Song Fa Bak Kut Teh, New Bridge Road

Despite the appearance of Song Fa (11 New Bridge Road, #01-01, tel : 6533 6128) with all that crowd, I didn't feel like it was one of the better ba kut teh around town. The soup was less peppery and robust in comparison with Imperial and definitely wasn't on par with the Sin Min outlet down at Kelantan Lane. The lack of kick was a bit of a let down. Refills of the soup fared even worse. Must have been a separate batch of that broth there. I'm going to put this at the bottom of the list of options if I ever get a craving. What was good was the cloves of garlic that were so soft and you could just suck them out of their skins. Their bowls of clear soup mee sua with pig kidneys was always welcomed on a cool evening.


Despite the seeming popularity of the pork rib soup, I thought that their braised fallopian tubes in dark sauce was actually the better dish. They seem to taste better than the usual ones I've had in kuey chup stores.

Finalmente Gastronomia, Goldhill Plaza

All thing considered, I didn't find Finalmente Gastronomia (1 Goldhill Plaza, #01-47, tel : 6256 2149) impressive beyond the friendly service. While I couldn't fault the preparation of the food, they left me with little incentive to return. I wouldn't say that I'll be avoiding this place for good but for the prices that these guys were charging, I found the quality lacking.


The starter of their pork lion turned out to be just four slices of pork ham with spinach. Must have been a typo there. Also somewhat pricey for four slices of pork with dressing. We requested for additional toppings of ham and mushrooms for the 5 cheese pizza which only contained a slightest hint of the Gorgonzola cheese that was suppose to be in it. For a pizza with 5 cheeses, it really didn't taste that cheesy and was a letdown. The topping looked thin considering that it's suppose to be filled with cheeses and there was suppose to be more ham and mushrooms.

Adding on to the disappointment was the tricolore pizza which featureed porcini mushroom, rockets, truffle oil and an egg. Wasn't worth the $25 for something that didn't even had the slightest flavour of the truffle oil.


All the pizzas were made to order and took very little time to prepare. I'm wondering if that's a good thing. The speed of their service was commendable. Be prepared to pay restaurant prices for the food that's prepared - not by Italians chefs. Dessert was lacklustre as well for a ubiquitous flambé-d molten chocolate cake that costed more than what Borgo charged and didn't taste anywhere as good. I would not have minded paying a little more at Al Forno Trattoria just a short walk away. Those guys serve a very good quattro formaggi gnocchi that I discovered last month. The food there was definitely better.

Chicken House, Upper Thomson Road

This was an ad hoc decision to come down to Chicken House (255 Upper Thomson Road, tel : 6456 0698) which serves kampong chicken for lunch based on a recommendation by a friend who had eaten it before and felt that it was pretty good. I've been curious about the sallow-ish yellow hue on the skins of these birds. 

Well, the kampong chicken meat was pretty tender and that I couldn't see any fat beneath the skin. Beside that leanness, there wasn't that much of a difference from any other regular chickens. The health issues over the birds raised in supposedly traditional methods wasn't really an issue for me since I think it's probably just a marketing gimmick.

More circular sumptuousness...

I suppose it was inevitable that I returned to Circular Sumptuous Square for more of their mouthwatering greasy duck. To put things into some perspective, the duck here was delicious in the greasy fatty way which wasn't matched by places like Sin Sian Yuen down at Chong Pang or Jin Xing. Those were dry and more thickly sliced. That's not to say at all that the mentioned places weren't good. They were just different and tasty in their own ways especially if you liked your duck free of sauces and in chunky portions.

This time round, I passed on the rice and decided to give their noodles a shot. That had turned out to be a good call as those noodles here were springy with bite and delicious. No more rice for me here. The accompanying noodle sauce was just okay. It was the chilli on the side that really elevated things. Personally, the texture of those noodles did it more than anything else.


We had some preserved mustard greens (mui choi or mei chai) which was pretty tasty. Served as a nice dish on the side to compliment to the main orders. Note to myself : This is something I could consider again the next time.

Ya Kwang revisited

Man, this sure was a good one down at Ya Kwang Dai Pai Dong (Ya Kwang Eating House, 709 Geylang Road, Lorong 37, tel : 6747 663). I was surprised that on a Saturday night, there wasn't anything resembling insane queues or crowds outside this stall. This trip was a specific one to eat their seafood based noodles which the stall known for. And rightly so. That being said, there's also a bunch of other items made the consideration list as they looked inviting over the neighbouring tables.

Moving on to the lobster tang hoon. Price aside, this was seriously great stuff. The stock that infused those glass noodles was both sweet and savoury. The lobster was also fresh with their natural sweetness and had firm meat. There were some similarities with the crab tang hoon that I tried previously. The only difference between that this was probably just the shellfish.

The clam noodles, or also known as the la la mian from Ya Kwang was what most vongole pasta should've been. Locally. Where many have failed pathetically living up to. This one was loaded with meaty clams and garlic flavour. This plate was nicely accented by the bits of sliced chilli padi with noodles that soaked up the seriously drool inducing stock. So good that I was sure that I could easily take on a large portion by myself.

On the side we had an order of the Penang char kuey teow which looked like a phad thai and even tasted like one. Minus the crushed peanuts. Pretty decent and they were generous with the eggs. We had ordered this as a filler since the previous dishes didn't have the volume. There were a also some deep fried pig intestines call Da Chang Jing which were served like Peking ducks where one would wrap the fried intestines in some egg crepe along with a strip of cucumber and/or sprig of spring onion and then coat with a sweet brown sauce before eating. This wasn't bad at all. 

Biryani from a coffeeshop at Ang Mo Kio

This Indian food stall was located at Ik Wah coffee shop (Blk 252, Ang Mo Kio St 21). Not 10 minutes away from Hong Heng. Was quite good. Their biryani had sufficient fragrance from the spices in the rice that one could eat them on their own while the curried bone-in mutton was surprisingly tender. Would have been great if the meat portions were larger. I wouldn't mind having them again.