Breakfast burritos at Wendy's...?

This was what Wendy's passed off as a breakfast burrito. There's a certain veneer thin marketing attempt promotion for the week. Basically, one gets a "free" burrito for getting a coffee. For a dollar ninety. Get it?

To put into local context, this was really more poh piah than burrito. It looked to be about a third in thickness as the posters had misled me to believe and it was about as long as the plastic stirrer they dispensed for the coffee which was by the way, really lousy. What I did like about them was that they were freshly prepared. It was almost 5 minutes of wait for each order and they were served piping hot. They were filled with eggs, bits of chicken and cheese and I actually kinda liked them for what they were.

I wouldn't discount two of these for breakfast. Only if it's for a dollar ninety a piece.

A Diamond in July

It has been quite a while since we were last prime ribbing at Lawry's. This would be our second visit down at the current location in Mandarin Gallery (333A Orchard Road, #04-01/31 Mandarin Gallery, tel : +65 6836 3333). Since it's been a while, it was actually also a little exciting to see them carve up my Diamond Jimbo as the beefy fragrance wafted across the table. 

The meat as my last recollection, was tender and excellent. And it seems that the current service crew is noticeably a notch up from the last ones back in Paragon. Well done there.

Ten Restaurant, The Central

Here's a super deluxe tendon from Ten Restaurant (6 Eu Tong Sen Street, #01-68 The Central @ Clarke Quay, tel : +65 6221 2185). I'm going ahead to state the obvious that this joint specializes in tempura even though there is a display of some sushi certification at the front of the restaurant. Was that a point to be made about their sushi in the event no one likes their tempura?

While I wouldn't just write off the food here since it wasn't bad per se, I couldn't say that I was impressed by their tendon. I'm sure I've had better fried anago where the batter wasn't as dense and the meat wasn't as measly. Plus we were quite sure that there was a taste like shortening in the batter.

Funny thing is, the sashimi that the next table had ordered looked pretty good. Fat slices, firm looking meat from the fish, adept knife work, glistening and all.

Re-revisiting Etna

Two visits over the span of a week, I must have been voodoo-ed by something at Etna. This time round, it was really a series of hits and misses.

Here we have a grilled Asiago cheese wrapped in Parma ham on oregano toasts with porcini mushrooms. The flavours were pretty much how I expected, mostly earthy pungent with a rush of salt and laced with the tart of the vinegar that made them altogether pretty tasty.

The antipasto di mare was unfortunately a bit of a bore. I didn't quite take to the artificially crunchy texture of the prawns with semi translucent meat. These didn't taste like the prawns that were used for their delicious risotto and were certainly also not the ones in the frittura mista as well.

There was a fettuccini with black summer truffles. This was an oil based pasta (though I am unable to determine what oil that was) that was really perfumed by the fungus. None of the truffle oil infusion to boost the concentration of flavours. I thought this was pretty good on its own, but I couldn't help but compare it to the reminder of a buttery sauced rendition I had once at Bonta. 

Off their specials menu, was a filo pastry wrapped tenderloin. It was quite the bummer that the steak was cooked beyond the specified doneness. It had arrived pretty much medium well rather than the medium rare request. To their credit, it still turned out very acceptable in my opinion. I did like that the meat had been seared (char flavour!) before they had wrapped it up in the pastry and sent it into the oven. The Gorgonzola sauce helped the fact that the meat was a little dryer than I would have liked.

Didn't think much of the cannoli at all. The ricotta wasn't as rich and creamy as I was expecting and the shells were extra thick and hard. Here cues the happier memories of the much better ones from Gattopardo and Garibaldi.

Fortunately, their pistachio tiramisu was as good as we remembered it. Out of the variants of pick me ups I can recall, this has got to be one of the more outstanding takes. The chocolate drizzles made up for the lack of cocoa, but it was the flavour from the bits of pistachio and mascarpone that I really liked.

In spite of some of the things that I didn't quite like here, their fairly extensive selection on menu combined with what I did enjoy will probably get me walking back again.

Bukang Tuna, Red Dot Traffic Building

I sure hadn't anticipated the spread that came along with the order of the tuna sashimi set from Bukang Tuna (28 Maxwell Road, #01-06 Red Dot Traffic Building, tel : +65 6327 4123). In fact, I had imagined that it could have been something along the lines of a Japanese teishoku styled meal serving. 

Certainly not one that filled the table literally right to the edges with servings of miscellaneous food that wasn't quite banchan. Those servings included octopus, a thin but tasty kimchee pancake, a deceptively clear as water yet spicy clam broth, freshly grilled saba, spicy flounder soup, fish porridge, a fish roe bibimbap, some top shell slathered with some red spicy paste, a little basket of vegetables and an interesting steamed/burnt egg dish that was bubbling for a long time in a hot pot. 

The highlight of the meal which were slices of chilled shiro maguro, regular maguro that tasted different from ones that I've previously had and strangely, mekajiki. What was different about having the sashimi here was a very fragrant dish of sesame oil which worked pretty well with the raw slices of fish. A change from the usual shoyu and wasabi combination.

The restaurant operated very much like any other Korean shops except that it had a sashimi counter and that most of the items available on menu were seafood or fish.

Pizzas at Etna

It was just coincidence that both pizzas that were ordered represented extremes in flavour. The Napoletana of anchovies and capers was generous with both ingredients resulting in it being heavy on the salt while the other pizza of black truffle paste and porcini mushrooms had the quantity of flavour from every ingredient moderated to the point that each of them could be tasted and neither overwhelmed one other. I certainly wouldn't have minded if the truffle paste was bolstered with generous lashings of truffle oil.

Still, thin crusted and light, both rather enjoyable pizzas from Etna.