Hokkaido Fair at Meidi Ya

Here're some pics from the Hokkaido Fair at Meidi Ya supermarket located at the basement of Liang Court. I have probably missed the interesting part from the first 3 days but oh well... better late than never.

Helio Cafe, Marina Square

This wasn't a place that one could drop by for food with advance notification. Some of the items required preparation. Thanks to Junie (and Clement too for your time) for the invite down to this lunch. Helio Cafe was just 4 or 5 tables outside Prestige Helio Asia Spa. Headed by an enterprising Chef Clement Ronald Ng who has more than a few tricks up his sleeves in his world of culinary fusion.

I cannot remember what this dish was called, but it involves lemons, seedless grapes, ground rose petals and a bunch other spices that I do not recall in the chicken which is subsequently encased in a dense hard pastry to be baked.

If you've noticed from the first picture, the plate was dry. Subsequently, its filled with a brown juice. That's the "chicken au jus" - natural and delicately accented with the fruits and herbs that were baked with the bird. The pastry shell sealed in all the moisture from the chicken so that little of the natural flavouring and juiciness is lost in the process of high heat baking. The result is a very tender and juicy chicken which tasted quite herbal to me. I thought the grapes were really nice.

That's a beef cooked in red wine sauce on a bed of whipped potato. The beef was ok I guess. I do enjoy a good ribeye, so this isn't exactly the kind of style I'd go for in red meat generally. This tastes more like braised beef. What was interesting to me about this dish is the red wine sauce which slowly eroded away at the whipped potato creating a very pleasant cloudy soup which actually tasted pretty good

This strawberry yoghurt parfait with brandy snap and strawberry/raspberry sauce is a sort of ice cream like dessert which has raspberries trapped frozen in the cold creamy yoghurt hull. Notably mouth watering (literally) is the brandy snap which was the sweetness to the tart profile of the dessert.

And the strawberry cheese in filo pastry was probably one of best pastry stuff I've ever had. I kid you not. The pictures do no justice to the dessert. The layered crispy pastry shell was crispily awesome. I thought that the filling of the strawberry cheese may have been better served with more cheese. I'm not complaining though.

That's Helio's take on the molten chocolate cake. I'm sure you didn't see that coming. Yeah, molten choc cake and it looks little like the other molten chocolate cakes. This rendition of the cake doesn't come with molten chocolate, but very warm soft chocolate and topped with apricot that is aged in rum over two months. There was very pleasant diffusion of the flavour from the alcohol.

What we noticed about the desserts from Helio was that we didn't suffer from sugar saturation. Even after all of these. According to Clement, there is no added sugar in his cooking.

Chicken rice @ My Rice, Balestier Road

My Rice is a chicken rice stall with a claim to fame which is kinda unique. From what they stall was saying, the chef was formerly from Chatterbox. I don't really know how many chefs have transited over at Chatterbox but assuming things are as they claimed, a serving at $5 beats paying $20 at Mandarin Hotel. My Rice is located at the first coffee shop along Balestier road. If it helps, this coffee shop is known for frog porridge.

First thing I noticed was that there was a fairly generous amount of chicken. Almost Ming Kee portions. Many chicken rice stalls are guilty of flattening the meat of the chicken before chopping them up. I never understood the rationale. It seemed to me that the only reason was create an illusion of a larger portion of meat; and that also incidentally squeezes whatever moisture there might have been out of the meat. Hence dry chicken. This stall didn't do that.

I am often a chicken breast person because I don't like to deal with bones. I got breast meat this time round. Again. That meat was more tender and succulent than I had anticipated. The rice came with saucers of ginger, dark soy sauce and chilli. The latter was more ginger-y than garlic-ky. Their soup for some odd reasons reminded me of french onion soup. I actually finished it so I guess that meant it could have been pretty good.

Besides chicken rice, My Rice also has pan fried vegetables and tofu on their menu. I didn't get the vegetables on recommendation, however the tofu was quite nice.

Riverside Indonesian Restaurant, Riverside Point

I've been to this place on a few occasions. The restaurant has a set menu (that I always go for) which goes for $10 per person in a 6 dish set which comes with free flow of rice. Each of the 6 dishes comes with 2 separate options. The only qualifier for this menu was that the group must consist of at least 4 persons. The food in this place was mostly grilled and stir fried Indonesian styled dishes. For 10 bucks, I thought was a steal at this part of town. Definitely one of the more economically priced places for dinner. The below are a look at what one can expect.

Charcoal grilled red snapper

Charcoal grilled squid

Claypot curry chicken

Belacan kangkong

Otah

The grilled red snapper looked a little unexciting. It's probably because of how the photo was taken and also because it didn't really look visually appealing in the first place. It was however quite delicious. One of the things I like from the menu is the claypot curry chicken. Over the years, the standards seemed to have declined, but still retains enough of the good taste to make me drench my rice with curry and eat more than I usually do.

Sage, Robertson Walk

I've been eyeing this place that's sequestered in the second story of Frasier Place's inner courtyard for some time now. Never got about to coming down. Fatpig suggested lunch here. Quite glad I didn't wait any further to visit. Sage came about sometime in the middle of 2005. They've gotten a bit of renown with some of the local food bloggers. I heard that their annual dinner this year was held in this restaurant. That had stirred my curiosity. In retrospect, it would seem that this was one of those places where the experience was as good as the hype made it out to be.

Sage does an executive lunch at $25++ for a 3 course and $28++ for the 4 course. The lunches include a starter, soup, a choice of main and a dessert. The difference in the 3 course lunch is that one gets to choose to opt out of any of the courses. This made the 4 course much more attractive. The food was very enjoyable, albeit small in portions.

The menu for lunch I was told is rotated every fortnight. The appetizer we had for today was a seared yellow fin tuna topped with avocado mousseline, lumpfish roe and an aged balsamic glaze.

It was a very nicely seared tuna topped with what tasted like a fresh avocado puree. The dark sauce  I tasted, was the balsamic glaze. But the server claimed to be barbecue sauce (so who's wrong about it?). The lumpfish roe was more of a texture contrast to the avocado mousseline because I couldn't really taste it. It was on the whole pretty light. And I liked it.

Soup on the menu was a cappucino of cauliflower veloute.

I couldn't think of a better term to describe this but cappuccino of cauliflower cream. The soup was served piping hot with the foam that tasted like hot cream. Definitely a milky cauliflower. Brought a very nice warmth and perfect for a rainy afternoon like today. I was quite impressed with this.

The mains that we got for today were the pastilla of braised lamb shank with mascarpone cheese, Provencal ratatouille and cassoulet of summer beans and the braised beef short ribs topped with marinated shallots, puree of butternut pumpkin and brunoise root vegetables.

The braised lamb shank was wrapped in a thin pastry. Like a fried spring roll. It was delicious. Braised beef was nicely done and very tender. What got me was the butternut pumpkin puree which I thought was fabulous. It tasted exactly as was described. Buttery and slightly nutty smooth pumpkin which was very similar to the soup at Aerin's.

The meal ended with a very delicious dessert of vanilla panna cotta with Granny Smith apples and its own sorbet. The smooth and creamy vanilla panna cotta tasted like coconut to me. Not complaining here. Paired very well with the very fresh tasting and chilled apple sorbet which was nice like nothing I've ever had before.