Yet Con, Purvis Street

I've always thought that this restaurant down at the Beach Road end of Purvis Street only sold chicken rice since it was the only thing that's visible from the shop front whenever I happen by. Apparently they're also known for their steamboat. Not so common for a chicken rice/steamboat place. Judging from the crowd the place seemed to be pretty popular. From what I've gathered, this establishment has been around for a really long time. The setup of Yet Con was an old styled coffeeshop (marble top tables still) with air conditioning. On several of the tables are the gas piped steamboat cookers along with chicken rice condiments like the chilli, ginger and soy sauces.

What theh had were pretty average tasting steamboat items which were affordable. The chicken rice was quite decent, though the meat was dry. Original Hainanese style? The chilli sauce here was flat tasting and only mildly spicy. I do mean mildly. No complains otherwise though. The steamboat had a broth that tasted like chicken soup. Wasn't too impressed with the offerings of the steamboat but didn't actually explore if they had better options to top up. It came with a small portion of assorted meat like cockles, squid, chicken and beef with a couple of eggs and some vegetables which have seen better days. I was told that the steamboat is popular here?

The verdict was that this was nothing exceptional. It's average tasting food at affordable prices. Maybe it's good for nostalgia.  Dinner for 3 which constituted chicken for 4 persons, 2 bowls of rice each and a serving of steamboat and drinks was about $38.

Waraku, Starhub Centre

The last time I visited Waraku was last September. Today's visit also marked my first at the restaurant that isn't in Marina Square. And they have new items on the menu which I haven't seen before like spinach cream udons.

I ended up with something which is rather mundane because it looked pleasing on the menu. I know I shouldn't be trusting those Photoshopped images. Here's the Sakura set, mentako yaki and some fried vegetable & squid thingy which I have forgotten what it's called .

sakura set

mentaiko yaki

The Sakura comes with a bowl of creamy soup udon and scallops, a bowl of rice with shredded egg and salmon roe and a side of pickles. This is one of those occasions where I didn't finish up because there was too much to be had. The carb alarm must have gone off and somehow, I missed it. Rice, udon and that creamy soup..... . Between the rice and the udon, I actually think that the former was tastier with the salmon roe injecting flavor into the rice and eggs. As for the bowl of udon, the main draw for me was actually just the scallops. I found the udon much to chewy and thick. Which probably is a preferential thing as they're not poorly done. I just don't think I'm an udon person.

The menu describes the mentaiko yaki as burnt cod roe which seems to be pretty accurate of how the roe was served. The skin of the roe was dry with some char marks. In the department of taste, I've run out of interesting descriptions. It's salted cod roe that's been slighly charred. I'm sure one can imagine how that would be like. Unlike the one at Aoki which was not fully cooked, the roe here held it's shape firmly when pressure was applied. The texture of the eggs were however more grainy. The fried vegetable & squid cake tastes exactly like how it looked.

Aoki, Shaw Centre

Named after the restaurant director Kunio Aoki and designed by a Japanese interior architect, this minimalist designed yet stylish Les Amis restaurant is located alongside the parent Les Amis and sister La Strada along Shaw Centre right beside Pacific Plaza. Fronted by a the sombre dark exterior, the interior furnishing of Aoki is largely done in wood providing a warm sanctuary of zen like enclosures which separates dining booths for the visitors of the restaurant.


The dining areas of Aoki are separated into three main sections. First of which are several alcoves of private space shielded by wooden sliding doors along the main passage after the entrance. The same corridor also leads via a short flight of steps to the bar counter where one can watch the chefs in their dangerous knife art. Behind the bar counter are more private dining rooms which I did not get to explore. The restaurant was manned by a host of very polite and attentive staff, a portion of which are real Japanese. What I had really appreciated about the service in this restaurant was that their wait staffs, while attentively observant and barely out of sight were also not intrusive by keeping a distance. This made the eating experience here a largely pleasant one

I had lunch today in one of the hauntingly peaceful (the weather helps) booths by reservation with courtesy of sinquanon88 of HWZ. These booths were just the alcoves of private dining space which I have mentioned earlier with the shielf of sliding doors that separates the said booths from the main corridor. The walls of the booth facing the sliding doors are of a fogged glass which, when catches daylight creates a ethereal wall of impenetrable mist; the illusion of a permeable backdrop with bamboo silhouettes just behind the wall of opacity.



Aoki does lunch sets and has an accessible menu from their website. Their lunch sets are priced ranging from $30 to $60. We went with the Mazechirashi and the Shokado sets and decided on some add ons. These came in the form of fermented sea slug intestines, spicy cod role and uni sushi.

Fermented sea slug intestines

I didn't have any idea how these things would taste like before today. I didn't even know how a sea slug looks like. I was assuming that they would be small sea cucumber like mollusks and it would hence require quite a few of them just to get sufficient intestines for the dish. The taste we noticed was also strongly masked by the use of very salty soy sauce and a raw quail egg. I could imagine that without the use of those, the long semi-rubbery intestines would have a rather overpowering fishy flavour. Pretty thankful that the portions were tiny.

mentaiko

These spicy cod roe were soft and heavily salted and had noticeable heat. It was with sheets of dried seaweed which was used to wrap the roe along with sliced strips of zucchini; presumably for the offset of the saltiness of the roe. The skin of the mentaiko was soft and the eggs misshapen when pressure is applied to them.

Uni sushi

The uni sushi here costed $24 for two. It was pretty good, but surprisingly not even Akashi good.

Shokado ($38)

Mazechirashi ($35)

Their Mazechirashi came with very generous portions of cubed raw fish toppings. Salmon, mackerel, tuna, tamago, sliced zuchinni and other fish which I've either forgotten or cannot identify. On the side, grated wasabi. Underneath the bed of raw fish were also fine strips of seaweed which blanket the rice at the bottom of the bowl. I was really quite pleased with how this turned out. I had thought that lunch was usually not a good indicator of how good a restaurant could be. Apparently inn Aoki, there was considerable efforts made in their lunch sets. Each of the lunch sets came with a side of pickles, a prawny miso soup and dessert.


I mentioned prawny miso soup earlier because the soup does in fact come with a prawn head. Besides surprising unwary drinkers there is actually a rather robust flavour of prawn in the soup. In fact, that prawn flavoring was probably greater than that of the miso. Another pleasant surprise.


Dessert from lunch came with a delicious pumpkin custard pudding topped with a raspberry, a scoop of melon sorbet and plum jelly. It was so good that I wished there was more, but I suppose these good things are usually better in small portions. Lol. The melon sorbet was very flavourful, but it didn't taste like any melon which I knew of. That plum jelly which was also rich in the flavours.

I was really pleased with this lunch at Aoki. This was probably one of the lengthier write ups I've done on lunches which meant that it left a pretty deep impression for me to say what I had to say. Be advised that it doesn't come cheap.

I visited the washroom before leaving and noticed that they had an interesting wooden basin with dry towels on the side. Nice.

Buko Nero, Tanjong Pagar

Bummer! No photography was permitted by Buko Nero. I was informed that they have in recent months started disallowing photography of the food and the restaurant. What's up with that? I was hoping that since a picture is supposedly worth a thousand words and I could save myself from typing stuff that'll be stinging at your bleary eyes as you read this in the dead of the night.

Consolation was that I had managed to snap a few shots before one of the owners, Tracy came to inform of their policy against photography. I've waited almost a month for this seating after numerous frustrating attempts at calling the place with no one picking up the phone.

iPod Nano mounted onto speakers

A table's eye view

A peek into the kitchen

Pink guava juice

tableware

Buko Nero is a tiny family restaurant helmed (haha!) by it's tonsure baring chef Oscar. The space could seat what I estimated to be about 20 or so. The waiting time for food here was excruciating. Reservations was made at 7.30pm and by the time we hit the main course, it was about 9.30pm. I understand what it is to take the time and enjoy the food and I'm aware that this place isn't exactly well staffed. Still it grated. Be sure to bear in mind that good company is of the utmost importance at Buko Nero.

The menu didn't look particularly interesting and I was not sure what I was expecting either. So I ended up with the set dinner for the night at $38++, swapped the pasta main for a bacon & steak with blueberry sauce with a supplement of $16 (wtf!) and shared their oft mentioned Buko Nero Tau Kwa Tower with fatpig. I was told that it was possible to do dinner here for $40 so that was pretty much what I expected to pay, thinking that it was rather reasonable. My portion of the bill came up to $70. Kinda pricey.

Buko Nero serves a nice bread. It was small, hot and a little oily. But also nice. And free flow. Beats bread from many other places. The starter was a "lemon juiced" beef carpaccio blanketed with pomelo and topped with alfalfa with a smear of balsamic vinegar. It's a smear because the vinegar came literally as a smudge on the bowl, which meant that there wasn't much of it to go round even with such delicate portions. It was ordinary as carpaccios go

Following that was a pumpkin and crab soup with mint. The sweet pumpkin soup was served in a bowl the size of a Chinese teacup and had succulent crab meat. We also had a palate cleanser of a mango and lime sherbet which tasted weak and diluted.

The Tau Kua Tower appeared like a small tau kua pile. For $17, was expensive. If you're familiar with the squares of tau kua that can be bought in wet markets, you'll be getting a slice of that. A slice which was probably a quarter to a third of a whole block of it.


This steak wrapped with bacon was pretty decent. To the credit of the chef, it arrived at a proper medium rare. It however lacked the juiciness which I was hoping for. The blueberry sauce did not have much flavour we ended up tasting more bacon.


Dessert was an impressive chocolate and coconut cake with gula melaka coulis. This was one of the best application of brown sugar I've had. In spite of appearances (yes, the poor photography was to be blamed too), the hot crusty surfaced cake was soul warming. It's on the regular menu apparently and I would recommend it.

In all, a passable meal with very good service. Which still didn't quite make up for the waiting time and the considerably pricey bill. Could have had dinner at a place like Sage. However I just don't see myself going through the trouble of doing another reservation again for the prospect of a really small menu.

Copper Chimney, Race Course Road

Indian food for me has generally been a mixed bag of excitements and disappointments. In general, I do enjoy them. Especially those of the Northern India variety. There are certain commonalities which doesn't agree with me. It has to do with certain overused green herbs, amongst them the vile coriander. There are others, but I do not have the names to them. Suffice it is to say, these are the bane of my eating pleasures.

Copper Chimney at Race Course Road was an example of a mixed bag place. The restaurant is a few units away from Delhi Restaurant which I ate at a couple of months back. The al fresco dining area at the entrance was tiny (just two tables) but had a small measure of the old world charm (and dirt) of the colonial era. An old shop house glazed in weathered whitewash and peeling paint matched with dust coated grey concrete flooring. If not for the lack of shelter from the rain, it would have been a pleasant place to linger after lunch with hot tea and a cigarette which I shouldn't have the luxury of. Lol.

Papads were served at the start. These ones are studded with peppercorn and are quite spicy. Alongside, was a mint chutney which did not have slightest hint of mint in them. After a while, I couldn't decide if the crackers were the main source of the spicy sensation in my tongue or if it was the chutney.

One of the things I enjoy from Indian restaurants is lassi. This one was a mango flavoured one. Good stuff.

Their Murg Malai Tikka was heavy as a starter.  The portions could've made a main course. This was also one of those dishes that didn't altogether agree with me because of the amount of green herbs that was sprinkled all over. The dish was suppose to be chicken marinated with mild spices, yoghurt, cream and cheese. All I could really taste was the herbs and the bitter burnt portions of the chicken. Despite being a Chef's Recommendation on the menu, I'll never eat it again unless my life depended on it.


This Gosht Saag turned out to be an excellent in the rainy weather. It's mutton in spinach gravy as described in the menu. The dish was like a piping hot and mildly spicy mutton and vegetable stew of sorts. It managed to stay warm throughout the whole time I was eating. What impressed me was that mutton was actually tender and not overcooked. Had this with an order of cheese naan. The only complain that I had was that my unerring senses detected sparse bits of coriander. Fortunately, it was in quantities small enough for me to forcibly ignore.

I noticed that there is quite a variety of cheese based dishes on the vegetarian section of the menu besides palak paneer, so it's possible that I may come back again.

The Pied Piper's Pie

I don't recall having a pie which I thought was better than Don's. After today, I still haven't. Lol. I was thinking Piper's looks kinda good, having passed by the stall at the basement of Raffles City on several occasions and catching a waft of the golden brown pastries. I had originally wanted to check out the Beef, Bacon and Cheese but I was there pretty late and they were out. The good news is that if you're there late, all pies (no matter which one) goes for $5. This one up there is....some creamy chicken pie with white wine in the sauce. Couldn't tell from the taste. At all. It's filled with plenty of chunky chicken meat though. Pretty big chunks. What didn't quite cut it was the creamy sauce which I thought was pretty weak. It's not so good, despite how it looked.