A worthy mee pok at Whampoa food centre

...can only mention the firm mee pok flavoured with bits of browned garlic and deep fried lard. Also the refillable soup that included wanton which had dried sole in its stuffings.

Ack!

Wooloomooloo Steakhouse, Swissotel The Stamford

focaccia with caramelised onions 

I've heard about this (2 Stamford Road, Level 3 Swissotel the Stamford, tel : +65 6338 0261) Australia-esque steakhouse from Hong Kong and decided to check them out. The setup of their menu reminded us of a mini-Morton's. Even the prices were a little more mini in comparison as well. But service from the restaurant was excellent and not miniaturised.

Dinner started by serving a freshly baked caramelised onion focaccia.

half portion of an excellent lobster bisque

The rendition of the cognac laced lobster bisque from Wooloomooloo was luxuriant. Natural sweetness from the crustacean was rich in the creamy broth backed with a trickle of prickling spice as it ran down the throat. Glad to find that the token piece of lobster that came with the bisque retained a great deal of its natural sweetness as well.

jumbo lump crab cake

Crab cakes were mixed with breadcrumbs. The result left a slightly floury texture but the crabs were tender and fresh tasting, spiced with little but salt and pepper. It also understandably didn't leave as much of an impression as the ones from Morton's.

beef wellington

For a country that's self proclaimed as a food paradise, beef wellingtons are somewhat a rarity. Wooloomooloo's tasted pretty good. 8oz tenderloin with mushroom duxelle, topped with foie gras and baked in a buttery crust. The inevitable comparison for me came between this and the filo pastry tenderloin from Etna which had actually more flavour in the seared meat. This one had foie gras and more buttery pastry. But then the latter had blue cheese sauce. Well, this came with a pretty good Maidera sauce which couldn't be discounted as well. And so forth.

ribeye (150-day grain fed, 2-3 weeks wet aged, Grainge Farms, Gippsland, Victoria)

The ribeye was in short, delicious. Their 12oz Australian Black Angus was a stellar representative of a properly done medium rib steak laced with a decent amount of fat and finished with a nice char on the surface with little to detract from the natural flavour of the meat but salt and pepper.

sauces and sides

Accompanying sides of sautéed spinach and mushrooms and the thin hash browns were nice. What I thought was outstanding was their creamy peppercorn sauce. In a wonderful, strange, sweet and peppery manner it got me.

As much as we would have wanted sweet ending, we had no more room for desserts.

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.