Dim sum at My Little Spanish Place

This was my first time attempting to update the blog with an iPhone and there's been some hiccups. The Blogger app on iPhone sucks big time. It really needs to be updated. Nonetheless, it's given me some lessons about mobile blogging and this is My Little Spanish Place (619 Bukit Timah Road, tel : +65 6463 2810).

We trudged off the Spanish dim sum with something safe and traditional; tortillas. This was something that would easily recognized by taste and texture to be comfort food by pretty much anyone. Essentially, chopped potatoes and onions in egg. The texture of the omelette felt a little bread-y. 

House platter. Featuring some mild and nutty lomo, some umami salchichon, chorizo aromatic with paprika and jamon Joselito. The last item being a grand reserve grade of the Iberico as I understand; made from pedigree Iberian pigs with a extended duration of curing. Full bodied, nutty, savoury and naturally sweet at the same time. I had never been able to reconcile with people whom had always described these things as melt in your mouth, because most of the ham doesn't melt in your mouth. It's the prolonging of sustained flavour from the continual mastication that makes this really an awesome jamon.

Also, Manchego cheese very nice.

To further elevate our blood pressure, there were some savoury and spicy chorizo fritos which we had with additional orders of bread. Altogether, it was akin to a salty and paprika laced lup cheong with more aromas.

Unfortunately, it seemed that their calamare fritos in its ink was really more aesthetics than substance. Couldn't taste any of that seafood-y flavour of the ink on the batter and it was in the end, a pretty boring fried calamari rescued by their aioli.

Dessert was a leche frita, a traditional fried milk dessert from Spain. It tasted like hot custard in batter that was pretty good with the cinnamon dusted fresh cream. A heart clogging kind of good if you know what I mean.

Supreme Pork Chop Rice, Beach Road

This particular stall (basement of 67 Beach Road) has had its history for sure. I can not so vaguely recall the time over a decade past when a camp mate of mine brought me for the first time to savour their freshly fried pork chop rice. Back then it was located in a coffeeshop in a shophouse just beside Allson Hotel. In my earlier working life, it shifted to the food court at Shaw Leisure Gallery. The next relocation saw them at the food court at Bras Brasah Complex. Then came the Middle Road unit and now, the current premise is a basement just at the junction of Middle Road and Beach Road.

And in the past 4 years, the price has gone up by a mere twenty cents. How good is that?  The chops were still pretty much as I remembered them. Backed up with frozen variety peas, corns and carrots. And an egg if you would.

They may not be the best (screw superlatives sometimes!) in the world, but they're still definitely freshly fried, thin crisp batter and enough moist meat in there to qualify itself as a real pork chop. And they're still pulling a pretty big crowd.

Milo butter prata from The Roti Prata House

Definitely guilty pleasure there in my books down at The Roti Prata House (246M Upper Thomson Road, Thomson Garden Estate, tel : +65 6459 5260) with all that Milo powder soaked with greasy margarine (I'm not so sure if it's all butter or if there's even any butter in there) folded within a crispy fried skin of flour that was eventually fried in more grease into a pastry of mottled golden brown. Well, not exactly that romantic with the real thing, but one gets the picture.

What I liked about them was that most of the crisp was contained in the surface so the end product was a textural mix of crispiness and chewiness. Just like pizza eh? Except that when one says this stuff doesn't do your arteries any favours, it's meant to be serious rather than jest. An extremely local representation of rich, sweet and savoury packed into a pastry snack.

In the scorching heat of these days, a great wash down would be a cup of ice cold and milky bandung.

Ba chor mee from Meng Kitchen

This place (246B Upper Thomson Road, Thomson Garden Estate, tel : +65 6455 4890) was one of those 24 hour joints which I had passed by numerous times and never had the opportunity to drop by until today. It was also one out of countless minced meat noodle stalls that dot this island doing rather brisk business.

This was the $5 bowl. A pretty decent bowl with fairly generous amounts of ingredient. I'm having a little difficulty thinking of how to describe it here so maybe there was nothing exceptional about what they had. It comes down to the point where I would mention that I wouldn't mind eating them again if I were in the vicinity, but I'll probably not make the effort to head to the stall just for a fix.

Brunch @ Hummerstons

 

While the attempt was applaudable at least in concept, the outcome wasn't so and didn't quite work out for me. I don't see myself coming back (11 Unity Street, #02-14 Robertson Walk, tel : +65 6737 8863) for brunch.

 

The Montreal styled poutine was fries, gravy, some mushrooms and a small piece of  foie gras. The gravy was salty, but stingy in portions. It wasn't curd cheese that they had used and the portions were so miserable that you could sometimes taste, but not really see them. You know what I'm saying?

The country eggs benedict looked to be an interesting option but fell short in execution. Just like the poutine. The texture of the sausage gravy felt curdled. It tasted of a lot of nothing but cream. Seriously, the visual representations also hints that there was a whole lot of nothing in them but cream. Sausage bits aside. In a sad revelation, Popeye's biscuits tasted even better than these ones. The only thing that was done properly were the poached eggs. Not worth a third of what they had charged for these at all.

The Grecian squid looked like it had a lot of spices and a good accompanying sauce going on, but had about one tenth of the flavors that one would expect. There was little char on the squid and apart from being tender, was mostly devoided of flavors.

The mildly spicy deep fried fish was seriously nice and so was the tasty and tangy slaw; which could have helped the the fish tacos if they came in larger portions. But having large crispy corn tortillas to eat this with is a fucking stupid idea. Think tacos breaking apart and greasy fish and slaw falling all over your hands.

Breakfast biscuit at Wendy's

Following up from the offer in the previous week, this was what's available for $2.30 in the current. A rosemary chicken patty in some dense and not so crisp on the outside biscuit. And a cup of iced Milo. Interestingly, the biscuit was a little sweet in contrast with the salty chicken patty. The look and texture pretty much crushed my hopes of finding something similar to what McD used to offer a couple of decades back. 

In retrospect, the burrito tasted a lot better. This on the other hand was a lot more filling. Not that it really matters since I'm sure I will not be coming back for more. The blessing from this trip came in the form of a discovery that they're actually giving free Milo mugs for orders of breakfast that are on the regular menu.

If you're wondering why I'm writing about Wendy's breakfast all of the sudden, I could ask the same question of myself.