Filipino sweets from the dessert stall Asia Food Mall

Tried a couple of things at the dessert stall in Lucky Plaza's Asia Food Mall (#B1-038 Lucky Plaza, 304 Orchard Road).

We were curious about the ube champorado. The usual one's chocolate. This one also didn't have daing.

I couldn't really taste ube though all the diabetes inducing saccharinity from the condensed milk. This looked somewhat like pulut hitam but didn't taste like it.

Our fix to keep it edible was to get kopi c di lo kosong from the drink stall and make coffee flavoured ube champorado. Actually, kopi o di lo kosong would probably work as well. Surprisingly, the coffee here was drinkable.

While getting the champorado we noticed these banana turon. I got these to try in the hopes that it might use the local bananas that are commonly used for goreng pisang - while the voice at the back of my head was pretty confident that they wouldn't.

The rolls were drizzled with something brown and sweet...could not tell if it was caramel. There's also a dusting of sugar on them.

The voice at the back of my head was right. It's the one that tasted more like plantains which are less sweet and a texture like soft yam than ripe bananas. Which turned out to be a better choice since the fried skin was already crusted with sweetness. Unexpectedly enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

Kubo, Robertson Quay

"Filipino inspired" was the description of the food at Kubo (#01-12 The Pier at Robertson, 80 Mohamed Sultan Road, tel : +65 9645 8436). I could see how 'inspired' was the operative adjective and I thought it was pretty accurate. The chef, a Kurt Sombero, had previously headed Meatsmith Little India and has been part of Burnt Ends and Andre. Those experiences show on the menu.

The menu simply described these as Prawns, seaweed, coconut sambal. Didn't see or taste any seaweed and I think maybe the coconut sambal's the orange stuff. I actually don't know. There was a tomalley-esque cream in the middle of those prawns that were awesome. Nicely grilled these were.

This was Crab fat risotto and tobiko. I don't know where the tobiko were and I couldn't taste the crab fat. We ordered this because we remembered the crab fat dish we had with rice at 7107 Flavours years ago. Reminiscence unfortunately did not happen. 

To go by the name, this dish could have been misunderstood, miscommunicated or a failure. But it tasted good. A lot of coconut and pretty strong calamansi flavour in there. Nice one.

We were told by the staff that their smoked beef tongue was melt in your mouth.

That person was right and this was......I wanted to say fucking good. It's fucking good. 

Loved that sweet caramelized tare glazed exterior that held the tongue in form while the insides were almost pâté tender. There's king oyster mushrooms, some spicy nutty sauce I couldn't identify and....more chopped up bits of stuff I couldn't identify. But hell yeah this was one tongue that needed only tongue. No teeth necessary.

Tried their House-aged duck, pineapple jus, timut peppers. Duck's nice but I couldn't tell it was aged. The leg portion was tender but the breast slices were pretty chewy. I also couldn't tell that the jus had pineapple.

Their take on halo-halo with meringue and crispy rice. Didn't taste bad but I didn't think it was special.

I like the Turon better. That's banana in pastry (filo?) with coconut butterscotch. The menu mentioned jackfruit jam but I couldn't tell. It looked like just a few strips of jackfruit. 

More fried chicken and pizza from Asian Food Mall at Lucky Plaza

Got some fried chicken from Jollibee and pizza from Shakey's at Asian Food Mall.

The product shot of that spinach bacon glazed pizza like many product shots out there can be construed as deliberating misleading. It looked a lot nicer than the real thing.

There was less spinach than I imagined. I think even Dr Oetker's frozen spinach pizza might have more spinach. Turkey bacon looked unnaturally rectangle and was not as sweet as what the word 'glazed' might have suggested. Pretty disappointing.

Champorado

I've been wanting to try champorado for some years now ever since I've learnt about them. So I finally tried one made by a Filipino lady who brought in her daing from Palawan and fried it herself. I had the impression that the milk that it was accompanied with was condensed milk but this one was evaporated milk so it wasn't as sweet as I imagined.

It's not bad. I kinda dug it between the chocolate risotto-like rice and the bites of the crispy salted fish.

Aloha Burger from Jollibee

The Aloha Burger from Jollibee has the same beef patties they use for their "burger steak"/Yumburger - which tastes semi mysterious in a cheap manner but also strangely addictive to the point that I might describe them as delicious. That and lettuce, bacon, cheese and a ring of pineapple with their Aloha sauce. I don't actually know what's in that Aloha sauce but...

...the page that many burger joints can take from this particular humble fast food is not to over-sauce the burger. Especially if the rest of the ingredients in said burger are good enough to sell themselves. Unless those burger joints had never thought that way about their burgers. 

I liked that this wasn't over-sauced. Delicious without being overbearing and there was that tangy sweetness from the pineapple which made sense with the salt from the other ingredients in the sandwich. I'd eat this again.

The Jolly Spaghetti from Jollibee

We've had fried chicken from Jollibee numerous times but have never ordered their Jolly Spaghetti because it never looked appealing to me. I've also heard comments about how it was sweet and that didn't help endear them to me. For some reasons, we ordered and tried recently and it didn't taste half as bad as I had imagined. There was a light beefy flavour to the slight sweet sauce and the noodles weren't as soggy as I thought they might have been. 

Trying dinakdakan

We came across dinakdakan the last time we were here at Asian Food Mall. They're apparently another porcine dish that could be made with pig's ear and face folded in with mayonnaise, lime, onions, vinegar and chilli. And other stuff. We came to try them. Noticed that there were a couple of stalls that were selling these. The one above is from Lutong Pinoy (#B1-16 Lucky Plaza). Creamy and a little greasy in a good way. Yeap, that's a longganisa on the side as well. I like the chicken-y tamarind soup that came with their rice plate. 

This one is from Chick Point a couple of stalls away. I got their dinakdakan with some lechon paksiw. Their rendition of the dinakdakan tasted a little gingery and had more heat coming from the slice chillis but was otherwise pretty similar to Lutong Pinoy. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of ginger in savoury food so no prizes for guessing which one I'm going with the next time I'm here. Say, don't these things taste like the non hotplate version of the sisig at Max's. The soup here didn't have any chicken flavour. 

500g lechon from Lechon Republic

This was a spontaneous decision. We enjoyed the "porcinity" from Lechon Republic that we ordered from them again. 500 grams of their roasted pork this time round and sisig to go with rice.

Food from Lechon Republic

Trying Lechon Republic (#01-09 Novena Regency, 275 Thomson Road) for the first time.

The lechon was not bad. The crisp of the skin held up quite well through delivery. I would imagine that they would be even better if we had them fresh at the restaurant. The meat was very tender and had some fat for flavour.

Tried their bopis. If you didn't know what bopis was, it's a sautéed offal dish of beef and/or pork lungs and/or heart. The sauce was a little sweet, a little spicy, tangy and creamy even. It was good pairing with rice. 

Here's a sizzling sisig which is obviously not sizzling anymore. Because delivery. Heh. Deliciously savoury that is enhanced by a citrus-y tang from the limes. That and some spikes of heat from the green chilli. Obviously so good with the rice.

Max's Restaurant, Far East Plaza

I've never heard of Max's Restaurant (#01-07 Far East Plaza, 14 Scotts Road, tel : +65 6909 8504) until they opened up recently. From what I've read, they've been around since 1945 and are known for their fried chicken.

We ordered their pinakbet because it was the only real vegetable dish on the menu. There was a variety though which included bitter gourd, string beans, carrots, kang kong, eggplant and okra that's stir fried or sautéed in bagoong. Together with some bits of pork and shrimp. No idea which variety of bagoong they used but this was pretty tasty.

Since these guys are "the house that fried chicken built", we had to have their fried chicken. My verdict was that it was not bad at all. I liked that it wasn't battered. The bird has a nice chicken-y flavour which in my opinion, many local fried chicken doesn't and the meat was tender to boot. Those little planks on the side were fried sweet potato.

The restaurant recommended the banana ketchup and Worcestershire sauce to go with their fried chicken. I mixed them both and added a bit of hot sauce. That banana ketchup had a flavour not very different from preserved sour plum. No banana flavour though.

I'm generally not big on mayonnaise. Max's rendition of the chicken sisig is done with mayo. From what I could tell, the meat components were chopped bits of their fried chicken and chicken liver. I liked this dish more than I thought. Loved those seared liver bits. Together with the onions and chilli, the sisig came together nicely. This was one to go with steamed rice.

Speaking of which, I should avoid the garlic rice here the next time. Expensive, bland and the flavour is nowhere near Gerry's.

Kabayan Filipino Restaurant, Lucky Plaza

We were in the vicinity and had lunch at Kabayan Filipino Restaurant (#03-25 Lucky Plaza, 304 Orchard Road). I've heard of them for some time and have been wanting to check out their food. Which is done cafeteria styled like Sari Ratu or Minang House where one picks dishes of their choice to go with rice.

Food's not bad. The options were a little overwhelming so in the short moments of agonizing over what to pick, I ended up with a plate with longanisa (sweet sausage), lechon kawali (roasted pork belly) and some long beans in a vinegar sauce. The latter was dangerously appetizing while that longanisa reminded me of 台湾香肠. Pork belly wasn't so crispy but I didn't quite mind that.

Also liked also their peanut-ty kare kare with tripe that came with a side of bagoong which was pretty awesome with either the stew or on rice with everything else. Gotta come back another time to see what else is good.

Don Lechon, Guillemard Road

I heard about this shop (#01-52 Grandlink Square, 511 Guillemard Road, tel : +65 9778 9737) a while ago and have been wanting to check them out. The dish that had which piqued my interest was their bopis which I hadn't seen available elsewhere. Lechon is....well, not so uncommon these days. Anyway, they were out of bopis which was a little disappointing because we came out of the way for this. Their lechon was pretty tasty, tender and had a good crisp going at the right parts. The order took really long though. We waited about 45 minutes just for these.

Revisiting Gerry's Grill

I realized that my challenge with ordering at Gerry's is trying to get something that looks good that doesn't contain pork.

There was a measure of success with that from the green mangoes with bagoong. Bagoong as I've recently learnt is a condiment made with fermented fish or krill. It's sweet and salty and has a shrimp-y flavour akin to what one an taste in belachan or rojak sauce. The bagoong a complement to the sour from the green mangos. I'm thinking it's something that'll also be great with rice.

The porking began with sisig, the almost universally recognized Filipino dish of sizzling chopped pig's face on a hotplate. The menu understates by mentioning pork cheeks as the ingredients but we're pretty damn sure it was more than just cheeks in there. Perhaps snout and skin and ears. 

We had an order of their adobong puso rice which was steamed rice with strips of tender pork belly in adobo sauce wrapped in banana leaf. Sweet and savoury and just a tiny bit smokey with pepper. This was pretty good.

And a green mango shake for that make believe ending.

Jollibee, Lucky Plaza

The entire of this country's fast food could certainly learn a thing or two about queue management from Jollibee (#06-048A, Lucky Plaza, 304 Orchard Road). That aside, I can see why these guys are so popular. Their fried chicken was pretty light, quite tender and tasted reasonably good. Even their burger steak in that onion-y gravy was quite the comfort food with the little packet of rice on the side.

I thought part of their draw was that they were a little different, subtly enough and not entirely a different beast. I wouldn't mind eating this but I'm not so sure it'll be worth the time if there was a long queue. Hey, there's actually pineapple juice instead of just the globally monopolized sodas and overly sweet lemon tea.