Screening Room, Ann Siang Road

I suppose I can say that I've found another place for pretty good steak down at the Screening Room (12 Ann Siang Road, tel : 6221 169) along Ann Siang Hill and it happens to be at a rather unsuspecting looking location that does proper restaurant food along with gastrobar snacks along with movie screening options to go with your food. It must be coincidence that a place like this is located within proximity to Les Bouchons and L'Angelus which serves very decent steaks as well.

What I'm talking about here were their wagyu new york strip and boneless ribeye (both at a decent 340g) from Australia. Admittedly, I had expected a little more flavor out of the cattle type that the meat is gleaned from and the servers weren't even informed of the meat marbling grade. Since it was suppose to be wagyu, I would presume the grading to be much lower than they had claimed, but it still didn't stop them from being the properly medium rare done hunks of juicy pieces of cow, professionally browned on the exterior without char while the insides remained prerequisitely pink and moist. Not that I mind a little bit of char at all for the fragrance.

Clean and straightforward with a little salad on the side with extra options for side orders which we then decided to go for the duck fat potato cake which was basically a hefty potato lump patty deep fried in duck fat and seemed to be infused with a very distinct flavor of rosemary. I'll say all these warrants a return in the future.

Natural cut fries from Carls Jr

Wow, Carls Jr now has these natural cut fries with skin on and they're actually not too bad. If you are wondering, it does taste different from the regular fries that other fast food places offer and that's in a good way. There seems to be more flavor in the mealy strips of potatoes compared to the flatter tasting regular shoestrings. It seems like I've found my favourite fast food french fries for now.

Some dinner stuff from Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐)

assorted vegetables and tau kwa strips

It's been quite a while. Possibly two years or more since I've last visited Din Tai Fung (290 Orchard Road, #B1-03 The Paragon, tel : 6836 8336) and the previous times were not at this particular outlet.

Most of the food were pretty much as I remembered them. I liked their vegetable and meat buns. More delicious when they're hot. I've discovered that the portions of meat to vegetables in those are 1 to 9. One of the things that I hadn't seen on menu before are the assorted vegetables with strips of those hard tau kwa which I liked. Their xiao long baos are still one of the better around.

the 90/10 vegetable and pork buns

xiao long bao

chilled drunken chicken

fried rice with pork chops

noodles....neat....kind of

braised beef noodles

Japanese sweet potato soup from Ah Chew

While down at Ah Chew for their papaya double boiled in milk we came across this dessert. It tasted just like most sweet potato soups with ginger. Except that it's Japanese sweet potatoes and they were less fibrous than the local variety. Unless I get a very specific craving for these, I don't think I'll be having them again.

Pho from Madam Saigon

That brimming bowl of pho at Madam Saigon was pretty good. I got the special pho which featured thin slices of beef, brisket and beef balls with additional tendons I spied on their menu. My bowl was loaded with ingredients. The lightly spiced beef balls tasted home made with grits. The broth also didn't match the beefiness from Pho24 and like Pho Lan was served lukewarm. Does anyone know if cooked bean sprouts are a preference or are they meant not to be thoroughly cooked?

We supplemented our pho with the Vietnamese pancake which we had previously. Couldn't resist it.

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.