Revisiting Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐) @ Paragon

Trying new stuff, getting old stuff and discovering new fried rice at Paragon's Din Tai Fung.

First time trying their angled gourd and shrimp xiao long bao. The flavour in the soup was clean and sweet. Pretty lightweight compared with the regular ones that had rendered pork fat.

Pretty respectable prawn paste mid wings they do. The prawn paste wasn't as intense as say those from Sin Hoi Sai, but it's adequate and not shabby with chicken that's nicely fried. I liked that we could just slurp the meat off those bones easily.

Fried tofu with lotus roots and mushrooms seem new. Tasted kinda like how you think it would. I didn't like it because there's some Chinese celery (芹菜) in it.

Quietly, Din Tai Fung has also introduced black truffle fried rice in this outlet. Real shaven black truffle, no truffle oil. Which means while the flavour doesn't endure for long, it's not artificial. Actually, the ones at London Fat Duck and Tampopo felt like better eats. 

This steamed kaya buns were oddities. The menu mentioned Nonya kaya and it looked Hainanese. But it tasted like Nonya kaya. The brown stuff crusting the surface were coconut flakes.

Kimukatsu, Takashimaya

Kimikatsu (#B201-5 Takashimaya Food Hall, 391A Orchard Road) does mille feuille tonkatsu; it's the only type of tonkatsu they do. If you didn't know what that was, it's a katsu made with thinly sliced pork rolled into a tight package before it's panko-ed and fried. Unlike the common variety which is made with thick sliced pork that's panko-ed and fried. It's not new or unique and it's available from folks like Tonkatsu by Ma Maison, Tonkichi, Tampopo back in the old days and even Gochi-So Shokudo.

They opened up a few years back. Been wanting to try them for a while but whenever we're in the area, we kinda inadvertently get drawn to Nakajima Suisan. Orders here were accompanied with a sauce platter which came with tonkatsu sauce, tsukemono and ponzu.

Tried the salted egg katsu which was a National Day limited flavour. Pork was tender with a nicely browned crunchy surface. Salted egg sauce was decent tasting; not as intense as I was hoping for in the salted egg department and I'm sure it's from some powder. Wonder if it's one of those from Knorr.

I like the garlic flavour more because the flavour from the pork came through all the garlic unlike the one with the salted egg sauce. Not bad tonkatsu here. Will come back and try other flavours.

London Fat Duck, Great World

We ate at London Fat Duck in Scotts Square a few years ago when they just started business. Back then, they were a venture by Akashi and Fei Xiong groups. I recall it wasn't a particularly good experience. Now it's run by just Akashi. Menu has had changes since.

We didn't have any duck this time.

I remember them doing a pretty decent char siew. This wasn't the barbequed pork I had expected.  Pretty sure it's not the same thing we had previously but it didn't matter because this one wasn't bad too. Struck a good balance between meat and fat. Liked the sweet sauce. Just not the char siew I was expecting.

Tried the fish noodles with fish curd. Menu stated superior sauce but I would prefer to just call it prawn soup. Yeah, the very same kind one gets in hae mee. Spiked with lard. Not bad at all. The texture of the noodles was like soft fish cake. Fish curd was also like fish cake with more bite. 

We ended up with har gow. Better than I remember them.

Debated over this and their duck bak kwa fried rice. In the end the black truffle won. Turned out to be very nice. Even if we were to discount the slices of black truffle and truffle puree, this was already a competent plate of properly fried rice which had the savouriness and texture it deserved to make it delicious. A different thing from the one by Tampopo so I couldn't make a proper comparison. I liked both.

Obligatory vegetable dish of brinjal in minced meat sauce. Gotta have this with plain rice the next time.

Cold ramen from Tampopo

I've eaten a cold ramen from Tampopo years ago. This one is a bit different. No kurobuta ham and no mustard. Looked a lot less impressive and truth to be told, the experience was not even on par with the ones from Baikohken or even Ohsho. Serviceable but definitely not getting them again. Chilled food doesn't survive delivery well.

Monster Curry, Jem

My first experience with Monster Curry was a few years back. Recently, I happened to be looking for a place with no queue at Jem in the lunch hour and ended up here (#02-06 Jem, 50 Jurong Gateway Road) with their steak curry. The steak didn't look as good as the picture on the menu. I was imagining something like the wafu steak from Tampopo. It didn't taste too bad though.

I remembered liking their level 3 spiciness for their curry and got the same this time round. Creamy with a nice heat from that level 3 and a sweetness that wasn't annoying. Almost fruity if I hadn't been imagining things. 

Kyushu ramen and apple yoghurt salad from Tampopo

I've had my first taste of Kyushu styled ramen from Tampopo. It's always been a sort of reference for me for tonkotsu based bowls because I liked their creamy but thin broth and it was about the time I started learning more about ramen and their broth. These days we have plenty of other options for tonkotsu. I can't even differentiate if they're Kyushu, Hakata or Fukuoka styled these days. Or even if there's a difference.

There's an apple yoghurt salad in season now. Personally, yoghurt's much nicer than most other creamy salad dressing.

But back to this. I don't think much has changed for their Kyushu styled bowl. Charshu's thin sliced and flavoured with fat. As much as these guys aren't a ramen-ya, I like theirs. Still not getting much of the mentaiko until the end of the broth though.

Tai broth ramen from Tampopo

Tampopo has a tai (red snapper) broth ramen this month by a certain award winning Kawase Yuya. It was actually kinda nice. That broth had a certain light fishy sweetness which one doesn't find in their other bowls. There was a bit of yuzu peel in there for flavour as well. What's also cool was that those menma didn't have the least bit of pungent taste at all.

For some reasons, I was expecting slices of the fish in the bowl but that turned out to be just charshu.

The Public Izakaya (大衆酒場) by Hachi, Tras Street

We have walked past The Public Izakaya (#01-09 100AM, 100 Tras Street, tel : +65 +65 6604 9622) countless times and wondered if they were any good in spite of the crowd. We finally found out today.

Their reba shoyuzuke was the first to land on our table. I liked that those chicken livers were not overcooked. Suitably flavoured with both shoyu and sesame sauce. The accompanying onions were crunchy and not sharp.

There was a negitoro don. I was thinking that this might be a substitute for the one at Tampopo that used to be better since they were at similar price points.

I think it could work. It was nicer toro that they used and I certainly couldn't argue against pickled daikon and ikura. More negi would be great but I don't think that's a deal breaker.

The momotaro tomato which we had thought would be the first to be served came after the negitoro don which we had expected to be served last. Sequence was a little wonky but I guess it wasn't such a big deal. But a little more salt for those nicely chilled tomatoes would have been nice.

We had an order of the jaga shiokara mistakenly thinking that it would be the same as the ones from Hokkaido Izakaya. Those had fermented squid guts while this one was just fermented squid. That explains why there was a lot more squid here since the guts had a much more intense flavour and saltiness.

Following up was some big assed tsukune in squid ink mayo. The tsukune was sweetened by a lot of minced carrot and I wasn't not getting much of those squid ink flavour.

Kushiyaki here were heartily portioned. No comparisons will be made to the king since they are obviously better at this - I thought these bacon wrapped hotate were pretty good. Each piece was a large mouthful.

This place also seemed to be less heavy handed with the salt. Which I suppose is sometimes a good thing. Still the hatsu skewers were enjoyable.

Both their tori momoniku and reba were also large and chunky. I think we liver-ed out here. These liver skewers were about twice the size of regular ones. Haven't had so much in one sitting before today. While those larger portions were good value for what they charged, it also meant a larger meat to surface ratio which by extension made these skewers less flavourful than the smaller "usual" skewer sizes that kushiyaki joints normally make them. 

More eats at Tampopo

Been a little while since we were last at Tampopo.

Sweet corn from Hokkaido was in season so we got ourselves some of them in tempura. These ones here were a lot tastier than the ones we had at Keria Japanese Restaurant not a couple of months back.

Tampopo's wafu steak has always been a welcomed sight. While we don't order it every single time we're here, we've had it enough times that it's possibly the most ordered beef item that we do.

Their beef and potato croquette was lacklustre. Not quite getting that beef.

While it can be argued that we have enjoyed their negitoro don, I think I've figured out what has changed. The negi is still there but there's not much toro anymore. The portions of the minced tuna have increased, but it's no longer so fatty. Once upon a time, it used to be good.

White peach is in season and there's a chilled and refreshing salad on the menu currently which was delicious. Most of it because of the sweetness and aroma coming from the peach.

Remember their hon maguro don at a good deal? It's still available.  

Sumo Bar Happy, Waterloo Street

Sumo Bar Happy is by the people behind Tanuki Raw and a bunch of other places that I've never visited. What intrigued me about this outpost was its setup as a casual ramen and sake bar - doing beef based ramen and no less.

Beef based ramen are quite the rarity here if you didn't already know. Apart from the one off beef bone broth bowl from Tampopo ages ago and the gyutan negishio bowl from Sandaime Bunji, they're about as oftenly seen as the nine tailed fox.

There's beef gyoza on the menu. Crispy skin and a shade of beet root red which they have described as capsicum wrappers stuffed with US Prime short rib mince. I could tell that it wasn't pork but I'm not getting a definite beefiness. Pretty looking gyozas though.

We ordered sashimi. These guys aren't exactly the specialist for that and from the nature of this particular shop, I wouldn't expect any real focus be put into sashimi as part of their menu. It's not bad if one were to overlook the small slices and poor knife work though. 

What I liked was their Kinsanji Miso with barley that was served on the sticks of cucumbers. Those were really nice and sweet.

That's a pretty mini loco moco don which featured their house made Nagano pork luncheon meat with a small slab of pan fried foie gras and a fried quail's egg. Pretty small, pretty cholesterol laden, pretty heart clogging and pretty good. That luncheon meat was a lot meatier in texture than the regular canned variety. Probably more akin to a meat loaf. It's actually kinda nice. I liked those sweet marinated mushrooms they put in the donburi too.

Impressive looking was the bone in short rib ramen. The rib that came with the bowl was pretty huge. The meat was chopstick tender. So tender that it fell off the bone on the way to the table.

No real need for the fork and knife which the staff thought might come in handy since one could simply pick the meat off the rib with a chopstick. I thought it was quite good.

The noodles were those thin variety that I liked. But they were not exactly harigane after we were done with the rib to work on them. I'm pretty sure this has got to be one of the heaviest bowl of noodles I've had.

Hon maguro don at Tampopo

This was a super deal at $19 (before tax and service charge) from Tampopo (#01-23 Liang Court, 177 River Valley Road). Yes, it's that tripartite of akami, chutoro and otoro again from bluefin tuna which seems to be in season now. This was the uncommon occasion when the actual product looked better than the picture that the restaurant used. It's too bad that their foie gras and truffle tonkatsu is no longer around but the old favourites remain as good. And now, this maguro donburi....