Revisiting Canton-i

Encouraged by the wanton noodles from the previous visit at Canton-i, we decided to return to try some of the other items that they have on menu.

This would be the equivalent of the twin roast meats with rice. Surprisingly good was their char siew, which was nicely caramelized with the sweet fatty half of each slice melting nicely in the mouth. The roast duck was unfortunately lean and dry. The lack of fat also rendered the meat of the duck a little bland.

Nicely done too, was their stir fried Chinese chives & bean sprouts with dried shrimp, dried cuttlefish and cashew nuts. The dried shrimps used were of a much larger variety than usual. The flavors from the sauce of this stir fried vegetable dish was robust and definitely paired very nicely with white rice. Can't really break down what that was in there apart from the listed ingredients, but it was good stuff.

The XO sauce radish cake was decently executed and probably might have made a better better dim sum or breakfast order rather than dinner because of the grease, but we had wanted to try them out. Each piece was coated with a light layer of crisp with creamy insides.

Another order of wanton noodles here. This time round, we opted for the dry noodles. Strangely, the firm and chewy texture of the noodle that was experienced previously was less apparent in this than the one in the soup rendition.

There wasn't that much in the way of desserts on menu, so we settled for the jiang zhi zhuang nai. Milk curdled in ginger juice. Moderately spicy and sweet and textured like very soft bean curd, this was not bad at all.

Back in Anatolia

Decided to head here (14 Scotts Road, #02-58/59 Far East Plaza, tel : +65 6836 3352) for lunch because of some kebab craving that sparked off by Deli Turk. Invariably, comparisons were made since it was just a day ago that we were eating Turkish food.

Here's just talking about the doner kebabs here and the most obvious difference was in the serving of the meat. I had noticed that the spits were only switched on when the order was taken on a quiet weekend lunch and presumably, things were not as warm compared to a busy spit. Still, the beef kebab was pretty tasty and the half green chilli added a nice spicy depth to the food. Chicken was kinda boring and the cold fries which had been laying around somewhere were totally forgettable.

Regarding their "special" rice. It's merely the same butter rice that was used with the frozen peas/carrot/corn and some almonds.

Deli Turk, Suntec City

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I used to work in the vicinity. Deli Turk (3 Temasek Boulevard, #03-004, Suntec City Mall, tel : +65 6336 8082) was yet another one of those places that I must have passed by countless times and overlooked until today when I decided to give these guys a try. Even though I thought that the proprietor looked like a insurance sales person with a chip on the shoulder.

We started off with a safe order of hummus which was quite generous with the lemon and also had enough paprika to almost paint the dish Szechuan. Lol! I thought it was strange having chopped spring onions sprinkled on the top since that really added to the effect of making the dish look really Chinese and spicy. But all was good with the nicely chilled and creamy chick pea paste served with warm bread.

This yoghurt slathered dish, Kara lahana domasi was something we got off the daily special menu. The tubular shapes were cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and minced meat. It was altogether quite good.

The lamb doner kebab was delicious with sufficient gaminess from the meat on top of moist butter rice. In spite of the grease from both the meat and rice, I did feel that portions were a little small. My not so spider sense detects a repeat order item here in subsequent visits.

The kunefe was a dessert that was recommended by the grumpy looking proprietor and wow, this was pretty good stuff indeed. I would come back just to have them again. It appeared to be a shredded filo pastry like tart/thing/disc with unsalted cheese on the inside. The pastry which was lying on cream was sweetened by a topping of syrup and served piping hot with a shower of crushed pistachio over the top. The texture of the kunefe allowed it to soak up the cream from the bottom, so it ended up being cool yet warm, and was both crispy and juicy (from the soaked cream) at the same time.

Nantsuttei, Parco Marina

Finally visted this ramen-ya (9 Raffles Boulevard, #P3-06 Parco Marina Bay, Millenia Walk, tel : +65 6337 7166). I've been curious about them since the time I read about them opening up here. Thinking to beat the novelty crowd, I had decided not to be in such a hurry to visit them like I did for Ippudo but apparently the queues have not abated. Good thing that the turnover was pretty quick. I may just have found my favourite tonkotsu ramen shop!

Overlooking the other options, I went straight for the maru-toku negi chashu-men which was their basic ramen with additional portions for the negi and chashu. The rich creamy broth was lightly accented by the flavour of the black ma-yu which was to me a bit of a curiosity. It was a fragrance rather than a intense flavouring of garlic that had been fried multiple times. Their slightly stiff slices of chashu relented after being soaked in the broth for some moments having the fat softened. Resisting the temptation for more enhanced flavours, I gave the extra garlic options a pass this first time. Just so that I can experience their ramen straight up as they were done. Got a little enthusiastic over the order and forgot my usual topping of egg.

On the side, we gave their Fuufu Enman Gyoza (amusingly named Happy Couple gyoza by translation) a shot and it arrived slightly burnt. They were just small gyozas, albeit a little meatier than I was expecting.

Definitely coming back again.

Skinny Pizza, Raffles City

Yet another outlet has opened for Skinny Pizza (252 North Bridge Road, #B1-63/64 Raffles City Shopping Centre). What drove us to visit this time was their expended menu which looked like it has much more than what we remembered from the last visit.

We got ourselves the 'salami & pesto' pizza this time round. Turned out to be one which we thought was pretty good with a smattering of different flavours coming from the salty salami, bitter rockets, sweet roasted capsicum, sour from the bits of chopped olives and pungence from the crumbled goat cheese. I'm surprised that I even managed to list all of them out.

Nibbles on the sides now come in a three item option (costing a little less than three separate orders) which we decided to take advantage of. The truffle fries were an obvious choice. We picked a seared brie crusted with pistachio and garlic grilled prawns with cauliflower cous cous. Damn, the cous cous (which was just finely shredded cauliflower) was good! I wished they had been more generous with the portions though.

Dessert was a rumbaba which was served with a shot of rum. I'm not sure how these cakes are done traditionally but I thought this rendition was pretty good with the vanilla bean sauce and preserved orange rinds.

There was a red latte which was basically roobois tea with milk. If the color of the drink wasn't apparent, this was a robust brew of the tea. Didn't taste as milky the looks might have suggested. There was definitely more tea in this stuff.

Bontá.....omakase

Leaving things up to the hands of the chef is spruced by the appeal/appal of mystery. One does not know what one might get. For many, the anticipation of the delivery works magic. It's not something that I do very often and if I did, it's usually for Japanese food and it's more of the fact that it allows me to sample what's good for the day/week rather than getting a surprise. Maybe I lack adventurous spirit. I don't really like surprises (still saying this even though I'm generally willing to try weird stuff) and I want to know what I'm going to eat. No disparagement to Luca and his selection, but I guess this was just one of those meals which I didn't choose and turned out to be not too exciting.

Pumpkin flower fritters stuffed with cheese would be something that would catch my eye if it turned up on menu. I'm not sure how eating these were suppose to go but the flavour was mostly cheese and some bits of vegetable texture which didn't quite identify itself as anything. I noticed that the rockets looked a little tired. Lol.

Nice refreshingly tasty tomato hearts, a light and a creamy mozzarella. Parma ham tasted a little washed out. Definitely not a perky nutty aroma which I was hoping for.

This was affectionately termed the kuey teow a la Papermoon. It was a mimic of a certain pasta dish which a friend had over at Paper Moon at Milan. The pasta was al dente, tomato based sauce wasn't overly tart and there were chunks of scallops and some shrimps. I'm guessing that this didn't taste as good as the original since it was an attempt to duplicate. Sure didn't blow my mind there.

This is the first time for me with goose confit. I'm not expert with them, but I thought the meat was a little too dry and lacked identifying flavour.

Desserts....

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.

Lunching at Mayim

This was certainly one of those satisfying lunches. I've realised that I haven't really talked about the food here in Mayim in my previous mention of the place. Certainly, it wasn't because of the food being forgettable. There's definitely stuff here which I liked and some which didn't impress me much.

The roast meat noodle selection here were some of the items which I thought were worth returning for. It's probably more of the roast meat for me than the noodles which were unfortunately not springy and firm enough to further raise my eyelid. Especially not after having had some pretty awesome ones out of the country and a surprising good rendition at Canton-i. Today, we landed our selves some tasty roasted duck and a fattier than expected roast pork belly. The fat from the pork didn't quite disintegrate as I am normally hoping for, but it was still agreeably soft, coupled with a nicely crispy crackling.

This would be a stir fried spinach with pork belly, lup cheong and bits of bacon. Pretty meaty for a vegetable dish if you asked me and that's always a reason why I like ordering this. The greens make me feel less guilty of the grease which also incidentally, flavors the vegetables very nicely.

Very nicely done steaming har gow with chunky pieces of shrimp in them. Definitely a benchmark item for dim sum places. This was in leagues better than the ones at Red Star and part of the reasons for ordering them was so that I could exorcise the residual phantoms of the ones left in my memory.

Slightly misshapened they might be, but these are one of the better siew mais to be had around. Their crude shape holds together chunky pieces of shrimp, bits of pork and cubes of mushroom, all of which are individually identifiable in their own flavors. Nice stuff.

These creamily textured radish cake with a nicely browned crisp on the outside are always a weakness of mine. Excellent carbo fix if you're looking for something tastier than regular rice.

The dim sum variety at Mayim is admittedly quite limited, but they've scored a few hits with me to ensure re-visits.

Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger : Year Four

Geez....it's been so long huh?

Quite a lot has changed since the time when I was procrastinating with the creation of my account with Blogger. That certainly didn't feel so far back. In several blinks of the eye, this milestone marker post is telling me that I've been doing this for 4 years and counting. My camera/old mobile phone counter tells me that it's been a fun ride of several thousands of photos. So much has happened in between the spaces of these past few years which have made me almost stop. So many changes have occurred. I've never really talked about them, but I guess it doesn't really matter since this site is still up.

How many people are still reading this?

Red Star Restaurant, Chin Swee Road

I've been asked by some friends to give this place (Blk 54 Chin Swee Road #07-23, tel : +65 6532 5266) a try on numerous occasions and I've never gotten the chance to come down until today after shopping for glass jars. 

It was more than just a little disappointing considering that they're treated as an iconic institution that are supposed to be the place to go for old school dim sum. It didn't help at the end of the meal when I realised that it actually costs less to eat a Crystal Jade Golden Palace where the food was much more refined and tasted a lot better. This aged stained place might have been a sight for nostalgia with their decor of a bygone era and trolleys of dim sum in steamed bamboo baskets which are carted around that one had to rush for. I'm definitely not convinced of returning. Not when the best food we had I could pick was just a plate of stir fried vegetables, a bowl century egg porridge and egg tarts.

These har gao deserved mention because it tasted very little of prawns and the fillings were a floury lump that left a chalky feel on the tongue. As a main stay of dim sum, it was very disappointing.

Honorary mentions also had to be made for the ubiquitous char siew bao which had dark and dry-ish minced pork fillings. Like they were unique to this restaurant. Didn't think they were tasty. Even the generic factory made ones in coffee shops tasted better.

I'm normally one for pan fried radish cakes but these were far from the creamy ones I was imagining.

I was hoping to find some salvation in the department of desserts. Their black sesame paste was so starchy that even when it was relatively warm, it had already formed a skin at the surface. The black sesame flavour was weak and it was a little too sweet for me.