Recently at Sushiro

Some recent eats at Sushiro (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九,十, 十一, 十二, 十三, 十四, 十五, 十六, 十七, 十八) again.

Aburi nodoguro in season. This was fatty-ish and nice. Had seconds.

Shoyu aburi mehikari. I've had this fish once a long time ago and I don't remember much of it. Not a bad tasting one but also not memorable.

Their aburi engawa has always been a quiet MVP for me. My only gripe is that the aburi is often inconsistent. Sometimes, it's a light hand like this and other times, more toasty. But that melting in the mouth part along with the flavour keeps me coming back for them.

Tempura tobiuo. Or flying fish. Not bad tasting but there wasn't anything about it that was particularly distinctive about the fish. That's also the fish were we get tobiko from.

Fugu shirako with ponzu jelly. Pufferfish milt if anyone was wondering. Torched and creamy. Nice.

Mediterranean bluefin kamatoro. Kamatoro is meat from the jaw/collar/gill area. Nice and fatty.

This was called soft shell shrimp bisque dry ramen. I'm not sure if it's "soft shell shrimp bisque" or was it a soft shell shrimp with "bisque ramen". It was a soft shell shrimp in there though where the entire fried shrimp could be eaten. The yellow cream was the bisque which tasted pretty prawny. Not bad.

Shio koji albacore tuna karaage - a little gingery fried chicken from the sea.

Moon moon dorayaki - a tiny dorayaki with anko, cream and condensed milk. This was so good. Needs to be part of the permanent menu.

Revisiting Kamoshita

Been a while since we last ate at Kamoshita. We ordered more from their oden menu this time round.

Lunch beer is now $12. 33.3% more expensive than the last time. No longer as attractively priced but still cheaper than most for a pint.

I've just realised today that their oden menu is separated into cold and hot. This zucchini with miso is from the cold section. Clean and tender zucchini with a creamy salty miso paste.

The other cold oden item we had were their super tender nasu (eggplant) topped with bonito.

From their specials menu, fig tempura with red wine sauce and cream cheese. The figs weren't particularly sweet. That red wine sauce made up for that. Reminded me of Ribena.

Potato with miso.

Their smokey oden daikon tempura which we remembered from the last time.

Ayu's in season. This one had a lot of fine bones and a large portion of the fish was its roe. I liked the roe but not the bones.

Tsukune in oden broth. Chicken meatballs were pretty smooth and tender.

Ganmo in oden broth - a ball of tofu mashed with stuff like bits of vegetables and seaweed. Tasted a little gingery.

Another special was their maguro hamburg. There's bits of shiso on top and that green oil at the bottom tasted like shiso. So you know what this tastes like. Tuna meatball that's pretty shiso-ed.

Very nice shirasu butter mentai don. The ingredients that made the bowl are all in the name - shirasu, butter and mentaiko. I'll add on at this point the useless comment of "hard to go wrong with this".

I ordered this out of curiosity - it called "gout" kaisendon. Pretty small portion for $35. There's uni (not great quality), maguro, ikura, minced crab, salmon, egg yolk and maybe hamachi. Wasabi's the good grated stuff. Serving this kaisendon in a masu also just made it a hassle to eat. 

Sakana Hiraku (魚光る), Stanley Street

So I read that Sakana Hiraku (14 Stanley Street, tel : +65 8940 2824) is from the guy behind eateries like Ramen Soshiji and Sakutto Tempura & Oyster. They're a relatively new grilled fish teishoku shop in town.

What's featured prominently online was their ginshake salmon belly set which features both salmon and its belly that's been marinated in shio koji. Meat from the fish has that sweet salty flavour from the marinate and was nicely grilled with some crisp bits.

Aside from salmon, there're a few other fishes that one can pick. This was their hokke. Not bad tasting, but has bones to deal with. There's a choice between the white and red miso soup for each of the sets. Go for the red.

The servers recommended their house made chilli. Tasted much like yuzu kosho.

This definitely works!

Oyster rice & sausages from Donki

Some take away from Donki. Those aburi oysters with teriyaki glaze on rice were pretty good tasting. Sausages were salty, fatty and in snappy casing. The brown sauce on the side came with the sausages - tasted like HP Sauce.

Onigiri Gon (おにぎり 権 ), Fortune Centre

Lunch at Onigiri Gon (#01-18, Fortune Centre, 190 Middle Road). Shop seats only about a dozen and queue starts before they open for the day. Once seated, each onigiri is made to order so there could be some waiting time.

One can order these a la carte or in sets. I got the 3 piece onigiri set meal which came with a choice of pickle (kyuri shiokouji/shio koji marinated Japanese cucumber) and soup (aosa misoshru/seaweed white miso).

Which were the 3 lucky ones you might wonder?

• Niku soboro + ranou shoyu - Base was minced meat. Added shoyu marinated egg yolk which is charged separately. Not bad tasting with the egg adding creaminess on top of the shoyu umami.
• Mentaiko + cream cheese - Nice one. Base was mentaiko. Added cream cheese which bumped up the richness and lightly mellowed the edges off the salty mentaiko. My favourite among the three.
• Karashi tanaka - Spicy pickled mustard greens with chilli. Salty and a little spicy. A tried and tested pickled vegetable and rice pairing. This one was runner up.

Seaweed miso soup was nice and smoky.

Pretty happy with the onigiri. A few things to note. The cost does add up with each additional top up. Seaweed and rice tends to stick to the serving paper. Onigiri wasn't very compact so they tended to fall apart while eating.

Tsukiji Kaisendon, Holland Village Shopping Centre

Finally came down to Tsukiji Kaisendon (#02-03 Holland Village Shopping Centre, 211 Holland Avenue, tel : +65 8493 0438). This was the queue with an already full house at about 5.30pm on a weekday which according to Google is their opening time for evening service.

From what I could piece together, the restaurant's history started with Sumo-Ya -> Chirashizushi Shou -> Tsukiji Kaisendon -> Takumi Sakaba.

There's Suntory on tap.

And ankimo ponzu.

Their barachirashi was decent as barachirashi went. As an aburi barachirashi, I'll score it something like 2/10. The amount of torching was scant that I could barely taste it. It's not like torching took a lot of skill and this looked like they simply couldn't be bothered.

I'm pretty sure I can get better tasting salmon belly from Donki.

Witch's Black Potion with Katsu Kun and other things from Tonkatsu by Ma Maison

Tonkatsu by Ma Maison @ Mandarin Gallery had a Halloween tonkatsu for this year. We went for that and tried a couple of other stuff.

Never seen their chilli cream cheese on the menu before. It's pretty good. There's a savoury flavour from the chilli oils that paired nicely with the cream cheese.

What we were looking forward to today was Katsu Kun 😬. 

Check out the crazed looks. 🤘🏼 One could choose between rosu or hire. This was rosu. Plate came with squid ink black curry. The wagyu menchi katsu on the side's an add on.

Menchi katsu's a mix of minced wagyu and pork. Tender and moist on the inside and was pretty tasty. Didn't taste particularly wagyu-y.

Recently at Suju Takashimaya

Buri daikon from Suju ( 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十, 十一, 十二, 十三, 十四, 十五, 十六, 十七, 十八, 十九, 二十, 二十一, 二十二, 二十三, 二十四). Yellow tail fish head with large chunks of daikon in a sweet-ish mirin soy broth. In retrospect, I liked the meat from the head more than the body.

Took me a while but I realised that their rice set alone makes a warm and comforting light dinner. Just rice, takuan (one time refillable) and a bowl of smoke-y good tasting miso soup (not refillable).

Kuro Kare, Havelock II

Heard about Kuro Kare (B1-32 Havelock II, 2 Havelock Road) and their signature 36 hours curry which has over 25 ingredient including dark chocolate, apples puree, tomatoes, onions, honey, mirin, ginger, butter, roasted flour, milk along with their custom spice blend. Yes I aggregated that list much like how Gemini does - from different sources online. 

There's Suntory on tap. 😬 Pricey but was worth the chilled malty reprieve from the heat. So much so that I got a second mug. 😬

One could get curry rice with a choice of protein here. Curry's nice. It had a deep savoury flavour with a bit of tang and was much less sweet than what I was expecting from Japanese curry. I also liked that it wasn't overly starchy.

Iberico tonkatsu was competent. No tonkatsu sauce, just salt and mustard which didn't overly complicate the flavours.

Steak's decent with a bit of sinew/silverskin.