at Mei Ling Food Centre. I'm going to disregard the confusing branding among various similarly named stalls and move on with just this one.

This was from maybe a month back. They're still great without the chilli sauce which allows for some nuances like the flavour of the rendered chicken drippings over the poached bird to be more discernible.

Jurong Popiah (裕廊132薄饼), Redhill

Decent poh piah from this stall. The wrap wasn't particularly firm but it's not a dealbreaker. The reddish looking roll has extra chilli and garlic - nice. Love that extra punch in them. Stall's located in that same coffeeshop as Penang Handmade Pau and Daeng M.Y..

Ah Hua Teo Chew Fish Ball Noodle (亞華潮州鱼圆面), Ayer Rajah Food Centre

Trying Ah Hua Teo Chew Fish Ball Noodle (Stall #43 Ayer Rajah Food Centre, 503 West Coast Drive) for the first time.

This was their snow crab noodle. Not real snow crab included obviously. Just crab sticks.

Decent-ish. There's sliced pork, minced pork, mushrooms and crab sticks. There was a sweetness in the saucing that borderline bothered me and I think it's from the stewed mushrooms. Speaking of mushrooms, these weren't as tender as I preferred.

Handmade Carrot Cake (手制菜头粿), Tekka Food Centre

Black radish cake from Handmade Carrot Cake (#01-301 Tekka Market & Food Centre, 665 Buffalo Road). Might not look like much and I was even thinking that a better job could have been done with the caramelisation. But there was a nice flavour coming from the kueh and one could also tell that it wasn't a mass produced variety from the texture. I liked that. For anyone that might want to know, they do fried radish cake sticks too.