Revisiting Quentin's

Came back to try more of the food at Quentin's.

That's the pasteis de bacalhau - deep fried salt cod & potato fritters. Nicely browned crisp shell with piping hot insides. These are like the better version of Birds Eye Fish Fingers. 😅 

Was curious about their dry laksa which turned out to be pretty similar to the Peranakan variety. This one was a bit more sweet than savoury but was otherwise, very recognizeable from the coconut and shrimp infusion in the rempah. That and those flakes of dried laksa leaves.

Dry mee siam was sweet and tangy. Seems that the ratio of the ingredients in their rempahs favours sweetness which is a little bit more than I like. There's a mellow quality in the sweet tanginess of some mee siam that I've enjoyed which I don't detect here. Between this and the laksa, I prefer the latter. 

Loved this black ink calamari dish. The broth was flavoured with the ink and garlic - thin enough to drink like soup and sufficient flavourful to be gravy for rice.

Quentin's kueh bingka was a pleasant curiosity. They appear to be a derivative of the more commonly found bingka ubi. These were less dense and in spite of the name, were more cake than kueh. Aside from the bits of tapioca one could detect, the rest of it was pretty much a butter cake. I like this.

Quentin's, Ceylon Road

Eurasian food - how interesting! I can't say I know much about them but today's always a good time to start finding out more. Quentin's (Level 1 Eurasian Heritage Gallery, 139 Ceylon Road, tel : +65 9008 3802) it seems is the only Eurasian restaurant we have. Food's a mixed bag of influences. While I understand that they're derived in part from Portuguese cooking, I also recognized elements from Indian, Malay and Peranakan cuisine.

The restaurant even have their own embroidered napkins. That's identity right there. No?

We were served fish keropok with sambal. Top one was a spicy and bitter belachan and the bottom one tasted like it was made with dried tomatoes.

We had the most cucumber-y tasting apple & cucumber juice. Just to be clear, the juice didn't just taste of cucumber - we've just never had a juice with cucumber that had so much cucumber taste. Very refreshing with the apple and well chilled when it was served. This was just the drink we never knew we wanted as a respite from the weather.

One of the dishes we were curious about was their Feng - a stew made with diced pork, pig's livers and heart. Something an old friend affectionately refers to as curry feng. Nice. There was a recognizeable offal-y flavour to it, present but not excessive, along with vinegar. Like many dishes, everyone has their take on it. This reminded me a little bit of adobo. Definitely made for pairing with rice. Just like....

...their prawns bostador. Chunky prawns in a creamy lemak coconut laden gravy topped with shavings of toasted coconut. Flavour profile couldn't escape the association with the local laksa or sayur lodeh. Delicious this one.

The vegetable dish was their turmeric cabbage - something not dissimilar to the Indian cabbage poriyal. Turmeric, mustard seeds, curry leaves and green chillies.

Gotta have rice.

Dessert was sugee cake. The layer in the middle beneath the lemon flavoured icing tasted like marzipan. The cake itself was a little salty which paired pretty well with the sweet toppings.

Pretty decent coffee.