Some SG60 mazesobas from Menya Kokoro @ 100AM

Been a while since we ate at Menya Kokoro (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九. 十, 十一, 十二). We came over to check out a couple of their mazesoba they whipped up for SG60.

Was pleasantly surprised by their mapo tofu mazesoba. The umami gravy packed a bit of heat - more than what I imagined though not nearly the level 3 at Torasho Ramen & Charcoal Bar. I'd eat this again.

Unexpectedly, the bak kut teh mazesoba tasted like bak chor mee. Kinda. I've mixed feelings over this one. 

The ingredients that "made" this a bak kut teh mazesoba fell short. Pork rib was dry-ish and not exactly flavourful (the dark soy sauce helped). You tiao was dry and hard. Soup on the side was savoury and garlicky but not exactly bak kut teh. 

On the bright side, the noodles did not taste bad at all. Together with the minced meat sauce, mashed garlic, spring onion, nori and egg - it was actually pretty good. But that's just mazesoba. Much like what they normally do. Nothing bak kut teh about it.

Miso fusion mee pok from Li Yuan パート2

Well, this was our last time at the Li Yuan in Commonwealth Crescent. Literally so because by the time this post was out, they would have shuttered this Commonwealth stall leaving only a couple of outpost left. My last bowl was $8 miso fusion mee pok. It's probably an additional meatball and slice of charshu above the $7 bowl. Miso sweetness and umami with a nice hum of heat from the chilli. I like it but I don't think I'll get to eat it enough to fully understand it.

Clos Pasoh, Bukit Pasoh

We've seen a lot of pictures of the food from Clos Pasoh (48A Bukit Pasoh Road, Level 2, tel : +65 6980 0672) and it looked good. That has in part set expectations.

The restaurant described themselves as "a chic reimagining of the French brasserie for today’s urbane food and wine lover". I find that noncommittal-ly vague. A simpler and more accurate description would be just Asian influenced French.

We were wrapping our heads around the Asian influenced French brasserie vibe. From the French-y setup amidst lush tropical plants to a sequence of music we noticed that included some rap tune I didn't identify, followed by some stereotypically Frenchie music and then 'Baby I'm Yours' by Breakbot & Irfane. Eclectic much?

Personally, I preferred the French aspect of their food.

Sourdough was charcoal grilled. Great smokey flavour.

Accompanied by some tangy Cervelle de canut.

And salted butter.

One of the pictures that comes up often on social media is their bisque coco-homard. Coconut lobster bisque with lobster dumpling. I tasted lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. Was unpleasantly surprised by julienned ginger. The broth was nice. One could describe it as lobster-y and reminiscent of laksa. 

Did not enjoy the dumplings. When it's described as lobster dumplings, expectations tend to be raised. I couldn't identify what I ate.

Can you believe this is tartare de beouf? Did not think sliced red chilli add to the experience but maybe that's just me. Loads of texture which I expected from bits of herbs, roughly chopped meat, onions and capers were not present. It's inside mantou instead of on bread. Texturally it's nothing like beef tatare.

There's also green curry in it. In my not so humble opinion, they tried too hard with those Asian elements.

The glass bowl contained cashew butter. With the garnish, I thought it was more of the beef tartare. 😂  The cashew butter was nice though.

Ris de veau was good. Like I mentioned earlier, the French stuff was nice. Chunks of well caramelized foie gras in it were nice also. Mopped the Vin Jaune sauce clean with additional bread we asked for.

That the additional bread. Sourdough but not charcoal toasted.

The lamb we had was part of the butcher's cut of the day. Shoulder braised in what the server described as Madras curry and drizzled with Greek honey. The latter was totally lost. That huge smudge of harissa was actually nice but unfortunately I like lamb tasting like lamb mostly and used that for my bread. Did not understand the obsession with capsicum here. 

The lamb itself was fantastic. Slip off the bone tender. If they were to tell me this was an African/Middle Eastern dish, I'd buy it. Don't see the French part in this.

Pistachio souffle was...not great. Could not taste the pistachio so calling it 'not great' was a kindness. Raspberry sorbet was delicious and robust.

Some Irish coffee with Jameson whiskey to end.

Jelebu Dry Laksa, VivoCity

Jelebu Dry Laksa (#02-48 VivoCity, 1 HarbourFront Walk, tel : +65 9721 6560) is by Tipsy Collective. If one were inclined to do a little investigative overview, the group creates manages restaurants that could be construed as contemporary local/Asian fusion. Booze is apparently a thing too. Jelebu Dry Laksa didn't feel so much to me about the passions of a particular Renee Tang who has a limited background/history with cooking than it is likely, just a convenient pretty face with a suitable story for the purposes of branding.

Just saying......I don't know the real story.

Tried their carrot cake omelette. The actual dish looked like an amateur's attempt to replicate the dish compared to the picture on their menu. It's not a bad tasting carrot cake wrapped in egg. Those red chunks were lup cheong. Orange sauce was sambal mayo which I thought wasn't bad. Flavours were intense from those two which was pretty much the majority of what could be tasted. What we did not expect was that the dish was served barely lukewarm. Hmmm..... 

That's their tiger prawn beancurd roll. Stuffings include the mentioned prawns and diced water chestnuts. This was like ngoh hiong minus the minced pork. I don't know about the truffle mayo on the side. Felt like it was put there because they didn't know what else to spruce those rolls with.

The Jelebu dry laksa was not bad tasting and also not very lemak. After mixing everything, the laksa leaf flavour also kinda got lost but I'm gonna chalk those up to the flavour profile they were going for. The one thing that bothered us were those crispy ebi that were exacting their revenge by stabbing the roof of our mouths. 

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. 

Baba Chews, Katong Square

Baba Chews (#01-01 Katong Square, 86 East Coast Road, tel : +65 6723 2025) is...Peranakan. I guess. If I had to venture with my observations, there's western influences, perhaps a shade of Japanese with a tiny breath of Chinese and Thai. As rojak as this nation is. 

Was intrigued by their kopi c spare ribs. That sauce was more coffee than most Chinese cze char coffee pork ribs out there. Which was a good thing if you're wondering. But I'm not sure it's kopi c I tasted. Pretty nice sweet slaw with pineapples and I also kinda liked the crispy dough fritters (油条) they sprinkled on top.

What didn't work out for me was how the ribs were cooked. Not slide off the bone tender like well done barbecued ribs. I wished it were. Meat's lean and a little dry. Pity.

That's chicken rendang lasagne. I had in mind a Malay sort of rendang but maybe this was of a Peranakan rempah recipe. The dish didn't taste bad as whole but......we'll leave it at that.

WOW Bistro (威旺美食酒馆), Bencooolen Street

Read about WOW Bistro (#01-02/03, 47 Bencoonlen Street, tel : +65 9654 7947) and got curious because of some of their featured dishes. They're located at the side of the lobby of Hotel Bencoolen. We tried a walk in one Saturday and were turned away because they were filled up. So we made reservations for the next one and it was mostly empty when we were there. Hmmm......

Kwirk Belgian White on tap for $11. Pretty good deal in town. Note to self : can come for beer.

We ordered radish cake. Black one. I expected it to come with cheese but it didn't. Instead there was a lot of coriander on it. Who the hell puts coriander on radish cake? Anyways the wait staff tried to explain that only the white radish cake had cheese.

Really? I wouldn't have known. No one told us. 

The black radish cake was actually pretty good. House made fried onions, a hae bee infused sambal, loads of egg and not excessively greasy. I wouldn't mind coming here for these.

The dish I was curious about was their durian curry fish. I know right? Durian curry sounds kinda out there. But it was also kinda good with a lot of richness, some heat and spices. First in the world they said. I detected curry leaves, laksa leaves, black peppercorn and chilli padi in the creamy durian infused curry. The portions were huge.

While it tasted unusual, I thought it kinda worked. There was sufficient flavour from durian and we even found a couple of seeds of those D24 that they used. Which was awesome while the dish was still hot. 

The pan fried sea bass felt left sidelined even though it was a huge piece. Not bad tasting but my mind was still trying to reconcile the savoury fish with the sweet-ish spicy durian curry.

The other dish that got my attention was their lamb kut teh. Basically lamb rendition of bak kut teh which was something I had over a few occasions in the past wondered if they existed. Now I know it does. There's a rich herbal broth infused with lamb flavour and a herb infused rack of lamb. That fork tender rack of lamb had at some point been on some grill because we could taste the caramelized parts which were delicious.

I prefer the broth to be more savoury rather than the dominant herbal sweetness that this had.

The dish had a couple of cloves of garlic on the side which were....melt in your mouth? These definitely qualified that description. To think of it, they were already borderline melting before they were in our mouths.

A Noodle Story, Guoco Tower

A Noodle Story has a stall now at the basement of Guoco Tower (#B2-32 Guoco Tower, 1 Wallich Street). The Amoy Food Centre stall is still undergoing renovations I hear. I wanted to eat this again to see if my views of them had changed. This was the medium sized bowl - I don't remember what size it was that I had previously. The first thing that I missed was those fried prawns wound in potato strips. It was replaced with a regular battered prawn. 😢

The bowl is built for maximizing umami. The thing that had gotten to me a little was the sweetness in the sauce of the noodles that I wished wasn't there. But it's their sauce. Otherwise I think I'm understanding it a little better. Not much has changed - their noodle texture was still wiry as I liked them. Those delicious wantons in soup were packed with meat and shrimp - flavoured with sesame oil and I thought I detected a hint of ginger. Soup was also not bad tasting.

More mee pok-ing at Li Yuan Mee Pok (栗原ミーポック)

Didn't quite plan a return to Li Yuan Mee Pok so soon but it happened.

This was a bowl of their shoyu fusion mee pok. Flavour difference between the shoyu and the miso bowl for their fusion mee pok seemed to be not much. I can't definitively tell which one I prefer.

Trying their mushroom mince meat noodle for the first time. Came with mock abalone like the fusion mee pok bowls. Not bad tasting. Solid savoury umami going on with discernible vinegar in the sauce. I emptied a little dish of their chilli soy sauce in it for a bit of heat but that cranked the sour up a bit too much.

That's the chilli soy sauce I'm talking about.