AmiYaki ( 一汁三菜), Icon Village

AmiYaki (#01-16 Icon Village, 12 Gopeng Street, tel : +65 6970 9963) has taken over the space that used to be Tokyo Soba - which has moved into the area a stone's throw away that used to be occupied by Tom N Toms Coffee. 

From what I gathered, they're teishoku styled incorporating ichijju sansai - a foundation of Japanese home cooking involving the four elements of one soup and three dishes. Rice, soup, a main dish with sides and pickles.

Kinda like how some of the stuff we had previously at Ootoya.

Tried their lamb leg and gyutan sets. Not a fan of their lamb because of the pretty strong marinate that was sweet and had ginger in it - a pairing I wasn't expecting as opposed to lamb-y and savoury which I was looking forward to. Gyutan's not bad, just a lot more jaw work than I am used to.

The soup's miso and pretty good with a squeeze of lime, rice was obviously incomparable to Suju while pickles were young and zested with yuzu. Spinach was tender and pretty good eating. Not a fan of their chikuzenni - would have much preferred the renkon/beans to be more cooked and the broth to be more intense from a longer stewing.

Kawa - we ordered it on the side. These were freshly grilled like their meats plus a bit of bitterness from the charring. Made nice munching. Odd thing was that they weren't salted at all.

Ootoya this year

It's been a while since the last time. While we were of the impression that Ootoya was no longer the standards it once was then they had first started business here, some of the items that they have on menu were still enjoyable.

We never recalled having bad sashimi here. Today's hamachi was fatty and delicious.

Their salad roll with bagna sauce was a first time for us. It's one of those items that's been in the menu probably since the beginning but we've never ordered it. The sauce was obviously something that they've adapted from bagna cauda. Creamy with anchovies and garlic, it made a delicious dip. I just wished that they packed a tighter salad roll. 

Grilled buri was greasy and tasty.

Their jako gohan was stingy with the shirasu. For $3, I expected at least double the quantity they gave. 

Fortunately I had decided to get an egg to go with the rice.

I maintain that more shirasu would have made this better. It's little reasons like these why we don't come back here as much in recent years.

Today's pork belly shiokouji was a lot fattier than I remembered it.

Teishokus from Ootoya lately

We hadn't been eating at Ootoya for quite a long while. Spoilt by Suju and I suppose in no small part - their declining standards of food compared to their heydays when there were pretty solid. Oshinko looked sad. Portions have definitely become smaller while prices have inched up slowly. But what's new right? We did drop by a couple of times because the menu has changed and we wanted to know if what's current was any good.

There were grilled whole fishes for their seasonal specials. I thought the chidai yaki (grilled crimson sea bream) was quite nicely done. Tender, reasonably moist and something I could see myself looking forward to.  

There's gyutan on the menu now. It's not bad but it's also not Sandaime Bunji.

On a limited run, charcoal grilled boneless chicken thigh with what they described as green onion sauce. It's more of a green onion salsa if you asked me. Delicious with the torimomo yaki. I just wished that there were more chicken.

And the last dinner for 2013 was......

We went the dependable route instead of some place that had a New Year menu. Ootoya it was. Even as we placed our orders, I was scanning the update on the Last Dinner of 2013 by Burnt Ends which looked enticing indeed. Well, it's $200 per person so......

This was definitely good in the comforting sense and much less expensive. I picked apart a couple of the seasonal sets that they were offering and grabbed the fried oysters a la carte and discarded the soup from the steamed scallops on rice set. So this mix and match landed a shell fish teishoku dinner along with starters of blue fin tuna sashimi. This time round, the fried oysters were noticeably much better than when I last had them. They weren't as large as I was imagining but were briny and juicy. Couldn't complain on how this year has been wrapped up.

Ramen Keisuke Gyoza King, Orchid Hotel

The third of three Kings along Tanjong Pagar by Keisuke Takeda has opened its doors sometime last week and this third, was unexpectedly the Gyoza King (#01-15 Orchid Hotel, 1 Tras Link, tel : +65 6804 6674). I wouldn't say that I'm that big on gyozas as I generally prefer their Chinese counterpart, still I was intrigued enough to give it a go.

So, it's basically a counter seating joint with gyozas on a la carte or with sets - teishouku styled served with Koshihikari rice for the latter where you can pick your stuffings of choice between tori, buta or ebi and choose a couple of sides to go along.

I honestly didn't come here expecting myself to be blown away by gyozas, but I couldn't deny enjoying the meal. It was almost like eating at Ootoya. The sides were delicious and the gyoza was not bad by my yardstick. I prefer the shrimp over the pork stuffing. I think this place nailed the frills free comfort food concept right on the head. Hey, their green tea Cola doesn't taste of green tea at all.

A Cheeseburger from Ootoya

No, this is not a an actual cheese burger but a Cheeseburger. Basically it's a hamburg with melted cheese and some pesto, served in a piping hot tomato broth with vegetables. How did that fare? I thought it was pretty edible but also didn't think they make the tastiest of hamburg patties. Intrinsic flavour of the beef was muted and there are definitely better around. The tomato broth was unexpectedly enjoyable though. This dish was definitely very good cold weather food. If only it ever got cold here. Would I eat this again? Sure, but I'll probably want to run through some of the other items on their menu before. 

Ootoya in 2013

So, it's been a while since the last time. The menu seems to have changed and so has presentation. They used to cram their teishoku sets into a large tray. Now we get a smaller tray, and a big plate.

This was the first time with their blue fin tuna sashimi. The portions looked petite for what they were charging and the knife work a little amateurish. But the fish was smooth and the flavors were good.

Taking from a page of their shio-koji teishoku selection, there was some beef and pork. Shio-koji as I learnt is koji (a fermented culture of rice and/or soya beans) that is fermented in salt. The result is suppose to provide the same amount of flavor with less than half the actual salt content.

I was initially a little apprehensive of the beef from appearances, but it turned out to be pretty tasty. Fat laced with beefy flavors and uplifted by small bits of burnt ends. The pork belly was likewise really flavorful with delicious grease and soft fats, topped with char aroma.

Probably my favourite option of hijiki rice.

Why settle for one dessert when.......

...the second one comes for free! I don't know what's happening here. But we were told it's a one for one deal. The banana parfait remains the top pick for us while the green tea mousse thingy was pretty good as well. The roasted sesame on cream was nice.

Some new seafood rice stuff from Ootoya

Here're a couple of items that weren't on menu the last time we were at Ootoya. Both of which featured seafood on top of rice in bamboo steamers. The intention was I'm sure, to impart flavour into the rice. That hadn't quite worked out for the ebi seiro which featured sakura ebi. Those strips of omelette that came along with the rice actually tasted a whole lot more than those shrimps and the rice was largely flavoured by the cubes of shiitake mushroom. The clams with hijiki option faired much better in the department of flavour. Both still tasted rather healthy if you catch my drift.

Shuang Yuan, Liang Seah Street

This was another Taiwanese themed place (1 Liang Seah Street, #01-05/06, tel : +65 6336 9338) that was relatively new in the vicinity. Their lu rou fan didn't quite look like how we expected. In fact, it came generously filled with thin sliced pork and looked like a yakiniku don rather than braised pork rice with gravy. The accompanying portions of gravy was a little too little. We also ordered up a bowl of their shuang yuan noodles which came with a couple of renditions of pork - braised belly, minced and balls. Guess it was just an ordinary bowl of noodles. Nothing much to say about the flavour or texture of the noodles so I won't try. What was unexpectedly good were those very porky tasting meatballs which were made in house. The textures were chewy in a good way and the flavour was pork-alicious.

On the side, their breaded fried oysters were dry and couldn't hold up to the recent ones that we've had at Ootoya even. The stewed eggs came with overcooked yolk which really made them very ordinary.

If I ever come back, those large pork balls would probably be the only reason.

Oysters at Ootoya

Perhaps, it had been the initial excitement of having discovered that seasonal Hiroshima oysters were available on the menu at Ootoya that we came down with eager anticipation to try them. Such levels of excitement are usually no good because we tend to get disappointed. Which was what happened here. We left the place feeling not satisfied with what they had served. For one, the fried oysters weren't as juicy or creamy as I had expected and perhaps, being seasonal had made me expect much more out of them. Even the nicely breaded shell didn't save them from the fact that they were lacklustre.

 

Likewise with their steamed oyster rice which was shrivelled looking in comparison with the fat succulent shellfish we had imagined. Freshness was probably not the issue since they did taste pretty okay. They just appeared visually disappointing and while at that, had the textures of how they looked like. The flavour of the oysters did not so much permeate the rice as they had claimed and in fact, the hijiki seaweed were more pronounced.

 

What salvaged the dinner was the charcoal grilled pork rice bowl and a chicken karaage with stewed root vegetables served on the side of the oyster set. The former was a consolation with a nice char grill flavour but had too little rice to go along with. Guess I'm down to just one option for fried oysters for the time being. This episode has developed me a craving.

Ootoya again and again!

I'm getting to like Ootoya quite a bit. Even though the Atka mackerel didn't endear itself to me because it had so many bones which made them a hassle to eat. We've actually been back here a couple of times again and tried out more of their teishoku set dinners. The appeal was because these guys weren't very expensive  and the food was unpretentiously comforting and unsophisticated. Those were pretty compelling reasons.

The fried chicken with orange sauce set was unexpectedly good. I was thinking that the orange sauce would be viscous taste like the local sweet and sour variety. It wasn't as thick. The flavour was savory and sour.

I also liked their Japanese hamburg. I'm thinking that these guys could just give Ma Maison a run for the money. The quality of the beef patty was pretty good. This one I had was with the plum sauce option (there is also the regular demiglace option as well) and daikon. Tasted very much like how I imagined it. Pretty glad that their beefy patty wasn't ruined by excessive fillers. I could see myself looking forward to this.

The tonkatsu was a little disappointing. The meat was fine but batter felt a little too thick and greasy for my liking. I'll pick Tonkichi over this any day.

There was a cold spinach dish with sweet black sesame paste and some black beans. Liked it.

Ootoya, Orchard Central

Ootoya's a new restaurant in town (181 Orchard Road, #08-12 Orchard Central, tel : 6884 8901) that specialises in teishoku - which I've only recently learnt was the word for those Japanese set meals.

The Atka mackerel option I tried appeared appealing. The fish was flaky, salty and had a nice char aroma from the grilled skin. But those tiny bones which made it a hassle to eat. Rice was free flow with each order of their sets meals. There were a few toppings that one could pick for them. I got one with hijiki seaweed and it tasted like it had ume in them.