More Camelicious camel milk from Mustafa

So here's another two little bottles of flavoured camel milk from Mustafa. The date flavoured one strangely reminded me of oat milk. Not so much of dates. You know that brand of oat milk which is the name of a flower and it starts with the same letter as the word 'mother'. The saffron bottle tasted like how I thought it would - a little sweet, lightly perfumed with the flavour of the spice. I liked that better than the date one.

Revisiting Fat Prince in the Ottoman Room

The Ottoman Room exists at the back of Fat Prince in the very same unit. The decor in that area is chic opulence - a smidgen of richness like the clotted cream that they use to clog your heart with.

I had a brunchy drink call Moroccan Mary, an variant of the Bloody Mary using tequila. While the flavour was quite respectable,  I couldn't help but feel that this drink was more style than substance. I've had a number of these in the past years and my favourite - the most expensive of the lot remains the same. The one at Luke's.

Bread, clotted cream and honey with quince. So simple yet so good.

I wanted some over easy eggs to dip stuff in and yeah, eggs.

There was a roasted mushroom menemen. I don't know what they did with the mushrooms but they were pretty amazingly tasty.

Their smoked cheese and rocket pide was a little disappointing. You know, the kind of disappointing that you get when you read smoked cheese on the menu and the item doesn't taste like it had any? Yeah, that kind of disappointing but otherwise it tasted pretty decent. Smallest pide I've ever come across though.

Extra chicken portions from the chicken rice at Tangs Market

Wow, did the chicken rice stall person at Tangs Market feel extra generous or what? This was the $4 portion which featured breast meat - in double the portions of what one would usually expect. It certainly was a lot more value for the money compared to the drumstick plate. I'm guessing that we don't get lucky like that all the time here but I'd still come back because their chicken rice is pretty good.

Update 12/11/2016 2000hrs
Here's round two. Portions still look good. This might just be the best valued chicken rice in Orchard Road. I don't understand this......

Swedish meatballs from Fika

I've never had Swedish meatballs before except for those in Ikea. So I guess this would be my first time. These meatballs from Fika (257 Beach Road, tel : +65 6396 9096) were gristly and had a lot more texture. The sauce was creamier in a good way and the lingonberry jam was different. I definitely don't mind coming back and also checking out their bakery Konditori. I hear that they have semla over there.

Revisiting Piedra Negra

We finally came back to Piedra Negra. And wow, it's been four years since the first time. Time does fly.

More ceviche from them. This one is named Mango Madness done with red snapper and sans cilantro. Sharp and refreshing but I'm sure it could have been improved if the mangoes were a little sweeter to balance the acidity in the ceviche.

These are tacos de camaron - shrimp tacos. Beer battered shrimp it was, pretty tasty but nothing much to write home about. Certainly didn't expect to see star fruit in tacos.

That's octopus stewed in its ink with capers, olives and onions. Chopped up bits of octopus that is. The flavour of the stew was amazing. I never knew that capers would work so nicely in there with the octopus flavours thinking that they might be overpowering - which in this case they were not. It's a pity the portions were a little small. The rice on the side was good too.

And then cochinita pibil, a Mexican slow roasted pork of sorts served with white corn tortilla. I Wiki-ed it and found out that the orange hue of the dish comes from annato, the seed of the anchote tree which also imparts some flavour. It tasted a little nutty and I thought it could have been awesome with more salt. I realised that after adding the pickled onions, habanero and some lime, it worked too. 

Fucking Hell at Artichoke among other things...

I ordered the beer because of the name. If anyone's wondering, it's a light golden lager from Germany named after an Austrian town which is actually called Fucking. The bottled brew was little bitter, light and pretty easy drinking. 

We had their babaganoush while waiting for the rest of the food. It's Artichoke's babaganoush so it's beyond the regular babaganoush as befits their contemporary Middle Eastern methods.

I was recently just thinking about how much octopus plates have been going around a number of menus of restaurants in recent years. Those tentacles have apparently entwined around the menu here as well - Artichok-ing out a plate of grilled octopus on truffled hummus. This octopus was very tender, very delicious sheathed under the fragrant char on the surface. Things that make you go hmmm. Very nice pickled peppers too.

What we really headed down for tonight was their smoked chicken which they had explained would be served in six pieces. Those six were much smaller than I had imagined. The preceding sentence should be interpreted as portions for one guy. But the bird was deliciously tender and smoky. Worked with that toum or not.

Dessert was their yoghurt muhallaebi. A creamy pudding/custard. Served with poached apricots, orange blossom honey, pecans and those brown crispy stuff call kataifi. This actually tasted like panna cotta. With the crunch and flavour of the kataifi, it kinda transformed into something else which reminded me of kunefe which are essentially made with those too. But we couldn't taste any of that orange blossom honey.

Min Kee Hainanese Chicken Rice, Amoy Street Food Centre

We stumbled upon this chicken rice stall (#02-94, Amoy Street Food Centre, 7 Maxwell Road) one weekend, saw the queue and decided to give it a go. The queue wasn't very long, but there were apparently a lot of phone orders for a large number of take aways - hence it was horribly slow. This turned out to be fairly tasty - a stall good enough to be a reliable go to place but won't get me any cravings for.

Min Kee's rice was the greasy kind and had a darker hue than many - at first glance reminded me a little of Delicious Boneless Chicken Rice and Big Bird. The meat I gather is deboned for any particular part of the bird. While very tender and edible, wasn't particularly outstanding. I'm not feeling much for the chilli sauce. But hey, at least now I know where to get some decent chicken rice in this vicinity during the weekend apart from Maxwell.

Maiden England @ Colbar

Woah, the Iron Maiden Trooper beer can be found at Colbar. Supposedly developed by Bruce Dickinson. For you young 'uns out there, Trooper is a song by Iron Maiden from back in 83 about the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War in 1854 at Balaklava. The tune still somewhat rocks these days, albeit more to folks from their era. The beer? It's hoppy, ale-ish and rather easy drinking stuff. There's supposedly limited editions of the beer which is brewed by Robinson Brewery in the UK. But I don't think I'm gonna get lucky with those here.

Paik's Bibim, Tiong Bahru Plaza

I've just realized that the owner of this chain Paik's Bibim (#02-111 Tiong Bahru Plaza, 302 Tiong Bahru Road) is a Paik Jong Won who is also the guy behind Bornga. Anyways, I've eaten at this fast food bibimbap joint a couple of times and in the midst of all their offerings, found that I enjoyed their pork bibimbap. What appealed to me was the variety of the vegetables and the textures that they created in the mixed rice bowl flavoured with the bulgogi minced pork. Just the thing I would be looking for when I'm trying to evade all the other greasy options and trying to eat a little healthier. This bowl was quite good with or without their gochujang.

Kin Cow, Chinatown Point

You know what? As I was Googling for a little bit of information on Kin Cow (#02-34 Chinatown Point, 133 New Bridge Road, tel : +65 6514 9265) I realized that there's a whole lot of same stuff that's duplicated across the web. With a small handful of exceptions. So I guess the local Burpplers along with some of those "bloggers" (or should I call them influencers these days?) and those IG-ers are truly a product of this country. Authenticity represented at its best. Deft hands at little but Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V of press release notes, scoured web page information stained with borrowed old cliches. Much like a certain particular news channel or a partially pay walled online paper. Little wonder the state of journalism in this country when both the supposed pros and the amateurs suck at it. Let me not digress any further now that I've ranted.

Not going to be further parroting on what's already easily found on the web, I could only discover that the people who run it have a similar chain of restaurants in Thailand. That's my basis for giving this shop a shot anyway. While I'm not so familiar with Thai beef noodles, I've to say that these weren't too bad.

I'd do the briskets over the ribeye (above) any day because the former was a lot more tender and flavoursome. In a reversal of roles, the ribeye was a little chewy and had much less flavour even though it was laced with fat and much more thinly sliced. We added extra tendons and those were slurpy and tender. Both bowls we had were using different soup bases. The "dry" bowl tasted more herbal.

The egg noodles are good with the soup-less option because there's bits of lard and the chillis on the side which helps. The broth from the soup kuey teow, the less herbal bowl, had the flavour of rice in it. It's been a long time since I've had that.  

I always liked the Thai pomelo salad yam som o. Kin Cow's version, as with most renditions that appear in this country are much more refined than the street editions. But it's still nice with the flavours from the bits of dried shrimp, toasted coconuts and some bite from the pieces of raw onion; all tossed together with the sugar/fish sauce/lime maybe and the chilled pomelo.

I'm probably coming back again.

Brunch at MeatSmith

This was a brunch at Meat Smith. Everyone succumbs to brunch. Especially businesses. We have the lazy weekenders. I'm one myself so I don't judge. And smart businesses that caters to those lazy weekenders. So Meat Smith does brunch too like most other ang moh places that survive in the harsh rental economy of the country. But unlike many of the clones of clones, Meat Smith stuck with their own identity. One with a Southern and bbq personality. 

Their brisket and eggs were nice. Those briskets were fall apart tender and rather flavourful especially along the fatty and charred edges. If I had to criticize, it'll be the doneness of those sunny side ups - they weren't over easy. 

We liked their biscuits. A little dense, a little sweet and also crispy. A little more generosity with their country gravy is definitely in order but otherwise no complains with the accompanying porky sausages and scrambled eggs. 

Another weekend at Huber's Butchery Bistro

We had lunch at the bistro because we paid a visit to the butchery. I wanted to order their leberknedelsuppn again, but the Oktoberfest menu is no longer being served. #sad

These guys do pretty good lamb chops. It's the same Australian lamb that they sell at the meat section. The cooking was quite spot on, nothing fancy and that's usually how we like our lamb chops.

I've seen people order their spicy Italian pork sausage which is served in a brioche like a hot dog. Sensitive word for tubed meat in between buns for our neighbours up north these days but I digress. The sausage tasted quite like chorizo, albeit a less intense version of it. The brioche wasn't very buttery and I guess it was just too dry and crumbly for a hot dog bun. It started falling apart at almost every bite.

Huber's plum cake is pretty good. Quite a bit of the fruit on a light cake served with cream on the side. This stuff was pretty much the crumble that we had in their Oktoberfest menu sans the crumble part.

A paneer briyani from Saravanaa Bhavan

We needed to go Mustafa again and we stopped by Saravanaa Bhavan for a later than usual dinner. Sadly, their rice meals which I was looking forward to are only available in the late morning/afternoon part of the day so I ordered this paneer briyani because I didn't really feel like anything else. This turned out to be much better than I had expected. There was quite a bit of fragrance from the spices in the briyani, some nice warmth from the heat and I thought there was even a measure of smokiness in there. Awesome, so now I know this would be a place I can get a fix the next time I feel like having another.