Tangra Chinese, Race Course Road

We've seen Tangra Chinese (28 Race Course Road, tel : +65 9155 7645) around. Trying their food for the first time. From the menu, it looked Indian Chinese and Tibetan. A category we haven't explored much of.

There's lassi. Not thick but still refreshing.

Tried a couple of their momos. They're are dumplings of Tibetan and Nepalese origins and usually are steamed. These red ones are stuffed with chicken and glazed with a chilli garlic sauce. I detected a hint of ginger it it. But otherwise, it's pretty much like most fried dumplings.

The steamed momo we had was stuffed with palak paneer. Spinach and cheese. The latter, Indian cottage cheese with texture very similar to tofu.

The stuffings were chopped up. These were delicious. Kinda pricey though at almost $3 a piece.

The dumplings were served with a sauce on the side. Don't know what it was made of exactly but I detected lots of garlic and fermented bean in it.

So, the Indian Chinese stuff...this was their mixed chow chow rice. Mixed because it has both chicken and shrimp in it. The rest of it were basically stir fried basmati rice and egg noodles with spring onion and eggs. Tasted much like yang zhou fried rice. Not bad.

That's their lemon chicken. It wasn't so much lemon-y then it was plum sauce and the flavour of that wasn't intense. Not like the local lemon chicken which is generally more sweet and tangy.

Dessert was a mishti doi. From the flavour, I'm guessing it's yoghurt with caramel folded in. Nice one.

Bamas Kitchen, Sam Leong Road

Trying to figure out what to make of Bamas Kitchen (#04-01 Trio, 11 Sam Leong Road, tel : +65 9857 0023). Read about them and I had the impression that they were a regular Indian restaurant hidden in the building called Trio. Did not get the restaurant vibe when we were there. Noticed metal troughs which suggested that catering or buffet might be involved in their business.

There's also a retro-ish looking bar which implied that the place also functioned as a watering hole. Nothing's on tap in spite of what's displayed and most of the beers are bottled. There's even soju - did not expect those. Screen near the bar was playing pop MVs from the 90s. The guy who attended to us was Nepalese.

Moving on from the mixed signals, we came to try their duck briyani. Something I'm pretty sure isn't available anywhere else. We were given papadums minus the usual mint dip.

That duck briyani was pretty tasty. The meat was mostly slurp off the bone tender covered in curry that was described as a 'green chilli based masala'. The mound of basmati rice wasn't exactly flavoured with much besides that masala. Those being said, I also couldn't necessarily tell that the meat was duck. Hmmm...

There's achar for a bit of crunch and acid to cut through the richness of the masala on the duck. 

We ordered a mutton chukka, which was similar to pepper mutton fry. That was delicious.

At this point, the proprietress came out with little glasses of cream topped rose milk. She said it was complementary for the Hari Raya period. Nice.

Some hot noodle-y payasam before we left. These were a lot less creamy than what we've had before but they were no less milky and was served piping hot. Lots of cashews and raisins in it.

New Everest Kitchen, Chander Road

I realized that it had been quite a while since I was down in this part of Little India. A recent craving for Indian food along with a fragment of lodged memory of this place brought me back. This restaurant (55 Chander Road, #01-01, tel : +65 6299 0745) apparently, is run by the owner of Gorkha Grill, a place which I had found out about too late and had never had the opportunity to visit when it was still around in Chinatown.

We started with a serving of a basket of crispy papadum with a spicy mint chutney.

We ordered a serving of pan fried spicy chicken gizzards. The gizzards were a little tough, chewy and definitely more than a little spicy with a hint of garlic. They were tougher than those that one could find in chicken rice stalls. What I didn't like were the occasional bit of ginger which snuck up with the gizzards into my mouth.

The jheenge papita was a described as prawns marinated in wine and mountain herbs. The gravy actually tasted very much like butter chicken - or rather butter prawns in this context. I could only discern a modicum of difference with this and the murgh makhni. Interestingly that warm gravy was actually quite good eaten together with the chilled papaya. The prawns were well cooked and instead of being crunchy, had a "meatier" texture.

This murgh makhni was essentially what we usually know as butter chicken. It was one of the better ones we've had. Rich, creamy and not overly tart nor spicy. They didn't use chicken tikka so this lacked the smoky depth compared with the ones from Jaggi's. The meat was quite tender though.

New Everest Kitchen's jheera rice was different from the ones at Chellas or Annalakshmi. This rendition had a more subdued aroma. It wasn't bad, just wasn't spectacular.

Of course, I fell into my favourites trap and got myself an order of kashmiri naan. The ones here tasted remarkably similar to the ones at Jaggi's. Just one difference. The latter had cheese while I could taste some bits of nuts and garlic in this one.

Shish Mahal, Albert Court

Beside the ill fated attempt at findg Gorkha Grill some months back (does it even exist anymore anyone?), Shish Mahal (180 Albert Street, #01-20 Albert Court, tel: 6837 3480) was our second foray into Nepalese food. To be more precise, this place does both Indian and Nepalese. We weren't too impressed with the chicken momo which was in many ways like Chinese xiao long bao.

We had an order of the garlic prawns which weren't sure was Indian or Nepalese. The prawns were quite crunchy and de-shelled (yay!). Their starchy sauce was unremarkable and the garlic flavour fell short of what I expected from garlic prawns. Definitely had a much better rendition at Mango Tree.


There wasn't much to comment about their tandoori chicken (which was quite tender), the boti kebab (some chewy lamb heavily marinated in a tandoori paste that left nothing of the meat's original flavour) or the chewy cheese naan. I don't think we'll be coming back though.