Ximending, VivoCity

Naming a restaurant that serves Taiwanese food called Ximending (1 HarbourFront Walk, #01-51A VivoCity, tel : +65 6376 8018) is akin to having a restaurant in another country called Orchard Road because it serves Singaporean food. Heh! 

It seems that the entrants of Taiwanese cuisine here are making their play upmarket as well. Most of what was served here came in large portions meant for sharing. What bugged me was that they charged for every bowl of sweet potato porridge (they tasted pretty good but still...) that was ordered. 

The fried oysters were pretty mediocre. Tasted exactly like something that could be bought from the local pasar malam. No way I'm ever paying the prices here again. Waste of money.

We got the cue to order their chai poh (preserved radish) omelette after seeing them on another table. They were tasty albeit a little more greasy than I normally prefer. The browned omelette was loaded with the bits of preserved radish. Looked like a thick pancake and was quite substantial.

Their Taiwanese styled fried kang kong wasn't so much an obligatory dish of greens. We wanted to have some crunchy stir fried vegetables. This plate was stir fried in fermented bean curd sauce. Turned out to be the more memorable dish among the few we tried. Something that I would look forward to if I we came back. Regarding that braised pork belly with mustard greens some of you might been wondering; it tasted pretty much like the way it looked. Quivery, tender cuts of meat layered with soft fat that fell apart when you popped them into the mouth.

Do I spy ankimo on my chirashizushi?

Here's a look at a revisit at Chikuwa Tei. The food here has pretty much kept to the standards of how it was remembered from the last visit and the one thing that was different was that they've started serving their little appetizer dish again to all the patrons. It wasn't the old hijiki seaweed stuff today though, but a stewed soft root vegetables and minced chicken with the same broth as before.

There was an unexpected piece of ankimo for the chirashi which also featured rather surprisingly fatty cuts of all the fishes and some sinewy toro. And a little score off the unajyu having a mixture of regular grained rice and the Japanese variety. The texture of the rice mixture was downright noticeable from the start. I wonder if that's cost savings down there.

Good Chance Popiah Eating House, Silat Avenue

I remember having had poh piah that you had to roll yourself ages ago but can't for my life remember when or where it was. Recently, I had a poh piah craving and it lead me to this old shop (Blk 149 Silat Ave, #01-58, tel : +65 6271 0698) which is a family business being run by the third generation. There was definitely an air of old school about the place from the decor to the food presentation - or lack of. 

The main stay of the business which was poh piah is served deconstructed. Portions are determined according to estimated number of people eating them. What they offered were just the basic ingredients for the spring rolls. Extras like shrimp or lup cheong were add ons that you had to pay extra for. It wasn't really cheap poh piah here.

This was my first attempt at constructing the spring roll as I can recall. Without prior experience, I made them as I remembered from how they were prepared stalls when I bought them. It's actually easy peasy.

And this turned out to be a successful wrap. Shovel in too much fillings and the tends to skin break apart as they are rolled up, so don't. The stewed vegetables tasted quite different from the regular spring rolls outside and the chilli paste here was tongue prickingly awesome.

These hay cho (prawn ball fritters) were also a signature from the restaurant. Tasted not bad as they were freshly fried.

Their otah awesome item number two. While I couldn't identify the ingredients, I thought they had just the right combination of flavours and noticeable bits of fish meat. What made these steamed otahs good as well, was that they were actually spicy.

The yam fish head soup tasted unexpectedly bland. There were bits of yam which were boiled to the point where they were starting to disintegrate. I'm not sure what to make of this dish. Maybe the idea here was for it to be a light tasting soup.

To complete with a carb, we ordered a portion of their traditional dark Hokkien mee. To indulging in a little euphemism, I'd say that it tasted great with a generous slosh of vinegar. The original flavour weren't the least robust. Most of it came from the bits of garlic. Didn't hold a candle to the lard laden and much darker renditions that I've tried in Kuala Lumpur.

Kusabi, The Central

This (6 Eu Tong Sen Street, #01-68/69 The Central @ Clarke Quay,tel : +65 6225 9415) place is a relatively new outlet of yet, another ramen-ya, which are springing up all over town. Kusabi as I read hails from the Fukushima prefecture and apparently, what makes their ramen special is the use of bonito powder for their broth base and the flour for their noodles are apparently also infused with bonito and sardines.

I couldn't say that their uobushi tonkotsu broth bowl of ramen was anything impressive by any standards. The moderated smoky aroma from the bonito turned out to be the dominant flavor and while was actually pretty tasty, took out any traces of the tonkotsu base in the broth. The noodles were thicker than the regular Sapporo variety and much as I tried, couldn't detect any real differences in terms of taste from normal noodles apart from texture. The porky charshu was dismally stiff and the egg was far from what I was hoping for in terms of doneness. Both of which were also lacking in the flavors of shoyu that I was expecting. That was something that Marutama does noticeably much better.

Despite being so, I wouldn't discount this place as of yet since they do have tsukemen on menu and those Nikumaki rice balls that they have look pretty good.

Bedrock Bar & Grill, Pan Pacific Serviced Suites

Hmmm, this was a place (96 Somerset Road, #01-05 Pan Pacific Serviced Suites, tel : +65 6238 0054))) that I wouldn't mind returning to. The service was very professional in a way whereby it was almost personal yet not intrusive. I'm hoping that that wouldn't be a one off thing but in any case, the food was also part of the reason why I would look forward to returning. With a streamlined menu that had a focus, I somehow have a feeling that this was one of the restaurants that got their priorities right.

They had a flat bread that was freshly baked just before serving. This was one point up for starters which also featured some (baked?) garlic that was aromatic and soft in a creamy way that the cloves could be spread like soft butter.This was one of those things that I had to be wary about in a good way since it made one stuff themselves way too much before the other food was served. These guys even offered refills for them which I couldn't refuse.

We had their applewood smoked tomato soup for starters which was probably one of the best if not the best representative of tomato soups I've had. The consistency was creamy without having actual cream and I thought that it struck a good balance of being smoky and tart without being overly so. What I liked about it too, was that it wasn't heavy for a starter.

We couldn't pass up the roasted bone marrow on toast and it arrived just like I imagined it. What won us over was that it was heart clogging rich, gooey and hot..... robustly flavoured on top of well buttered toast sticks. I've always held that the sensation of having roasted marrow akin to eating foie gras.

The focus of Bedrock Bar and Grill apart from their whiskeys are of course, the steaks. We landed ourselves a 300g dry aged striploin and a 400g Australian ribeye. Place was a little dark and my hands were definitely not the surest with a camera, so the pictures here didn't quite do justice to how they really looked. To make things short, they arrived at a very nicely done medium rare, firm yet juicy with beefy flavour. And hey, they're also much easier on the wallet than Morton's is.

I sometimes get confused between hunger and gluttony, so I didn't know which of it made us decide to top the order up with a side of their mac and cheese which the server recommended to be something we had to try. Mostly, we were sold because he mentioned the use of blue cheese. The blue cheese that was used was unfortunately a tad weak, but the pleasant surprise was that the server had actually anticipated that and offered extras of that blue cheese sauce that they used. The cream at the bottom of the dish was rich, but not heavy at all. The crusty Parmesan over the top was definitely icing for the macaroni and did I forget to mention, that it was "perfumed" as such things are often described, by truffle oil.

The steaks were accompanied by a selection of house made sauces, none of which was put to good use by us except for the pinot noir which made a pretty good dip for the bread. That was not to say that the sauces were bad, but we were coming here because we enjoyed beef for the intrinsic meat flavour and the irony of robust sauces is that they defeated that purpose. We did managed to try them and found the Béarnaise to be pretty good, if different from other Béarnaise sauces that we've had. The chilli oil was a little too...Asian for steaks.

The dessert was unfortunately not impressive. This was supposed to be a red velvet cake and the pieces of beetroot in the otherwise ordinary cake coated in cream cheese made them taste a little strange. It was a little letdown here considering that the rest of the dinner brought smiles to our faces. Not a dealbreaker here. I'm sure they have something else that can redeem this for us.

Lunching at Aoki

Don't think I have very much to say about the food at Aoki at this point since a picture paints a thousand words. It was expectedly a great lunch. Light, yet leaving me more stuffed than I had expected and a satisfied customer. Looking at the vibrant colours of the food, the care taken into presentation.... I couldn't really say it any better doing justice to the flavours.