A chirashi from Kaiho Sushi

So I've heard about Kaiho Sushi (5 Koek Road, #03-01/02 Cuppage Plaza, tel : +65 6738 1315) for a while now and have been meaning to come check the place out. This little restaurant located in the little Japanese hub around the Cuppage area is run by an affable Bernard Tang who is the man with the knives behind the counter. Here's a chirashi from the lunch set that comes pretty packed with a selection of sliced raw goodies over the top. Here we have some toro, bonito, ama ebi a small blob of uni, some small slices of sake, some white fish which I couldnt really identify, and another silver skinned fish which I couldn't tell and a couple of slices of chilled tamago.... all resting above a dusting of the sweet pink fish floss over the rice.

One week later...


A second visit exactly one week later saw some differences in the offerings of the chirashi bento. Noticeably this time round, there was no more ama ebi and bonito but the lunch box got a little more uni, a fresh addition of ikura and hamachi.

While it didn't quite feel as laden as the offerings from Sushi Yoshida, this was really quite a compelling alternative as it comparatively didn't cost as much too.

From dandelions...

This was our first visit actually to the current location of Tampopo (177 River Valley Road, #01-23/24 Liang Court Shopping Centre, tel : +65 6338 3186). It was previously located at the basement in Liang Court. If you didn't know already, this family restaurant is quite well known for their fried kurobuta pork cutlets. Those are not bad but also tend to be overrated. 

The thing that caught my attention was a maguro head don that they had on the specials menu. According to them, they're on a limited serving each day. Probably because there's only so much meat in the head of a tuna. Sounds like Santouka. We were here for dinner and managed to snag a bowl.

The bowl included slices of shoyu marinated tuna. Those were nice. What was strange was that the bowl also came with two pieces of sushi - both of which aren't tuna.

A serving of the pan fried pork livers with chives. This was one of those Japanese dishes that bore much similarity to Chinese cooking. The combination of ingredients for this particular dish made it tough to go wrong. Unsophisticatedly, if there's such a word, good.

Felt like having ramen because I had one recently that I didn't enjoy. The basic kyushu ramen with creamy tonkotsu broth did the job. I also much prefer the slim straight noodles in this than the other types. What I wondered about kyushu ramen is, how much mentaiko was there suppose to be to flavour the broth?

Kuro ma-yu ramen from Menya Shinchan

This kuro ma-yu bowl from Menya Shinchan smturned out a quite different from what I imagined. Their pork bone broth ramen featured scorched black sesame and I was assuming that it was toasted in some way in the process. To my dismay, the flavours were just of regular sesame. Beside being rather oily, the broth tasted a little bland as well. I guess this was just not my type of soup.

Hatched, Evans Lodge

Relatively new establishment that serves almost everything with eggs, hence the name Hatched (26 Evans Road, #01-06 Evans Lodge, tel : +65 6735 0012). Most of the dishes look like breakfast food - which is a good idea since breakfast menu items are normally available till the early afternoons and this breaks that circle of practice. Probably makes many people happy to have the options that they offer.

I must have been lucky to have gotten a table without reservations on a weekend since the word around is that they seem to be under spotlight.

Food on the whole was pretty decent. Since I like eggs, I'm bent towards being more forgiving than usual and gripe on less things...... gripes like the foie gras from their Le Rossini being a little overcooked and not having a crispy enough exterior. Truffle oil on that was a nice touch. The Burly Benedict (nothing burly about them) had a bland tasting corned beef. That I didn't expect since I was imagining the salted and hashed variety. Cappuccino needed a lot more body with the foam.

There seems to be little or no salt on their food. For the beer people, there's a variety of bottled stuff that includes Trappist brews and the small selection was really nicely thought out.

Location within Evans Lodge was definitely a charm though.

Fatboy's the Burger Bar, Upper Thomson Rd

The birth of Fatboy's (187 Upper Thomson Road, tel : +65 6252 8780) might have been a baby step moving forward for the state of burgers in this country. The sort of place to be raising the standards of the burgers that is. That being said, the quality of the beef patties were a disappointment. Especially so for a place that sells itself as a burger bar. Truly.

We ordered the Fat Basterd which was on menu, the largest burger available with 150g patties X 2. There wasn't anything particularly special about it - unless you counted the fact that it was larger than the rest of the burgers and featured a dubious sounding "homemade bbq sauce". Cheese slices were thin and looked like they were of the individually wrapped variety. That cheese was also overwhelmed by everything else in the burger.

The liquids that oozed out of the patties didn't look nor taste like meat juices to me. It tasted like water squeezed out of cooked meat. The meat was far too lean and bland. Note to self : never order beef burgers from this place again.

On the positive side The Elvis kinda rocked as a burger. The pork patty was a league above the beef version. Cooked pink on the insides, it had much more of meaty flavour coupled with the char fragrance from the grill. The grilled bananas and peanut butter just made it better. Am likely to come back just for this.

Somebody needs to tell them that their peanut butter and banana shake should just be called peanut butter shake. Where're the bananas people?

Izakaya Nijumaru Restaurant, Cuppage Plaza

So here are a couple of teishoku sets from a izakaya place (5 Koek Road, #02-10 Cuppage Plaza, tel : +65 6235 6693) down at Cuppage. The restaurant actually consists of quite a few units and business must be really good for them to be able to afford such space. There seemed to an even mix of local and Japanese clientele. I've heard about this place from a few sources so decided to drop by for what looked to be the the popular items that people order.

The food here was definitely straight forward and frills free. It was also probably not someplace that I would like to order sashimi based on the samples I've had from the Nijumaru bento which also came with some forgettable grilled saba, pieces of mixed tempura and a piece of braised pork which was really the best item from the set. Even though as my memory serves, it probably wasn't as tasty as the rafute from Mimigar, it was definitely still good. And there was also a decent unajyu set which featured fatty eels as well.

I've yet to order much of anything else beyond a agedashi tofu so I couldn't really say if I liked this place much or not. I'm sure there must be an appeal somewhere and perhaps, it lies with the grills.