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.

Ameo Pudding Town (雨尾部町), Zhongzheng Road @ Tamsui District, Taipei

Came across Ameo Pudding Town (No. 264, Zhongzheng Road, Tamsui District, Taipei) while wandering around Dan Shui. They're a shop for soft serves, puddings and dorayakis.

I was initially intrigued by their espresso sundae. Turned out to be something like an affogato with too much ice cream so the coffee's kinda weak due to the ratio.

The other sundae which we got had balsamic vinegar and olive oil was delicious. Would come back just for this.

Dan Shui (淡水)

Some bites in our day trip to Dan Shui.

Pancake with cai por (pickled radish). Peppery ones at that. Never had these sweet pancakes with cai por before. Pretty good tasting with a lot of crunch - a texture that one normally doesn't get in these.

Red bean ones were also nice. Love that they weren't overly sweet. Loads of beans inside.

Custard ones were kinda lightweight.

Salted duck egg with powder blue shells.

They were salty, but not as salty as the ones we have back home.

The century egg shells were speckled.

The crystalline blacks were latticed with dendritic salt crystals. According to Gemini, these patterns are known as sōng huā (松花) in Chinese, are a sign of a properly made and high-quality century egg.

Yolk was creamy and molten. These were good tasting century eggs.

Stopped for some seasonal blueberry kakigori at this shop.

White bitter melon juice with honey. The drink was actually refreshing with the bitterness edging in at the back of each gulp.

Jiufen (九份)

Finally at Jiu Fen. We told ourselves to keep our expectations moderated because we've grown wise to the ways of social media whores. The location was magical in its own ways but not necessarily along the old street (老街) where it's mostly and unimaginatively featured.

Here's some of the stuff we ate. 'Some' because it was almost impossible to get photos of everything we ate in the crowd.

Tried some cream puffs. Decent tasting. The orange one was sweet potato custard.

Squid sausage was pretty peppery. No squid ink flavour here.

Finally got some grilled eringi after seeing them around in numerous street stalls. The mushrooms were a little juicy and a little spongy. Tasted much like how I imagined them. 

Snails. The chilli sauce packed a bit heat and vinegar. So while it added some zing, it also mostly overwhelmed the natural briny flavour of those snails.