The Song of India, Scotts Road

I've been wanting to visit Song of India (33 Scotts Road, tel: 6836 0055) for a while. It turned out to be quite the idyllic sanctuary for lunch on a weekend. Located just at the fringes of town in an old bungalow, stepping into this place felt like a reprieve from the urban hubbub. The restaurant on a quiet Saturday spelled tranquility. A tranquility enhanced by new aged Middle Eastern/Indian ambient music piping gently in the background (think a less sophisticated Delerium!).


I haven't really heard very much about this place apart from some reviews and the ancient history of the former chef of Rang Mahal, Milind Sovani. The man helming the kitchen of the restaurant on the mission to showcase modern, yet heritage bound Indian cuisine in an elegant light. The chef was kind enough to accommodate a degustation for lunch even though it was normally available only for dinner. Service in the restaurant was great. I was also glad that the wait staff actually knew about the food that the restaurant was serving. I'll skip the rest of the gloss and go straight to the food...

some spicy cracker rolls

amuse bouche of potato cake with mint chutney

spiced foie gras with bean/pine nut salad

This was certainly a differently interpreted foie gras from the usual grilled or pan fried rendition. I didn't expect foie gras to be served in an Indian restaurant but I guess since it's a modern fine dining restaurant, the inclusion shouldn't be too much of a surprise. The entire liver tasted salty, much like a pate and was very, very soft. So soft that I was wondered how they had gotten it onto the glass plate without destroying it. There was the requisite rich livery flavour, but in terms of texture, I would have much preferred the pan fried variety that has a crisp exterior. The warm salad on the side was pretty good though.

gucchi mushrooms lentil soup laced with truffle oil

The name of this soup caused me to chuckle inwardly initially. The name sounded pretty expensive, but the morel mushrooms in them have nothing to do with a similar sounding brand that is often associated with handbags. I'm not sure how to describe the flavour, but it was very good.

soft Awadhi lamb kebabs, tandoor toasted broccoli and peppers, pear, clove chutney

These Awadhi lamb kebabs are suppose to be a form of delicacy. They didn't quite grow onto me. As kebabs, the portions were quite small. The slightly crisp shell gave way to a lamb paste which I thought was too soft. It wasn't the grounded meat that I had thought they would be. Those would have been more satisfying. The fragrant tandoor vegetables were much more interesting as was the bean salad on the side. It seemed that these guys do very tasty bean salads.

palate cleanser of lime and passion fruit sorbet sprinkled with cumin

This sorbet with cumin was very good. I had initially thought that the taste would be strange but it turned out to be very refreshing as it was suppose to be. The spice seemed to have created a new airy dimension to the sorbet. I think I should try making this at home.

lemon chilly lobster, Kerala Moily sauce, asparagus and edamame stir fry

I had gathered that this was suppose to be a signature dish here from their a la carte menu which also indicated that they were running at $55 for a portion. The lobster wasn't as juicy or sweet as one would normally expect for a fresh one. The baked meat was dry inside and noticeably in spite of it being blanketed in the tasty Moily sauce. That sauce though,was thick with coconut flavor. The kind of sauce that make you want to eat a lot of naan or rice. Or to mask seafood should they be not be fresh. But since this was the makeup of the dish, I don't think the intention was the latter. It was quite unimpressive and I found myself liking the stir fried edamame beans and asparagus more than the lobster. What was mention worthy was the semolina cake with mustard seeds on the side. It was a slightly sweet with the texture akin to couscous, cooked in soy milk and tasted freshly made. Like a warm and light tasting moist cake of sorts. That was very good. I detect the trend of the sides being much more tasty than the main items.

The naans were light and quite fluffy but otherwise quite ordinary. Those sesame and saffron flavored ones lacked flavour from saffron but the sesame seeds got their flavours through. Enjoyable as naans go, but otherwise unexceptional.

garlic and sesame naan with saffron wash

choco chikki torte, vanilla ice cream with cracked pepper, fresh fruits

The choco chikki torte was a thick chocolate mousse with a praline base. As with many Indian desserts, I found it too sweet. And in spite of small the portions, was quite the sugar overload for me. At this point, I was actually searching for something along the sides to intrigue me. See where I'm heading? I found the vanilla ice cream with a sprinkle of fine cracked pepper to be quite good. The fragrance from pepper wasn't something one would normally associate with ice creams, but it turned out to be a pleasing pairing which gave the dessert a nice aroma.

This degustation by the Song of India didn't turn out to be as impressive as I had hoped. As I've said earlier, the accompanying sides outshone the mains. Still, it wasn't unenjoyable as an experience. The a la carte menu looked interesting. Stuff that you probably cannot find in Little India. I could come back to try those.

Simply Bread, Robertson Quay

This was one of the uncommon occasions where I got up early enough in the weekends to go out for breakfast. Should be doing this more often since getting up and out early means that I actually have more time of the day. The day does feels longer. However, that it doesn't happen often is because while most of the time the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak.

Simply Bread (60 robertson quay, #01-15 the quayside, tel : 6732 2966) is a nice location for breakfast. Several reasons for me saying this. One gets al fresco with shade. It's tends not overly crowded. The open seating areas do not feel cluttered and there are newspapers/magazines which one can borrow to accompany the breakfast. The selection for breakfast is adequite as well and prices aren't so unkind to the wallet. All of it along a laid back glorified canal riverside.

There were a few things that I've had that I thought were pretty good. The roast beef sandwich ($6), was amongst them. It's getting a simple sandwich correct many places fail miserably. Most of the time, it's a problem with fillers or ratio. Here, they do not sting. There's only tomatoes and mustard in the sandwich. There is also choice from a variety of bread.


The ham steak with eggs breakfast plate was served with two eggs and a couple of slices of toasts. Honey baked ham were pretty tasty. I don't remember the last time I tasted the honey in honey baked ham. One gets to choose how their eggs are done. Also got myself a sticky bun ($1.20) which was essentially a cinnamon caramel coated bun which tasted a lot better than it looked or sounded. The only gripe I had was the coffee. Even with the benefit of an additional shot of espresso, didn't pack the oomph that I was hoping to kickstart my morning heart.

Wakashachiya, The Central

I've happened by this kare udon specialist restaurant Wakashachiya (#03-92 The Central, 6 Eu Tong Sen Street, S059817, tel : 6534 9984) which hails from Nagoya, the capital of the Aichi Prefecture in Japan on a couple of occasions previously down at Central and haven't really taken much interest aside from cursory glances at the menu since I'm not an udon person. After having read some reviews and hearing feedback, I decided to give it a go. It seemed that this place has cobbled up 63 outlets altogether in Japan currently and they're on the way to opening the 64th down in Yokohama. The presence of the restaurant extends to Osaka and Tokyo. What does these information which can be gleaned from looking around all mean for me and you? Probably nothing but marketing fluff.


It turned out that this udon experience was much better than any I have had previously. Which isn't really all that much to speak of actually. I often found them far too chewy for my liking. This one had a consistency which I liked. The springy smooth udon came with enough bite and wasn't rubbery, soaking in the piping hot curry which was a notch spicier compared to many Japanese curries. The top up option for cheese ($3) came with a rather generous heap of shredded mozzarella which melted nicely above the hot curry creating a sticky but tasty goo coating the udon. There were some sliced pink fishcake things, some triangular pieces of bean curd and crunchy leeks which were hidden in the bowl of curry.

Besides the cheese, there were other add ons like nasu, katsu, ebi fry and tempuras and .....others. I was inwardly making comparisons of their dense piece of breaded fried pork (Tonkichi!) and prawn tempuras hoping that the portions of the katsu were bigger and more tender. But in the end it was just a $4 piece and the prawn beneath the freshly fried tempura batter was hot and crunchy.


We ordered the umaki just to convince ourselves that it probably wouldn't be what we had expected. The eggs here are a much cruder interpretation of the more exquisite version from Botan which were in my books, superior in many ways at a similar price point. Botan's tamago was definitely silkier and more smoothly layered. There was also more of that unagi. This one wasn't bad on the whole, it's just a little expensive for the quality and definitely not what we were looking for.

Fried devil's horns...

...as a particular lady calls them. I'm normally not big on chicken wings and I usually like my meat without bones. But these ones from cafeteria at Ikea (Level 2F, 317 Alexandra Road S159965, tel : 63781604) which goes at $7.50 for 6 (the first number of the beast!) are pretty good and are one of the exceptions with regards to how I generally view them. What I like about them is the lack of batter and the nice browning of the crispy skin. They're also not too tiny that there is barely any meat on the bones. Of course they are juicy and laden with grease and padded with some fat beneath the skin. Which self respecting delectable doesn't kill you in small delicious steps. Fried devil's horns does.

Funny Lasagna, Alexandra Village

I found out about this place (Blk 127, Bukit Merah Lane 1 # 01-230, Alexandra Village, tel: 6270 5464) from the papers which featured the the chef owner, Peter Bontoi whom has served a couple of "tour of duties" in some other restaurants before opening Funny Lasagna down in this quiet coffeeshop. They've a squid ink lasagna that sounded interesting as described by our 141st(?) media to possess "homemade sheets of inky black pasta are layered with remarkably unchewy pieces of squid".  Whatever that means. Also mentioned was a sauce that is intense, savoury and "dark as night". Heh! Well, fool me twice and shame on me. I must in terrible luck for the stall to run out of those home made sheets of inky black pasta and a sauce that was far from being dark as night. In fact, the colour dark brown wasn't too far off.


Jibes aside, there was a obvious lack of squid ink flavour in the lasagna. Not sure why the layers in between the pasta needed so much tomato sauce which made them too tart for my liking. I would have gotten the regular lasagna if I had wanted tomato sauce. Seriously, why bother with the squid ink option if it tastes like tomato in the first place? The gnocchi were decent, quite soft and came with a predictably flavoured tomato cream sauce. For $7, the portions were pretty generous but the accompanying asparaguses looked and tasted a tad wilted.


To call the cake what it is, this shouldn't be called a tiramisu. A rip off, perhaps. An attempt, maybe. I can make them better myself. And so can my mum in all seriousness. This rendition came with dry sponge fingers and only the top layer that tasted like mascarpone, albeit one with a lumpy texture. The middle layer of cream was definitely not mascarpone and tasted like some hard and dried custard.

The food gets credit for affordability, but at their price point, you do get what you pay for. Wouldn't becoming back in a hurry though.

Tenshin, Regent Hotel

I'm going on record that Tenshin (The Regent Singapore Hotel #03-01, 1 Cuscaden Road, S249715, tel : 67354588) serves tempura with the thinnest and lightest tasting batter I've ever had. Bar none - now and possibly for a while. Being the only tempura bar ad specialist around from what I've gathered, these guys ought to be one of the best if not indeed number one at what they do in their art of deep frying battered food. I suspect that the truth would be the latter but since taste is subjective, I would leave it at these guys are doubtlessly experts and do a damn good job.

Lunch was a $30 tempura set which consisted of an appetizer, salad, tsukemono, miso soup. Tempura consisted of a couple of prawns, a couple of slices of pumpkin, asparagus, maitake mushroom and white fish with rice. Dessert was a lime sorbet. We were urged by a friend to try the tempura uni. Something which we already had our mind/eyes on in spite of the hefty tag of $25 for a single portion. We landed a counter seat so we could watch the preparation of the food, much like in a sushi bar. In this case at Tenshin we got to witness preparation of the batter for each batch of tempura that was about to be served. These guys mix the batter upon each order and each piece of tempura is then individually dusted in the flour before taking a batter bath and then into the oil. They're all then served individually as would be for sushi in sushi bars.

There were various condiments to accompany the dishes - a generous bowl of grated daikon and a selection of flavoured salts; green tea, regular sea salt, chilli salt and a curry one. Tried them based on the recommendation of the chef and found that they were pretty flavourful. The curry salt in particular went well with their white rice. However, one can simply just eat the tempura without those as they tasted good on their own.

Found it amusing that while eating at Tenshin, we made more noise eating the vegetables than the tempura. All the vegetables served were crisp or crunchy or both and made crunchy noises. The paper thin crispy lotus root slices on the salad definitely contributed. Speaking of which, the salad had a tasty sesame dressing with a slight hint of mustard and pepper,

Beside being airily thin, crispy and not grease logged, what's noticeable about the tempura at Tenshin was that their vegetables didn't taste fried at all. The juices and crunch retained and if not for the batter, they could have pass off as steamed vegetables. The flavour of the produce were sealed in and it's been a while since I've noticed how crunchy a properly cooked asparagus could be or that the pumpkin was so sweet and fragrant. Mushroom they used was maitake. Had a nutty flavour which was quite pleasant. The fish and prawn were delicious as well.

The uni tempura deserved special mention because we enjoyed it plenty. We would have ordered one or two or even three more if it wasn't so costly. It was essentially generous portion of the sea urchin that was wrapped in a seaweed package - like a stuffed pillow. The package was subsequently dipped into their batter and then into the fryer for a few seconds. The result was a tight rectangular bundle of seaweed containing the warm uni inside which spilt out as you bit into them. I don't know if it was because of the heat from that short frying but the uni tasted especially fragrant here. The bouquet of the sea urchin was definitely much more accentuated than the chilled ones and it was very enjoyable.

Because of their almost ethereal batter, lunch turned out be quite light. There was no heaviness of grease and little over and hour after lunch, we felt like we needed to eat something again. Would love to be back to try something else from that lunch menu too.