Double cheese ramyeon and other stories from ChoWon Garden

It's been quite a while since we last dropped by ChoWon Garden. So here's a quiet lunch of Korean food in a family restaurant at this little corner of the business district.

If the double cheese ramyeon had piqued any curiosity, it's actually their regular cheese ramyeon. Part of their lunch sets. Plastic wrapped processed diary over a bowl of hot, probably instant noodles in a savoury and slightly spicy broth. I merely requested for an additional slice of cheese. How was it? Very tasty comfort food. This brought extra gooiness and cheesiness to the noodles while turning the broth milky. I drank it till the last drop.

We had pan fried zucchini fritters, hobak jeon. The slices of zucchini were coated with an egg batter. Greasy, but tasty. Better with their dipping sauce because the salt helps.

There was a nurungji tang. A burnt rice soup. The soup component was quite bland and tasted like rice tea. I wonder if it was meant to be that way.

That's a clear oxtail soup. The broth was quite beefy and very enjoyable.

I forgot what this was called, but it looked like Japanese tamago stuffed with kimchi from the menu. How it arrived was totally different. It turned out to be a pan fried omelette (imagine fu yong omelette); a greasy one, stuffed with kimchi. The same young kimchi that they served as part of their banchan. Not that it was bad, but I thought it would have been a much better idea to get something more sour, more aged to cut through the grease from the omelette. 

Meii Sushi, Erskine Road

A reader had shared the change of address for Meii Sushi (33 Erskine Road #01-01, tel : +65 6220 3466). The current location is at The Scarlet - also known as the hotel previously known as Scarlet Hotel. From what I had understood from the chef, reservations are advised. The reason is due to the fact that he has to prepare his fish and they don't cater for much extras.

So I guess this was a lucky walk in.

A couple of lunch bowls here. The above is a kanpachi (greater amberjack) don and below is their barachirashi which also had bits of kanpachi in it. This bowl is not exactly the standard issue bara that most of the restaurants are doing because these restaurants don't make their bara out of odd ends. This one here looked like it might have been really made with the odd ends. The only fish they had was amberjack and salmon.

Both decent fish donburi were on shari but don't expect to be floored. I was hoping that there would be thicker fish cuts which was what they were known for. Maybe it's just only for their omakase.

And here's some supplementary aburi toro nigiri. Fat content a little low for these slices.

A pizza from Marché

Yeah, this was the other restaurant concept of Marché at JEM (50 Jurong Gateway Road, #01-03, JEM, tel : +65 6694 2501) where you do not get issued cards and there are no individual stalls for your food order. This one works like a regular restaurant that is serving pretty much similar stuff from the regular one that we're used to. So here's a pizza from them, with goat's cheese, walnuts and grapes. Sounded good on the menu.

I had thought that they would slice up the grapes and perhaps toast them with the pizza halfway through to help release the sugars which would have been great - rather than just scattering them whole on top of the pie. Those were pretty nice grapes though. The goat's cheese was creamy but the pungence was a little tame. And those walnuts, they were just shy of being rancid. It's rather appalling at how careless restaurants can be with the quality of their nuts. And for what they were charging inclusive of service, it's almost criminal.

I didn't dislike this so much, I just wanted to rant about how it could have been a lot better if they didn't treat this like an afterthought.

Teochew Restaurant Huat Kee, RELC Building

We read about this Teochew restaurant (30 Orange Grove Road, #02-01 RELC Building, tel : +65 6423 4747) that previously hailed from Amoy Street from Makansutra which mentioned a young second generation taking over of the family business from the parents and it sounded like it could be pretty good. While I don’t eat these Teochew dishes so very often, I’ve had them numerous times over the years and I have an idea of what I like or not about some of their commonly known dishes.

This one was not as good as I had been hoping for. Hence I'm constantly reminded to take reviews with more than a pinch of salt. Take this with a pinch as well.

We had cold crabs, one of those things we liked and is unfortunately rather pricey these days. These ones from Huat Kee were a little smaller than the usual small crabs that we had been expecting. The process of molting had probably been going on into the later stages so the softer inner shell was starting to get....not so soft. No roe in there as well so I guess it's just not the right season. The meat was chilled and sweet, but didn't seem quite match up with expectations from the last eating we had.

The pork aspic was quite nice. Those jelly were quite packed with flavours from the stock and were also nicely chilled.

I liked the liver rolls too. The stuffing was like pate - wrapped in a crispy fried bean curd skin.

Their orh luak was unfortunately a bore. It was a little too greasy and too much flour and eggs with too little oysters. There's definitely much better around. 

I forgot what this was but it was braised chopped spinach. The flavours were light and unexpectedly quite enjoyable.

Those are sea cucumber stuffed with with pork and prawn paste. Didn't find those very enjoyable. And I generally like sea cucumber.

The other item that turned out to be quite good was their braised goose web. The flavours of the braising liquid was absorbed into the goose webs and the texture was enjoyable. Something akin to a chewier tau kee (dried bean curd sheet).

Olive fried rice. Would have been passable if not for the fact that it was too greasy. Certainly didn't expect them to screw up fried rice.

These were the Teochew kuey teow, also known as cai por kuey teow for the preserved radish that is used in the stir fry of the rice noodles. Nothing exceptional and their wok fry it seems at this point, always does poorly with the grease control.

An average orh nee. Nothing to write home about nor did it suck.

RELC isn't the most convenient of locations unless you have a vehicle. To add on to that, the food here was a little expensive as well. And then there was this odd server that recommended us against ordering their chive noodles citing that it is not done well by the cooks when they have a lot of customers. Oh yes - hot sugar cane drink that was in the colour of diluted chrysanthemum tea and tasted nothing like sugar cane. Something definitely went wrong with that with no admission from the staff.

Fat chance we'll come back and I think we'll enjoy ourselves more trying our luck at the Boon Keng area.

Balaji Bhawan, Syed Alwi Road

We came to Balaji Bhawan (103 Syed Alwi Road, tel : +65 63417797) because there was something that I had been reading about that they have on the menu. Namely the dal batti churma thali which was what I was interested in trying. So I’ll just be talking mostly on that and omitting other points of interest. Like the restaurant being a little dim and dingy and also that service was slow and reluctant. Air conditioning needs upgrade as well.

Back to the dal batti churma thali - well, it’s apparently a food item representative of Rajasthan in India. A thali (platter of dishes often with rice or bread) that contains dal batti churma. Which comprises of the dal, batti and churma. The dal which is the commonly known lentil stew, the batti which is a hard wheat roll/ball eaten with the dal and the churma which is also made of wheat and cooked with ghee and sugar (or jaggery as well) to make up the dessert. This thali here was also served with curried potatoes, vegetable korma, dah/dhal, raita, some spiced basmati rice, a couple of poori, a papadum and also gulab jamun.

The two doughy lumps were the batti and the one on the right was the churma. The former was a dense, dry and chewy bread which could be eaten with any of the dips or curries while the latter had the texture of a lump of wet ball of crumbly sand that tasted buttery and sweet. All in all, I had thought that the entire thali was quite enjoyable. Until the sweets. Both the churma and the gulab jamun were a sugar overload for me.

Their pudina parotha was also quite nice. Could taste the mint in the bread.

While waiting for the main orders, we passed the time with a raj kachori as dinner was only served from 7pm and there was chaat available. This was like a giant puri done up like the yoghurt version with peas and potatoes stuffed in the crispy shell. But this chaat looked sloppily made with insufficient lashings of chutney. Looked nothing like the regular chaat of any sort which would generally appear more messy and with more toppings. This looked quite sad.

Hong Boon famous Thai styled herbal duck noodle, Maxwell FC

I'm not an expert on Thai duck noodles so I don't know what exactly about these ones that make them Thai styled. The proprietor sounded local, looked a little frustrated, a little young and a shade too green for what he was doing. The stall (Stall 48, Maxwell Food Centre, 1 Kadayanallur Street) looked relatively new so if these guys were famous from elsewhere, I haven't heard about them before.

So was it good?  The mee kia according to the guy running the shop was imported from Thailand. I'm not sure if that meant anything in particular, but the noodles had pretty nice texture and the tender duck was infused with the herbal aroma from their braising sauce. What I thought could have been improved on was that the flavours for the noodles. It tasted bland and I'm not sure if the intention was so that we could eat them with the chilli sauce which you could help yourself to. One little saucer of it along with a few sprinkles of that dried chilli powder made for a lip searing experience. This was pretty much what saved the bowl.

The soup was....well, balanced for a lack of a better description. Flavours were pleasant and not overly strong. But it was also rather oily. Certainly not how I remembered these duck noodle broth. I wonder if it has occurred to the proprietors that trying to explain the slow service by claiming to be new to this industry is simply shooting oneself in the foot - or both feet, when you're trying to pretend that you're famous?

Some Asian rice dishes from Ikea's cafeteria

So we have some familiarly Asian rice items on the menu at Ikea (this is the one at Alexandra Rd). A pretty decent nasi lemak which I had no complains over. For just $4 with all things considered, it was cheaper than most food court. Yes, that came with one of their chicken wings, an otah, a hard boiled egg as well as a very thick slice of cucumber. Big and thick. Sambal was kinda unique, never had one like that and while it bore some similarities with the generic sweet and spicy variety, it wasn’t the same thing.

We first discovered their lotus leaf glutinous rice a couple of years ago during the CNY period where it was on a limited run at the Tampines outlet. I wonder if these were outsourced from some factory. Anyways, we kinda liked it because the rice was soft and moist and there were ingredients like ginkgo nuts, lup cheong, chicken, salted egg yolk and mushroom. Not that it was unusual, but it’s cheaper than what one will be paying for from a restaurant

Re-savouring Saveur Art

Just a quick update with this re-visit to Saveur Art.

Saveur's pasta, chorizo, grilled prawn, chopped kombu, chilli oil

The pasta starter here is different from the one at Saveur. This one had diced prawns and chorizo while the other has chicken. Both had very nicely timed noodles with a firm bite which I liked.

spiced pumpkin velouté, chive cream

A sweet spiced pumpkin soup. I couldn't tell that it was chive cream. Even if it was regular cream, it was a little too little to make much of a difference.

egg confit, truffled potato mousseline, macadamia nuts, brown butter

I remembered liking this a lot from the last visit. I still like it a lot. The bits of macadamia nuts were aromatic and had a very good crunch which really worked with the egg and potato mousse.

roasted stuffed quail

This was definitely my favourite plate from the dinner. Quail was roasted medium well-ish and was stuffed with foie gras. On the side, more of that grilled foie and some mushrooms.

sautéed forest mushrooms

As it says, mushrooms.

grilled pork belly, provençal artichoke barigoule

I remembered that the pork belly wasn't bad at all, but there was a little too much fat on some of the pieces and I'm now at a loss for how to further describe it.

Hong Kong Wanton Noodle, Plaza Singapura

The Taste of Japan Group from Hong Kong which is responsible for Itacho Sushi has opened up a very straightforwardly named wanton noodle shop called Hong Kong Wanton Noodle (68 Orchard Road, Plaza Singapura #B2-25, tel : +65 6694 0923). One does not simply walk into Mordor mistaken their offerings for anything else. Not with such a name.

Honestly, it's not too bad. The noodles were wiry and had some bite. It's much better than most of what is passed of as Hong Kong styled wanton noodles here. While it will never be the same as the genuine article, good enough is good enough and what was the very thing they said about not letting perfect become the enemy of the good? Especially when you have no better option on hand? We've had Noodle Place and Mak's opened up here as well. I suppose we do have an appetite for this particular brand of wanton mee. 

Usman Restaurant, Serangoon Road

I heard about this place (238 Serangoon Road, tel : +65 6296 8949) some time back but never got a chance to drop by until today. While the address just stated Serangoon Road, a more accurate description of the location would be corner of the junction of Serangoon Road and Desker Road. Food seems to be Pakistani/Indian.

Their palak paneer tasted freshly made. You could taste quite a bit of the spinach from the puree which I suppose also meant that there wasn't too much of any other things (whatever those may be) added as part of the flavouring. The paneer had a rather rustic texture.

The keema on the other hand tasted a little burnt. It was smoky like what keema should not normally be. Some of the peas were charred, so I guess it was really burnt at some point.

Those seekh kebab that they had were made upon order, so it's as fresh as it could get. What I liked about it was that it wasn't infused with excessive herbs so that we could taste the meat.

The naan was also a little burnt. One's garlic and the other sesame and both were pretty decent if one would look past the char. The bread reminded me of an overdone Neapolitan pizza crust.

The only drink we had was their lime juice. It's not bad

Sapporo Ramen Miharu, Millenia Walk

It's been quite a long while since I've had ramen at Sapporo Ramen Miharu (Millenia Walk #01-06, 9 Raffles Boulevard, tel: +65 6733 8464). I guess it's mostly because I've never really been so big on Sapporo styled ramen and about the only time I recall being quite impressed by those miso based bowls was Gantetsu - previously at Ramen Champion.

So here's a revisit with their Shiretoko tori dashi shio (top) and a Noukou gyokai dashi (bottom) bowl with a trusty sidekick of shisho gyoza. The former bowl had a lightweight chicken shio broth which tasted like it was good for someone with a cold. That came with quail eggs. Interesting to try but I probably will not order again. The latter was a seafood infused thick broth which was really delicious. Not unique in any sense, but a robust dependable smoky bonito flavour. Those gyoza on the side had bits of shisho leaves in  the stuffings - quite a dimension of flavour from the regular ones. We rather liked it.

I wouldn't say that I wouldn't revisit because I likely would. I remembered liking their tsukemen dip and their rice bowl. Their noodles had the springy chew that I like and I'm thinking also that shoyu broth agrees with me. I just don't know when again.