Szechuan Court, Raffles the Plaza

Szechuan Court is located on the 3rd floor of Raffles the Plaza. The placement of the restaurant entrance isn't very visible to pedestrians, it can be found in one of the passageways in the middle of the mall which also leads to Inagiku. It was unfortunate that I didn't get the red curtained dining booths from my reservations, but if I do ever re-visit, I'll remember to specifically request for those which look to provide a pleasant semi-private ambience.

This restaurant offers a decent selection of chinese cuisine. I'm not sure if these are specifically Szechuan, but I did note some signs of fusion like the use of edamame, Boston Lobsters and red wine. So I guess it's not a totally traditional place here. Service here is just acceptable. It also sees the common problem of having servers that purposely avert their eyes from customers as they brisk past in the pretentiously busy pace. I noted that the captains avoided this behavior and appeared to be more observant, though cooly polite. Also they serve a wild chrysanthemum tea in this place that taste distinctively different from the normal ones. Comes with flower buds in the tea.

The below dishes were dinner for 4 tonight.

Thick soup of pumpkin with prawn and water chestnut served in pumpkin

I don't know what's with the last part of the name of this dish, but you can see that it certainly is not served in a pumpkin. In any case, the soup is pretty decent with a hint of the pumpkin flavor. The 'thick' from the name of the soup comes from starch added into the soup making it viscous. There are some small chunks of prawn and chestnut in the soup. For $15, I think I'm not being unreasonable to expect more prawns in soup. And it arrived lukewarm. Would have been great piping hot. Yes, I'm complaining.

Spinach with 3 eggs

This dish is not available on the menu. It's basically stewed spinach with egg, century egg and salted duck egg. It tastes pretty much the same as the ones available in everywhere else. This place has larger cut up pieces of the eggs. The broth in the dish is a little saltish and rich tasting.

Spicey pine seed fried rice with minced mushrooms, asparagus, bamboo shoots and raisins

This fried rice does come a little spicy which helps in rousing the taste buds. It comes from the vegetarian section of the menu. At $16 dollars, this is actually the small portion recommended for about 4 persons. The rice is a little greasy and apart from the ingredients which are not so generally used in "regular" fried rice, there isn't really much to mention of it. I generally like fried rice so I think it was pretty decent on the whole. I managed to get 2 helpings of it so I guess it isn't too bad.

Szechuan smoked duck with camphor wood and fragrant tea leaves

I was told that this place has one of the better Szechuan smoked ducks locally. So that kinda establishes for me that smoked duck around here isn't of any particular difference from roasted ones. For one, this tastes like regular roasted duck with difference only in the texture and crisp of the skin. There is no taste of tea leaves (let alone fragrance) nor was it camphor ish in any manner, whatever it may mean. So what you get is fairly tasty smoked duck that is accompanied by rather cute looking clam shaped buns (akin to those used for kong ba pau), which really cannot be used to wrap any of the duck meat effectively. Look at how it works out if you try. The meat of the duck retained enough moisture and wasn't too dry and is actually fairly tender too. Otherwise, it isn't remarkable and a bit pricey at $28 for half a duck.

Deep fried cod with superior sauce

This cod is actually one of the more memorable dish, unanimously agreed to be one of the highlight of the night. The skin of the fish was crispy and fragrant. The exterior of the fried fish possesses the same level of crispiness with the insides retaining the moisture and tenderness which is not the norm of my experience with deep fried fishes that tend to have dry meat. It however is also quite expensive. The picture above features a double portion and single portions cost $18 a piece. It was however, a very good piece of fried cod. The only complain I have about this dish is the described superior sauce which really taste like regular soy sauce to me.

Edamame stir fried with prawn, scallop and sweet turnip

I was thinking of whole prawns and scallops stir fried with this, but I guess it was not to be. The ingredients are diced and stir fried together with water chestnut, chilli slices and mushroom. The dish is slightly greasy mildly spicy. Despite that, it has a very light touch to it and was on the whole quite good. The portions were also dainty for 4 persons.

Red bean pancake

And here's the red bean pancak, a rather common dessert in Chinese restaurants. This one comes very densely packed with sesame seeds on the very light pastry top layer of skin which breaks apart quite easily. There is a secondary layer which is softer and oilier wrapping hot fillings of red bean paste. Apart from the more generous amount of sesame seeds on the crust, this is quite the normal red bean pancake.

The bill for dinner for 4. One can conceivably order something else different from the menu and have the bill easily doubled or even tripled. And UOB cards get you 15% off the bill so arm yourself.

Dinner at 11 p.m.

I'm wondering if you're wondering what exactly these are and where they are from. If Starbucks think their puffs are ugly, they haven't seen these yet.

Prata prattler

Almost uniquely local, this ubiquitous and grease soaked fried pastry has filled the stomach of millions for breakfast. It's as easy to find good tasting ones as the poorly made ones. That above was the cheese egg prata which used sliced cheese instead of Mozzarella. There's the dry golden brown hue which spells crispy skin. What's great about these is that they are never pre-made to be heated up for serving. They're cooked to order. Served hot with gooey of melted cheese and sambal.

The conversation I had with my brother went into the cheese of the prata and perhaps, why not blue cheese prata? Lol. Might be interesting for a gourmet prata shop to start doing so. Perhaps served with some onion and tomato reduction infused with cayenne and ground peppercorn. Lol. And while we're at that, why not truffle in prata with quail eggs. And maybe goose liver pate or even caviar and there comes variety. Enough for now.

The Star of ugliness Bucks the trend of pretty presentation

What, Starbucks is slowly encroaching into the space of a deformity contest? Ugly now meets uglier.

Spizza, Harbour Front

I heard that this place is run by the same people that did Senso. I've actually been eyeing it for a while and today, I finally managed to get the opportunity to come by. This restaurant was packed to the brim at about 7.30pm. With a short queue forming at the door. But it was a holiday's eve after all. 

We started dinner with some antipasti call Nerone and the Suberbo salad.

Suberbo

The Suberbo was a very simple salad. Frankly, I was quite disappointed that it did not go beyond anything more exciting than a small mound of shredded lettuce. I counted three average sized mussels and a couple of shrimps. I think they could have done a lot better with the miserable seafood portions. When I read prawns on the menu, I expected real prawns and not just small shrimps things. On the bright side, this salad was appetising. The dressing consist of just some black pepper and lemons. Simple, refreshing and it really made me more hungry through the 20 minute wait for the pizza. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Shrimp No.1 and No.2

Nerone

The Nerone was simply mixed grilled vegetables, mozzarella cheese and some Parma ham as described in the menu. The quality of the cooked vegetables here are sadder than that of Riciotti. I was honestly quite disappointed by this poor show. Those grilled vegetables lacked even the char aroma. I mean, it says grilled vegetables on the menu. If I had known that this was it, I'm pretty sure I would not have ordered it. The saving grace of this dish for me were actually the sun dried tomatoes and the mozzarella cheese. Imagine that. The dressing here was likewise simple with just olive oil and some pepper.

The highlight of dinner was the pizza. And this was Isabella.

Isabella

I was very relieved that Spizza actually did pizza nicely. From the crispy thin crust to the gooey cheese. What the menu described as rucola salad is actually just some leaves that were layered on top of the pizza. Sprinkled over the top were some black pepper. This one was actually the large sized pizza at $19.00. I'm pretty sure I could have finished it all by myself. It's that good. Unlike Pizza Hut that basically loads you up with their thick oily crust. I think I don't mind coming back for Spizza's other pies.

Dessert was tiramisu. I think I've mentioned a couple of times that they tend to have variable standards and is often disappointing for me. But occasionally, I take a leap of faith. For some reasons.


Comparing to the one from Menotti, this has a larger cream to cake ratio. The cake wasn't not as liquor soaked, but it was quite pleasant. Enjoyable, but nothing that really wowed.

Pontian Wanton Noodles, Yishun 81

One of the wanton noodles stall which had something to say about what's special about their brand of noodles. Pontian is located at the Yishun 81 coffeeshop at the Central, about 5 minutes walk from the bus interchange. Having not seen this particular stall before, I decided to give it a try.

I don't know if any of that 60 years of history had any real bearings on things. Or for that matter, if anyone in the past 60 years have been eating there and liking the food. The front of the stall is patched with signs with the usual claims of having noodles that are handmade and blah blah blah..... I ordered a bowl with a serving of 14 fried wantons.

The wanton noodles come in two sizes. A serving of the fried wanton goes for $2.50. So for 5 bucks I managed to get the following one of each.

The basic $2.50 bowl of noodles came with 2 fried and 2 soup wontons. The portions weren't very large. But decidedly, it was quite good. There was definitely something different about the noodles that gave it better texture. Didn't leave a residual after taste which I personally dislike about yellow noodles in general. The noodles also comes with the option of chilli sauce (which isn't really very spicy at all) and a bowl of soup containing the another 2 soup wontons. The mixed sauce gave the noodles a spicy tomato flavour which didn't quite taste like the usual ones. I don't know why's that. I had meant that positively.

Those were the fried wanton. These wantons though small, were very tasty. The fried skins are light and crispy. Not what I had expected. I had thought them to be hard shelled and oily. They were really easy to eat and a serving of 14 wantons can easily be finished by one. Despite appearances, it tasted freshly fried. I will be back for this again.