Sultan Kebab, Peace Centre

I've been hearing mentions of this place (1 Sophia Road, #01-15 Peace Centre) which indicated that the food was good and wanted to find out for myself if it was good as people were saying. A couple of those good things I was told was the affordability and the generosity of their portions. So I came into the shop expecting really big portions.

I was disappointed with what they had. The shop had also run out of beef so I was limited to chicken. From which I could choose between a sandwich, roll, with rice, or iskender kebab. I haven't figured out what the iskender kebab was so I stuck to the safe option of rice ($7.00). That'ss shaven chicken bits from the vertical spit grill on rice. Tasted like how I thought it would. Aside from the small portions, I thought it tasted pretty good. Good enough for me to come back another time if I happen by.

Moo Moo Burger from Vittles

For $10.90, this burger was pretty decent. Was surprised by size and it's not often that this happens. Vittles at Sembawang Cottage across the road from Khatib Camp is a relatively new diner for western food. Prices look affordable and there's not GST and service charge. The place works like Cafe Cartel where one writes their orders on a chit and brings the chit to the counter for payment. Then you wait for your orders and help yourself with free popcorn.

Back to the burger, I think is worth checking. Big hand chopped patty meat (250g) with onions, sautéed mushrooms, real bacon, cheese and lettuce between an oat bun. Said bun probably uses the oatss for decorations than anything else. Patty was beefy and better than the quality from Botak Jones. Not a big fan of the barbeque sauce though. With an egg, it'll give the Epicurious burger a run for their money. This burger's pretty. Try not to dislodge your jaws if you're eating with your hands.

Watershed Wine Dinner @ Senso

Watershed as I've learnt is one of the vineyards that resides in the region of Margaret River down in Australia. This wine dinner - a collaboration of WineBOS and Senso. As one may have surmised from the name, the dinner was accompanied by various wine from Watershed. I'm not knowledgeable about wines but I do drink it and preferences at this point of time is purely dictated by the tongue. I know what I like or not base on taste. I know very little else despite having attended wine appreciation. The differences between the new and the old world hasn't settled in me and I haven't gotten the grasp of the varietal of grapes that are used. So I'm not engaging in the subtleties of the drink. But for those that might be interested, I do have the listed course and accompaniment of this 5 course dinner.

Poached crabmeat salad with avocado, orange and green apple with Sambuca dressing served with
Watershed Sauvignon Blanc/ Semillon, 2006

Rigatoni pasta with braised rabbit in tomato sauce with Taggiasche black olives and fresh thyme served with
Watershed unoaked Chardonnay, 2005

Traditional Carnaroli risotto with braised duck and Italian porcini mushrooms served with Watershed Shades, 2004

Braised veal shank "Ossobuco" served with mashed potatoes, rosemary and lemon Gremolata served with
Watershed Cabernet Sauvignon/ Merlot, 2004

Chef's selection of cheese served with
Watershed Shiraz, 2003

The food was more or less as I had expected. Not so much on satisfaction. It was uninteresting without any highlights that the cheese was actually a highlight of the 5 courses. Those cheeses were quite good and to think that it required the least preparation.

There were a few items that I thought could have been improved. The rabbit in the rigatoni tasted much like fish and the braised shredded duck meat of the risotto tasted boringly flat. And had too little meat, rendering it almost unidentifiable as duck. This poached crabmeat salad seemed quite overdone and brought up more than a faint reminder of a unremarkable trout and crab roll from Bontá. Tthe osso buco was fine. I guess. It only had a small part of the meat from the shank. If I had to call it, the justification to the price tag of the dinner were the generous pours of wine.

A Superfamous wagyu burger

There's a place down at Chulia Street just beside the OCBC building near Raffles Place. It's a cafe in a tiny park called Superfamous. The cuisine reads like fusion/Australian but then I'm not sure of the actual differences between the two. Perhaps it can just be described as largely European with some Asian influences. Anyway, I dropped by for lunch prior to an appointment and decided to try out their Wagyu burger. I'm just wondering since Wagyu is merely a term for a breed of cattle, does it mean that there are those that do not go through the fattening treatment process or is something like Grade 1 really affordable? This one was priced at about $24 dollars and after seeing how places like One Ninety or the defunct überburger charges for a Wagyu between bread, this does smell like a different beast. Pun intended.


I've definitely had better. Better and less costly with the Garageburger from Wine Garage coming on top of that list of cheaper and better. There's also the Wild Rocket Burger. Sure, those aren't wagyu but they were certainly much more enjoyable than this one which featured meat that was marinated to death resulting in a sweetish herby flavour. That to me wasn't enjoyable for beef. I'm missing that beefiness. So the end product had a slightly peppery/sweetish taste that reminded me of cheap black pepper sauces.


The upside of the lunch was their seared tuna salad which came with delicious seared tuna slices and a generous helping of salad with olives and quail eggs. The portions of the salad was bigger than I had expected. I'm not too sure what was the dressing but I thought I detected sesame sauce and some sort of vinaigrette.

Burritos, enchiladas and magaritas...

These Tex Mex stuff seem to be my recent craze lately, so you people have little choice but to bear with it since this is my blog. Hahaha! Funny how little of them I've had until recently, which pretty much started from that night at Cha Cha Cha. Now that I'm hung up with Café Iguana, I've decided that doing a late Sunday lunch at this place might be in order since it would be probably the only time I get to look at everything that I'm eating in clear daylight. Back to topic, it's a lunch that I'm doing with my brother, so we wisely stuck to a single order of a starters of an ancho dusted calamari, along with a shredded steak burrito and tuna enchiladas.

calamari

These are fried calamari, generally good for keeping the mouth busy while waiting for the rest of the food to arrive. But these were served just shortly before the rest of the mains did. The calamari here have a soft/soggy batter coating. The ancho dusting was like a dusting of the spice but I didn't quite discern the flavour. The plate came with a salty and garlicky sauce of sorts which turned out to be quite good.

burritos

I didn't realize that their burritos were so large. The word I would used to describe this would be hearty. They were filled with the choice of meat, black beans and cilantro rice. I'm thinking that this may just be the beginnings of me not rejecting cilantro/coriander since the flavour of the in the food here were fairly mild and bearable. In fact, I'm starting to find them quite pleasant. All in all, it was good and as I mentioned earlier, hearty.

tuna enchiladas

The last time I had enchiladas, the skin was softer. This time round, there was more crisp and it did look a little like prata. So more black beans and rice which I'm not complaining about. There's the salty fried black tuna wrapped in the tortilla skins and topped with melted cheese and the tomato/onion things. Pretty damn good and I must say. I enjoyed this.

Crab tang hoon @ Geylang Lorong 37

Heads up here, this was pretty good stuff. This stall, Ya Kwang Dai Pai Dong, is located right at the entrance of Geylang Lor 37 in a coffeeshop. We had some pretty damn tasty tang hoon stir fried with their mix of sauces and stock which was flavourful to say the least, accentuated with the flavour of crab. The tang hoon had a springy consistency and was a bit thicker than the usual ones. It was fun slurping them and having them slither down the throat. The stall also sold some pretty good looking kuey chup at the front. So the kitchen at the back is where seafood dishes are done. That crab tang hoon was just one of it. Since we were already there, we decided to try the steamed fish head in bean sauce they recommended and also the kuey chup.

The steamed fish head wasn't too bad. The flavour came mostly from the bean sauce which was delicious. Meat tasted fresh but it was just a regular steamed fish head. Not exactly a huge fan unless they're exceptional.


The kuey chup was enjoyable. The mixed stewed dish we ordered came with braised duck, some pork (might have been trotters), braised egg, tau kua, braised pig intestines, preserved/salted mustard greens and fish cakes. I can see myself ordering this again.