Breakfast from Leo's Espresso Bar

There seems to be quite a few coffee places popping up lately. Leo's Espresso Bar was one (Leo's Espresso Bar, 1 Raffles Place. B1-03D, OUB Centre, tel : 6533 6853) of those. I heard that these guys did brisk business. Unfortunately, I like my coffee fragrant and strong and the ones here didn't quite make that cut. Even with an extra shot, their cappuccino didn't pack the oomph that I was looking for. But for a nice shop that places house/dance music early morning serving breakfast and coffee at $8, this wasn't too expensive. Still, I would have preferred the bacon to be more browned instead of limp. Their minuscular kitchen area didn't look like it could handle anything more complex than what I've had and waiting time looked to be a bitch if it got crowded. I happened to have wandered in the vicinity of Boon Tat Street and Amoy Street recently and saw another outlet there at Telok Ayer too.

Chocolate chilli anchovy pasta from Eden Cafe

Previously, this item used to be a lunch menu option. I see that it has now made the main menu and probably will be there until it gets swapped out for the next rotation (meaning no one likes this much) or stay there as a permanent repertoire of Eden Cafe's Menu. This wasn't bad at all considering the combination of flavours that was in this dish. There's saltiness from anchovies, sour from the olives, spicy from the chilli and of course, the chocolate which wasn't really sweet. The taste from the chocolate was pretty subtle. It could be detected but wasn't close to overwhelming anything. 

Loy Kee Best Chicken Rice, Balestier Road

Talk about bragging rights, Loy Kee (342 Balestier Road, S329774, tel : 62521115) actually has a store that says 'best'. That's a claim to fame that's hard to make considering that there're countless chicken rice shops out there and quite a number of them are pretty good. To be fair, I agreed that the greasy rice from their shop was a notch above many. The grains were was quite soft coupled with the eminent aroma of chicken and garlic. It's good enough to be eaten without the chilli but that being said, the tangy spicy chilli was also enjoyable as well.

The key difference with the roasted chicken from Loy Kee with multitudes of others was that the chicken here were actually roasted. Lol. The usual roasted chicken are actually fried.


On the whole, it was quite decent, but the portions a little small for what they charged. I don't think I'll go out of the way just to eat these. There is also a better value for money option in the vicinity.

Some interesting stuff from Meidi Ya

One of them is a box of Glico pretzel sticks and the other is a powdered (I think, I've yet to open it) sauce mix for pasta. If you're wondering what about these couple of items that made me buy them, let's examine the back of the boxes more closely.

This is one is for the pretzel sticks...


And this is the pasta sauce mix...


I wonder if they are good.

Nirai-Kanai, Liang Court

I remember walking out of the original outlet of Nirai Kanai located at Tanglin Shopping Centre after a poor semblance of dinner with a mediocre impression of the place and this newer place (177 River Valley Road, #B1-01/02 Liang Court, Tel: 6339 4811) didn't do much to alleviate those impressions from where it ended then. In that previous occasion, the service left almost nothing to be desired. Nirai Kanai was the place that I heard good things about being the pioneer of Okinawan cuisine in this country. Maybe Okinawan cuisine doesn't really quite agree with me. Maybe it's just Mimigar.

Simply put, the food was rather unremarkable. Apart from the fatty braised pork which was actually better done at Mimigar, everything else felt overpriced and extra-ordinary. No, I did not mean extraordinary. I really couldn't see the rationale behind why a $15 plate of stir fried pig intestines consisted mostly of mushrooms. Or for that matter, how a small fried spring roll with dry fish stuffings and a little bit of cheese could cost $8. It's small on portions, and small on taste. This could be one place I can cross out of my list for good.

Deluxe Hitsumabushi from Wakashachiya

I thought that this was slightly gimmicky but I've had a recent craving for unagi, ignited from the recent lunch at Matsuo which brought back memories of better tasting eels I've had from a couple of other places. Being the sole non-udon main item from Wakashachiya also aided in the fact that I remembered it from the last time I had visited. I've lived numerous years of my life being disllusioned/indifferent to unagi because I've never thought much of them. That is until I've had some good ones. And now I get a craving. Lol.


Anyway, this particular dish came with a standard and a deluxe version. The latter, which was the version that I opted for came with larger portions of eel and as you can see, covered the entire bowl of rice. Which was a fairly large portion for a single person serving. How this works was to divide quarter portions of the whole bowl of unagi and rice. Each of those quartered portion would be eaten as it is, with accompanied condiments, with the dashi broth and a lastly - the preferred amongst the previous three.

In retrospect, the eel was fine but unexceptional. Nothing that really made me feel like coming back for more another time. It wasn't as oily or fatty as I had hoped. This was just something to satiate a craving.