Birds of Paradise, Beach Road

Ducked into Birds of Paradise (263 Beach Road, tel  : +65 9820 5763) for sanctuary from the sweltering humidity.

Picked up a couple of scoops in their eggy rosemary flavoured cone. Top's osmanthus pear and bottom's sea salt hojicha. Nice.

Plain Vanilla Bakery, Cluny Court

We've walked past and sometimes into various outposts of Plain Vanilla Bakery numerous times and have never eaten/bought anything from them until today. Why? The confluence of correct signs never aligned. Today happened because we chanced upon no queues and also an empty table in this tiny (relative to their other stores) branch (#01-03A Cluny Court, 501 Bukit Timah Road, tel : +65 8363 7615).

So we grabbed a couple of cakes. 

Dark chocolate marble loaf - dry-ish but not bad tasting.

If memory serves, olive oil cake with Earl Grey buttercream and strawberry jam. Didn't taste any olive oil and the Earl Grey was subtle. Tangy sweet strawberry jam was pretty good though.

Black sesame cheesecake from Queic

Back at Queic. Pleasantly surprised at how light their black sesame cheesecake was. Black sesame flavour's pretty robust.

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.

Some stuff from Hoshino Pancake

Stopped by Hoshino Coffee at ION (#B3-22 ION Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn, tel : +65 6509 8638). Mango pancake's nice. Odd thing was, it was the smell that caught my attention. It smelled like bananas.

There's a "Paris Brest" on menu. Did not taste anything like one. There's barely any hazelnut flavour. Instead of praline, there's just real nuts stuck on top of the pastry. This was merely a cream puff that may or may not have looked like a Paris Brest.

Hvala, Ngee Ann City/Takashimaya

First time at Hvala (#B2-28, 391 Orchard Road).

I'm not sure how I feel about the yuzu warabi mochi. I didn't dislike it but I'm also not sure that I did like it. Maybe it's because I've never had it citrus fruit flavoured. The yuzu flavour was pretty prominent. One also doesn't get the same consistency as those from Warabimochi Kamakura which I like better.

This was....probiotic apple matcha. Apple juice and green tea. Not bad.

Galette des Rois and Dulcet Rose at TWG

Came across galette des rois at TWG. It's pretty good. Pastry was flaky and buttery with a light frangipane filling inside. Sweet but not excessively so. So I did a bit of Googling after that about them came across how these were traditionally eaten from the 12th days after Christmas on Ephipany. Guess we caught the season for the pastry.

I fell back into the Dulcet Rose trap again!

Revisiting Alice Boulangerie & Restaurant @ Raffles City

More food from Alice Boulangerie & Restaurant.

Their grilled beef tongue skewers were tender. The flavour of whatever it had been braised/stewed in had throughly infused the meat and it tasted kinda like Chinese dark soy sauce. Or lor bak. What I didn't like was the sauce on top which had ginger. Don't recall seeing ginger mentioned in the menu.

Lobster bisque orzo was not bad. I was expected more intensity to the bisque but maybe I was expecting a bit too much from them. There's minced crab meat in it.

Mac & cheese was bad. Menu mentioned mozzarella, parmesan and blue cheese. I'm not sure I tasted any blue cheese. I tried. It's mostly mozzarella and cream with little salt to fight the surfeit that came after a couple of mouthful.

I did what I had to in a bad situation and fell back to a reliable remedy.

Corn tart's not bad. The sweetness with the whole pastry was largely moderated except for something inside the tart which was noticeably more intense. Couldn't tell what it was.

Carrot cake's nice. Love the spices in the cake and that cream cheese frosting wasn't overly sweet.

Ma Maison, Anchorpoint

Some food from Ma Maison (#01-12 Anchorpoint, 370 Alexandra Road, tel : +65 6479 1670). These guys have been around for ages and have generally been pretty decent. They're also my first exposure to Japanese styled western food.

Onion gratin soup which was made with beef stock was not bad tasting. Sufficiently savoury and beefy plus pretty cheesy as well.

Their sirloin's generally not bad. I like that they get doneness correct and the crust that they give to the steak. This one has tamari sauce which was actually pretty good pairing with the meat. The only thing that they haven't quite gotten going well is the consistency of their meat. There's silverskin sometimes which can be a bummer. 

Yummy ikasumi omu rice. Creamy but not excessively because they didn't overdose with that cream sauce.

There's seafood and mushrooms about with squid ink rice in the omelette which was delicious. One can taste that squid ink flavour in it.

Love their chocolate strawberry shortcake too. These tasted better than their appearances belie. Pretty chocolate-y from the combination of the cream and sponge and the chocolate flavour's quite nice. Have mentioned liking them before.

Mashi no Mashi, Pickering Street

Mashi no Mashi (#01-42 Nankin Row, 3 Pickering Street, tel : +65 8957 8620) relocated from their previous location at Guoco Midtown to China Square. Place downsized physically from what looked to be a full restaurant to a ramen bar. The menu kinda went the same route and streamlined. I guess a few hard lessons were learnt there.

Some refreshing lemon soda water.

A la carte orders get a complimentary serving of of their charcoal grilled edamame. Wagyu fat is apparently involved. Most of the flavour is on the pods.

Something(s) has changed with their ultra wagyu bowl. I remember the broth being better. Beefier. I'm getting mushroom elements in the broth today. Like those from the gyukotsu bowl at Ramen Makotoya. Except that Ramen Makotoya did it better. Visually, one can already tell it has changed from their previous bowl.

The hard noodles weren't that hard as well. 😮‍💨 

There's a summer truffle bowl.

It's oddly a little sweet. Maybe it's the snow peas.

I decided not to continue putting up with the sweetness. One's made with Habanero and the other, Carolina Reaper. I recommend the latter if you enjoy heat. Instant scalp prickles. But it dragged the summer truffle bowl out of the annoying in the sweetness.

Their wagyu horumon featured offal in some sweet sauce that reminded me of those from bulgogi. I recognised tripe. There was another thing in there that was super chewy. I mean, super chewy.

This was Mr Mashi. Banana sherbet according to the menu with pecans and maple that tasted like ice cream rather than sherbet.