Pizzeria Mozza, Marina Bay Sands

I'm skipping the introduction to this place since everyone else seems to enjoy writing about celebrity chefs and their restaurants. Didn't make sense for me to add another tiny voice to it. Pizzeria Mozza practices dual seating for their meals. Generally don't like that of a restaurant since the pressure would then be on me to vacate shortly after I eat. It gives the feeling of being rushed through the meal even though there is probably sufficient time allocated into each seating slot. That being said, I liked this place (2 Bayfront Ave, #B1-42/46 The Shoppes @ Marina Bay Sands, tel : +65 6688 8522) and will make plans to come back another time.

chicken livers, capers, parsley and guanciale

We started off with an order of chopped chicken livers on bruchetta. Man this stuff was surprisingly refreshing for something that came with chicken liver, bacon and toast. The taste of the toppings were not as "livery" as I had expected. It was more of a balance between the tart and savoury married with a granular meaty texture riding atop the crisp of the bread. I am guessing that those flavours were probably because of the bits of parsley and capers. I could have sworn that there was lemon juice in there, but hey, I don't know any better. Good enough for seconds I'll say.

cauliflower fritti

In my mind, the cauliflower fritti I was envisioning looked a la Tenshin. Lol. The reality was that they came with a hard crispy batter that had fortunately not held on to too much of the grease. The batter was much harder and crispier than I had imagined. I doubted that they would have broken if I had dropped one of them onto the floor but I never found out.

I'm not generally a fan of deep fried batter so what helped this along was their spicy mint sauce which I thought was pretty good. A tart and minty dip that cut through all the batter.

crispy goat cheese with Umbrian lentils

This was a pretty respectable breaded and fried goat's cheese they had there. Again, it was a play of some of the basic flavours putting together savoury and the sweetness from the lentils. And also the bitter from the rockets if one liked them. I would have preferred more lentils here.

fresh goat cheese, leeks, scallions, garlic & bacon

The pizza was pretty impressive. It was quite a while since I've gotten excited over pizza. So the crust of the pizza that people talk about. That crust was very different from any pizza I've tasted. It reminded me a little of Taiwanese scallion pancakes (cong you ping), dough fritters (you tiao) and roti prata. It was layered, airy and had a nice crisp.

Was this good? Sure, if you like goat cheese. And melted bacon fat over sweet scallions and leeks. And sweet garlic bulbs that were baked till they would disintegrate into your mouth. I know I did. Even though it looked a little grassy.

caramel copetta with marshmallow sauce & salted Spanish peanuts

I made room for dessert because their caramel copetta sounded interesting. The gelato component was a little smokey and bitter while the marshmallow sauce was simply sweet. Topped with a rich bittersweet caramel and what I thought to be the best part of all - toasted and salted peanuts which added a new dimension to the texture and the "after-chew" aroma. Another successful marriage of saltiness and sweet if I had to make a call.

Mario Batali loves his salt!

Sole Pomodoro, MacKenzie Road

This was lunch over some beer, a couple of glasses of wine and pizza over at Sole Pomodoro (19/21 Mackenzie Road, #01-01, tel : +65 6884 3671).

Starting bites included some light and refreshing buffalo mozzarella and boiled salami with a lime mayo that seemed to have misplaced the citrus element of the lime. The cheese was light and milky, served Caprese style. The boiled meat of the salami appeared crumbly in texture and didn't have much of flavour.

speciale

siciliana

calzone tradizionale

The pizzas were pretty much as they had looked. Thin crispy crusted pies that became a little soggy after a while, soaked from the grease and folding from the weight of the toppings. The speciale could have done much better in my opinion with more of those miserable bits of prawn and of course, Gorgonzola. The siciliana was in spite of appearances, very nicely spread with the salty anchovies. Don't think the traditional calzone should come with shiitake mushrooms. Those mushrooms aren't part of tradition are they? Their particular type of strong flavour also ruined the calzone for me.

I didn't think that there would be anything in particular that would make me come back. That said, I'm not saying that they sucked. The food was passable. Just a little pricey for the location.

Teck Hin Fried Hor Fun, Ghim Moh

I've never really liked stir fried hor fun with starchy gravy. It was more because of the starchy gravy than anything else and I have never understood it. To that, I've also never enjoyed stir fried beef from hawker stalls because they tasted nothing like cow to me. Not in the slightest bit in their texture or taste. Maybe it was the sweat drenched proprietor behind his flaming wok fueled by a queue, I decided to make an exception and gave the stall a go. Here was a serving of Teck Hin's (Ghim Moh Food Centre, Blk 20 Ghim Moh Road, #01-44) fish and beef hor fun. The freshly fried hor fun turned out to be pretty decent, imbued with the char aroma from the wok that was enjoyable. On hindsight, I should have opted for just fish slices. I still don't think much of the pre-made viscous gravy that was ladled from plastic containers and the unidentifiable meat substance tasted exactly like how I had expected it.

Ramen and Tonkatsu Fair at Tampopo

Hear ye, I'm back at Tampopo. They seem to be holding up some sort of Ramen and Tonkatsu Fair with a bunch of new items on the menu probably for a limited period. This visit actually came about through tip off from a little bird about a certain foie gras tonkatsu that they had.

For a start, we ordered a serving of their steamed black pig dumplings which tasted very much like the Chinese renditions (hong you chao shou) with the moderated splashes of black vinegar and chilli oil. The smooth skinned dumplings were a little smaller than I had expected but they were pretty juicy and flavourful from the fatty pork fillings that we were rather tempted to go for seconds.

The kani ramen was the only ramen item from this fair that looked interesting. Basically a bowl of squiggly yellow noodles soaked in a starchy crab flavoured broth that was filled with a pretty generous amount of shredded Japanese crab meat and shimeiji mushrooms. The extra portions of added vinegar and La Yu on the side made it tastier and easier to go down. That in effect turned it to something akin to Taiwanese mee sua.

The foie gras from their tonkatsu was subjected to enough of the heat that the fat from the livers had seeped into the pork creating an almost subtle heady aroma into the fatty pork from the first mouthful. I was initially hoping for the flavour of the fatty liver to be more prominent, but it turned out to be a balanced equilibrium between the savoury deep fried crust and the foie.

If such a thing could be described by the word 'equilibrium'.

We wrapped up with their innocuous looking chocolate chiffon cake which tasted more strongly of chocolate than the milky hue of the cream suggested. If I had to describe, it was both light and not excessively sweet.

Stall # 15 at Tanglin Halt market

To be more precise, this was stall #15 in the food centre just beside the wet market down at Tanglin Halt. A small food centre that actually had four cooked duck vendors.

If I were asked if this was a great roast meat stall, I probably wouldn't have come back with a boolean response. Great isn't what everyone is looking for all the time and mostly, good is good enough. The stall serves pretty good roasted duck, sliced diagonally across the grains of the meat resulting in tender slices of duck. With enough fat under the skin to render the flavors into each bite. The crackling of the roasted pork belly was crispy to boot.

A very straightforward and down to earth meal prepared by a proprietor that apparently will not be rushed into submission by the queue as he took his time with this knife to neatly arrange the cut meat, fanning them across the edges of the plate.

Forty Hands, Tiong Bahru

I thought that their (78 Yong Siak St, #01-12, tel : +65 6225 4623) coffee was a little on the acidic side and lacked body. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't mind dropping by again for breakfast, but it'll probably be breakfast with beer!