Chellas Vegetarian Corner, Serangoon Road

I liked this place (70 Serangoon Road, tel: 6297 6297) in Little India more than just a little bit despite the fact that there is only vegetarian food served here. Was initially apprehensive since the front of the restaurant looked like a fast food joint of sorts. To that image, the food was served pretty fast after we had ordered. But the lingering doubts were dispelled after a very satisfying dinner..

Being not too familiar with many of the items on menu, we picked what we thought looked interesting and asked the serving staff when we came across things that we didn't recognize at all. Here's a show of what we ended up with.

pineapple & cheese dosa

gobi masala

ragi iddiyapam

kara bath

paneer butter masala

paper dosa

Appealing were the variety of appetite whetting sauces/dips that were available for the dosa. Those gave variety to the flavour of the rice flour pancakes. As I had also imagined, their pineapple & cheese dosa was savoury and delectable - married by the salty cheese and sweet pineapple chunks in them.

The ragi iddiyappam was a variant of the regular iddiyappam (string hoppers) using another type of flour. It was quite similar to the regular version and it tasted freshly made. Delicious with both the orange sugar or spicy coconut chutney. I also thought I may have found what I had been looking for from the Song of India, in the form of the kara bath which was a savoury semolina cake with diced vegetables. Pretty sure that the sweet version called kesari bath was it.

The gobi masala's delicious with the bits of battered and fried cauliflowers soaking in the spicy gravy. I was surprised to see an actual piece of butter melting in the paneer butter marsala.

This place had me scraping up the residual sauces with the spoon. All for $20.50 and very friendly service.

19/04/2008 update - A revisit!!


I had not planned to return just the next day, but I'm not complaining. Originally, we wanted to drop by Chellas for hot masala tea or milk. We ended up ordering something to munch while at it. This innocuous looking earthy orange mound above was the kesari bath which I have mentioned earlier. A sweet steamed semolina cake flavoured with saffron and some sultana raisins. Now in case you were wondering, this wasn't excessively sweet as one might imagine. In fact this wasn't even on the desserts section of the menu. I thought it was pretty awesome.


While at it, we grabbed also a chilli, cheese and mushroom dosa and helped ourselves with an order of rasamallai. That dosa came with a robust kick from the spices. Delicious with the salty cheese. The rasamallai we were told, was a milk based dessert. I had something similar back in Mustard which was made of cottage cheese and had a texture like damp cardboard. Does anyone know the differences if any between these two?

Tokyo Banana

These little soft cakes which were shaped like fat bananas are call Tokyo Bananas. They have a custard filling which was flavoured like...bananas. Though not heavily of it. In each of the individual plastic wrapping, there were the mystifying words "People gather to Tokyo from here and there with memories of their home. and then, Tokyo gets the everyone's home town." Lol. I got these from someone who has in turn received them from another person who has gotten them from Japan. Apparently these guys have a website for their product in Japanese.

Uncle Sim Home Cooked Nonya Food, Whampoa Food Centre

This was one of the better mixed vegetable rice stall at Whampoa Food Centre (Whampoa Drive Blk 90, #01-63) it seems. At least their variety of dishes were appealing enough to catch my attention. For $3, I landed myself some fried chicken fillet, steamed egg with century eggs & salted duck eggs and a soft simmered cabbage with black fungus. There's a rich curry that you can request for to be ladled onto the rice. That was thick with coconut flavour and every bit as tasty as I imagined. I'm sure there're other goodies from their stall which I have yet to discover. Those will be for the next time I'm in the vicinity.

Lunch @ Ten-Jyaku

My honest feelings about this place (9 Raffles Boulevard #01-11/12, Millenia Walk, tel: 6837 3960) is that there is probably more gloss than actual substance so if you're a aficionado of Japanese cuisine, Ten-Jyaku is probably not the place to look toward. Because the lunch was simply just a passable affair. I'm not an expert on Japanese food, but I've had enough Japanese, albeit locally to realise that there is more than a few points which could do with improvement. I personally do not believe in a large gap for compromise between lunches and dinners despite the fact that lunches normally lean towards being more economical on the pocket. That is because, it speaks volumns of the attitude of the chef or restaurant towards their line of work and glaring differences only say one thing. There is little to no pride in the place towards their food. It's just a business to them. There's more than a couple of places out there with well made lunches.


There was actually a decent array of lunch sets at the restaurant, but most of them held little to no appeal for me. I ended up with a Sanshoku Don ($25) which features 3 different sashimi bowls with rice, a simmered fried fish, pickles/appetizers, a chawanmushi and miso soup. The first of the bowls came with shoyu marinated maguro that featured a raggled, rather than a clean cut suggesting that there might have been a little scraping involved rather than simple slicing during the preparation of the meat. Marination like heavy saucing usually means one thing in a cuisine that normally prides itself for the freshness of their raw fish. The same type of maguro cut appeared in the mini chirashi bowl, the second of the sashimi bowls in this set which also sees a slice each of sake (salmon), mekajiki (swordfish), ika (squid) and amaebi (shrimp) accompanied by a token scattering of ikura. The third bowl was a small hamachi (yellowtail) bowl that is drizzled with a sesame and peanut sauce, and a sprig of half withered sakura.

I suppose that if one is impartial to marinated fish, this set could be considered pretty decent. I didn't think too well of the chawanmushi that turned out to be much to mushy and a hint too heavy of ginger. But the quality doesn't come quite close to some other places that have what I perceive to be more pride ingrained.


We picked also the tai and hotategai to be aburi-ed just to see what are they about. The char fragrance is rather light and I'm not really sure if the flagging aroma is all there is to it. The scallops are still possess of their natural sweetness, but something inside me told me I've had better. I have nothing to say about the tai. I'm wondering if this was even a good show of aburi items, but it leaves me with a lingering desire not to come back and try.


The atrocity above is suppose to be foie gras on eggplant with miso. I used the word atrocity because the questionable slice of dessicated looking liver had a texture like a rubbery wet piece of Digestives on the inside. The natural foie gras flavor was at best, feeble. I kid you not. It was left unfinished. I thought that the piping hot eggplant wasn't too bad, but my lunch companion felt it overwhelmed by the sweetish miso.

With Relish

Not sure why I took so long to visit Relish (501 Bukit Timah Road, #02-01 Cluny Court, tel: +65 6763 1547). Burgers here were pretty decent if not particularly outstanding. Where überburger failed, Relish looks like it might succeed. For one, it wasn't as expensive. That and Relish's parent seems a lot more active on social media.


Lightly peppered fried onion rings. Not bad. Would have scored higher with thinner batter.

wild rocket burger

spiced lamb pita burger with mint hummus

ram-lee burger

The beef patties for the burgers looked similarly moulded as before. I recall them being juicier back in Wild Rocket though. Remembered having to suck onto the ends of each bite simply to prevent the juices from the meat from dripping all over the plate. Wasn't the case here in Relish but the taste was as good. That thick beef patty was tender and not as dense as it might have looked.

The wild rocket burger, least intriguing one was actually pretty good. Not much flavour from the rockets though because it was mostly the fragrant Sarawak pepper cream and tart tomato relish I was tasting. Lamb pita burger was agreeable for me - liked the garlicky hummus/sauce/thingy one top of the patties. Couldn't taste any mint. Lamb burgers aren't common and this one was nice. I did feel that the one at Cellar Door was better done though. 

The ram-lee burger was inspired from the original greasy street burgers that make their appearances in the local pasar malams. Tasted somewhat like the original version slathered with mayo and sweet chilli sauce. There are a couple of differences from what I could tell. A thicker beef patty inside that doesn't taste suspiciously like unidentifiable meat matter (rat!) and this one was definitely less greasy. For the discerning, the omelette wrap for the patty tasted lighter as well. Did turn out better than I had imagined.


Was originally wondering what the deconstruction does to a cake. Sounded gimmicky but after having the cheesecake, I felt it was more enjoyable than the regular sliced variety which I probably would have passed on. Could taste the different parts. Didn't taste synergy though. The individuals ingredients were tastier than the sum of it.

Ham, cheese and strawberry pizza, Part 2

This was another attempt at my strawberry pizza again. I should give myself a pat across the back for making them more delicious this time round. Slowly but surely, I will perfect this. Lol. The ultimate incarnation will likely look very different from what you're seeing. If you're wondering how it tasted like, go try it.

This time round, I bought a small basket of strawberries instead of the pre-sliced ones and possibly because of these strawberries, the pizza tasted better. I used Romano cheese and mozzarella instead of parmesan and mozzarella. The results were quite similar as Romano and parmesan are both sharp salty cheeses. The sliced strawberries were first placed onto the crust and then laid over with the shaven ham pieces. The Romano bits were scattered onto the ham to fill the spaces in between. The mozzarella was added after. This shielded most of the strawberries from the direct heat of the oven and helped reduce char on the fruit while the mozzarella got the nice browning.

The next time round, I'll might just look out for bare crusts instead of using these pre-topped frozen variety.