Gandos from House of Gandos

We've never heard of gandos before. We came across these kueh from a neighbouring table at Geylang Serai Food Centre and thought it look both interesting and tasty so we ended up with a plate from the aptly named House of Gandos (#02-157 Geylang Serai Market and Food Centre, 1 Geylang Serai). From what we were told by the stall, these were made with rice flour and coconut. They're kinda like pancakes. The texture was soft, creamy on the inside and was lightly salted. Yes, you dip them into the orange sugar before popping them into your mouth. I'm sure they'll be excellent for breakfast.

Izakaya Nijumaru after 2730 days...

It has been a very long while since the first and last time we were in Izakaya Nijumaru. Little has changed as far as I could see and the restaurant seemed as packed as I remember. I think perhaps, this particular re-visit was steered by a subconscious drive to understand the popularity behind this joint. Today, we sat very close to where we did the last time. Right at the opposite end from their little counter where one could steal occasional glances at a window into another world while waiting for the food.

The servers recommended that we try their grilled beef on skewers claiming that it was very juicy. We topped that suggestion with an order of asparagus wrapped with bacon. As far as grills went, I couldn't say that it was bad. But we've been pampered by great places and as long as one doesn't start comparing with the King two floors up, these were actually quite edible. That comparison almost never ends well so we will not start.

Won't be ordering that beef skewer again though. I'm usually a meat with salt and pepper kind of person usually and this was very marinated.

Their teishoku are well received here. We had one with gindara teriyaki. That particular one was quite sad. Two points to be made here. The quality of the fish was mediocre and it was doused with that same garlic sauce used on the beef skewers which pretty much buried any teriyaki flavours - not that I could even tell that there was teriyaki sauce. The second was that one could easily get very decent stuff at a similar cost or less at Nakajima Suisan Grilled Fish.

Fortunately there was a omureto (omelette if you didn't catch it) set that made up for the cod. Who would have thought this? The egg was light, tender and piping hot with bits of mince pork inside. An almost childhood-like simplistic tray of comfort food. By the way, the stewed hijiki that's part of their teishoku was forgettable. These don't even come close to those that the old Wasabi Tei provided.

We had a horensou salad which the menu described to be a bacon and spinach salad. I'm not sure what the vegetable was but I was imagining baby spinach. After being thrown off for a little bit, I realised that these were actually pretty similar to baby spinach. Meaning that there wasn't much flavour in them and after I had accepted that, this was actually a pretty good eat. Thanks to the bacon and their rendered fat of course.

And a nasu dengaku that arrived right at the end. The grilled juicy eggplant glazed with sweet miso was definitely something to be enjoyed while it is still hot.

Thai Gold Food, Sunshine Plaza

Here (#01-14 Sunshine Plaza, 91 Bencoolen Street, tel : +65 68831575) be affordable home styled and tasty Thai food. When I mentioned home styled, I am describing the style - it's not meant to be a metaphoric abstraction that many people use for the sake of using because they don't understand what it means.

Normally the salads are the first to arrive because of the preparation time. But they got the salad order mixed up and we ended up with the yang moo (grilled pork) first.

Their pad krapow moo tasted very homely - unpretentiously tasty but needed a bit more salt. I think we liked the one from Diandin Leluk better for the flavour for the krapow moo.

I've never seen green curry fried rice in Thai restaurants around before. This one from Thai Gold Food was actually quite good - even though the flavour wasn't as robust as the punch from an actual green curry. It would also be the first time where I would describe such a dish as licorice-y from the basil. Embedded in the slightly damp fried rice, were also chunks of chicken and Thai eggplants.

I liked their yam mamuang. It was good after a spoonful of sugar and more than a few spoonfuls of crushed peanuts. Much tastier than the rendition that Sawadee Thai serves. 

If there was anything Thai Gold Food didn't do well at, it was their iced tea. I'm actually surprised this was lacklustre. These days, it's not so difficult to find a better representative of this beverage as it was some years back. 

Hajjah Mona Nasi Padang, Geylang Serai Market

Believe it or not, this was our first time at the current Geylang Serai Market. My last memory of the market was the old single storied place by the road - which if I remember correctly was at a different site? Anyway, since it was a first time, we were a little overwhelmed by the options. As chaos theory fate would have it, we ended up at Hajjah Mona (#02-166, Geylang Serai Market and Food Centre, 1 Geylang Serai).

Which also lead to my first urap. Aside from my first urap that is. This salad was more raw and herbal. There were bean sprouts, wing beans, something that looked like sweet potato leaves and some herbs which I couldn't recognize. I don't think all that rawness worked for me and it was precisely because there was some cooking of the vegetables that enjoyed it previously. But we managed to finish up the whole plate with help of the nutty sweet and spicy gravy from the quail eggs.

We had curried tripe - a curry that was rich and flavourful with coconut. That gravy was awesome with rice.

There was paru goreng too. In case anyone didn't remember, these are fried cow lungs. They aren't weird in flavour or texture and are more delicious than the looks suggest.

These were the quail eggs I mentioned earlier. Just quail eggs in a nutty/sweet/spicy chilli sauce.

Bonta Bonta, Japan Food Town @ Wisma Atria

I gather that Bonta Bonta (#04-39 Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Road, tel : +65 62623207) is a rice specialist that uses kinme mai - a rice from Japan that is processed with a patented buffing technique that helps preserves the nutrients by retaining the nutritious sub-aleurone layer. It is supposed to taste better too but I couldn't detect anything special from the rice which they served with their kaisen dons. In fact, it tasted ordinary.

The seafood for their rice bowls were pretty decent quality but not top notch if you catch my drift. These guys are rice guys anyway so I guess pretty good was good enough. That botan ebi had some deliciously sweet head fat and the uni they served turned out much better than what I had imagined in my apprehension. I may just come back another time.

White asparaguses and purple potato at 2it & drink

We returned to 2it & drink must faster than I thought we would. This would be largely because of the white asparagus season and we were pretty impressed with their white asparagus pizza the last time.

Today we had those asparaguses with tagliatelle in a butter sauce. This was amazing. The sauce even had the aroma of the asparagus. Pasta had great texture while the vegetable was tender and sweet with its asparagus-y flavour. Something not to be missed as long as they are in season.

That's their lamb shank with purple potato mash. Another good call here. The shank was tender but not fork tender. There was a nice flavour on the meat flavoured by the jus and some bits of fat. The mash was pretty tasty. I wished it were bigger though.

Profiteroles for dessert. Cream inside, not ice cream. Enjoyed this.

Timbre+, Ayer Rajah Crescent

Dinnering at Timbre+ (73A Ayer Rajah Crescent). I'm seeing that the hawker centre style of their setup resonates well with a lot of people. Myself included. Did anyone notice that in spite of the big ass fans and additional ventilation, this place isn't particularly better ventilated than many hawker centres?

We got some salted yolk wings from Two Wings. These deep fried wings were dunked in their salted yolk sauce before they were served. These were not bad. A little greasy though.

Here's a shrimp po boy from Dancing Crab Shack. At least that's what they call it. 6 fried shrimps and some coleslaw between buttered brioche. I wished they gave more shrimp. That buttered brioche made it all good though. While we enjoyed this, I don't think I'm getting it again. 

Big Bern's American Grill (from the original owner of Botak Jones), has what they call a lamb cheese steak po boy. Something they're saying is a first of its kind. Which I thought was a cool idea conceptually. The sliced lamb appeared to be sautéed with onions and mushrooms. The sauce was cheesy, had a bit too much dried oregano and the lamb flavours were barely discernible. Still we enjoyed this more than a certain cheesesteak than we had recently.

2it & drink again

A revisit. These guys have a nice salumi board. Even though it's pretty much the usual stuff - salami, mortadella, speck, and prosciutto di Parma - it was delicious. Especially good with their bread that's been doused with some of the olive oil.

There was white asparagus pizza from the specials board and it was pretty damn good. The mild flavours of those asparaguses and its sweetness came through in spite of all the cheese. With a few twists from the pepper mill, this was easily one of the most enjoyable pizza I've had in a while. The restaurant even did their spaghetti carbonara upon request, without cream. It turned out a wetter than I had imagined but I thought the flavours were quite good. Just needed a bit more pepper. 

Mao shan wang pizza from Tino's

One would be very hard pressed to find something like this anywhere else in the world - not to mention the fact that it's made with the expensive mao shan wang varietal. Tino's might have gotten themselves a first around here. They have a D24 option as well but I thought I should just shoot for the better.

I suppose I was both anticipating and somewhat wary of a durian pizza. So part of me was hoping that it'll be amazing while the other, reminded me not to set too much of expectations.

How did this go? While it wasn't as robustly flavoured as the eating the actual fruit but the pie didn't taste bad at all. The durian topping was pretty generous but I wonder if it was purely mao shan wang. No, it wasn't really so weird together with cheese. This should be eaten while it's still hot though.

Re-visiting Spice Junction

What have we here? It looks like the usual chilled sweet lassi that I would normally order. Except that it is not. It's a ginger lassi. Sweet and a bit of aroma from the ginger with a lot of that yoghurt flavour that I enjoy. Even though I was hoping for a stronger ginger taste, I found myself liking this.

That's a kozhi porichathu, another KFC if you would. This one represents Keralan fried chicken that's marinated in a spice paste. The spice paste was a little gingery, a little garlic-y and had some heat. The meat from the bird was dry though. While we didn't dislike this, I don't think it's something that we would be coming back for especially when there's a lot of other interesting stuff on their menu.

We were thinking of a richer and creamier gravy when we ordered the vegetable korma. This was much less viscous in texture but had quite a bit of coconut and some tomato flavours.

What I was looking forward to was their Malabar styled mutton briyani. Briyani that is supposedly prepared in the style that they do in Thalassery, a town in the Malabar coast of Kerala. While I'm not really sure what's the difference between the this particular kind and the other styles of briyani, it appeared paler in colour than the ones we normally find here. Spice Junction uses basmati which I read isn't the usual type of rice for this particular type of briyani.

Like other dum briyani, the meat is layered into the rice and cooked with the rice. I'm out of adjectives at the moment so I'm going to stick to a 'this kicks ass'. I would come back just for this alone.

We finished up with their payasam of the day which had a lot of coconut flavour it as opposed to that milky saffron flavour that is usually the case. Because of that coconut flavour, this reminded me of bubur terigu infused with cardamom. Plus raisins and nuts.

Marmite flavoured chocolate

Came across this at Meidi Ya. While I was curious how Marmite flavoured chocolate tasted like, I didn't think it was such a good idea getting one seeing that it was the size of an actual bottle. Oh well...

Morton's Sunday Lunch

It's been a while since our last visit. Not counting their bar that is. But thanks to their CRM tools, Morton's remembers us. The decor of the interior has changed some. Those glass panels letting the sun in were actually a good idea. A bit of furnishing has been replaced and the layout has changed a little. Otherwise, it's not unrecognizeable from the old setup which looked a little more dark and golden. 

We've been here enough times to know that we have to manage their onion loaf so it's half time at half a loaf even though it was tempting to go on with their salted butter. The other half gets bagged home.

The lunch came with a small cup of lobster bisque. Piping hot, umami-stic and crustacean-ily flavoured with a velvet texture. The atrocity of made up words.  There was also a chunk of the tail meat in the bisque. 

We've never had their centre cut iceberg before and have alway wondered what it was all about. Today we found out. While this wouldn't be considered healthy as salads went - damn, this was good eating. What worked for us were the chilled crisp leaves, the cream & blue cheese, bits of egg and bacon that made it a delight to eat.

Our last experience with their prime rib was a long time back. Here's 10 years later, eating it again. We prefer Lawry's slow roast version that doesn't get onto the grill. They've also got tastier creamed spinach but Morton's win with their mashed potatoes which were tastier on its own.

One of the desserts we picked was the key lime pie. We picked it because we've never had it from Morton's before. The fillings had a nice flavour from the lime and was rather sweet. I thought it was nicely done but if I had to choose, I'd pick the green one from PS Cafe over this.

Their chocolate mousse was smooth and airy. While it wasn't out of this world amazing, it was still nice. Because it didn't taste as sweet as the pie, it was also a lot easier to eat.

After the sweets, this was the perfect drink for closure. Black and no sugar. Not one of the more aromatic coffee around, but drinkable stuff because there was some strength in it.

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....