Triple Black Ramen from Tampopo

Steadily and surely, Tampopo unleashes more of their seasonal or limited run items onto the world. It has become difficult for me to revisit the stuff from the regular menu that I like.

I ordered this Triple Black Ramen because it looked badass. Like Darth Vader badass that's obsidian and reflects the abyss back to the approach.

It's triple black because of black broth, black noodles and black pig. The broth as I could gather, was a light vegetable and pork broth with squid ink. It came with noodles that were shaped like none of the variety that they're currently serving on the menu. Its a little like tagliatelle.

What wasn't so obvious was within the inky broth, were fat laced minced pork and scattered bits of fish roe that provided abundant bursty texture (as fish roe does) and more chew to the textural medley. The orange stuff was a scallop with a really large coral and hidden just behind the shredded lettuce was an ajitama. Bleached white colour in contrast. Molten yolked and no less.

Ramen Bar Suzuki, Circular Road

Here's a bowl of basic tonkotsu ramen Ramen Bar Suzuki (61 Circular Road, #01-01) with 'hard' noodles and 'strong' flavoured broth sans the red pickled ginger. The customizable options for each bowl was of greater granularity than what I've encountered before. One can choose items to omit on top of the usual slew of add ons, strength of flavour and oil. On hindsight, I should have opted for 'harder' since 'hard' just fell right in the middle spectrum of options. Would prefer more bite.

While it was an decent bowl of ramen, I didn't think the broth was interesting enough that'll make me crave for it soon. Though flavourful, it had lacked a certain creamy depth which I preferred. It didn't make me want to finish up after the noodles. The charshu was thinly sliced and tender, but was otherwise ordinary. What was interesting were the "flavours" available for tonkotsu ramen which including squid ink, sakura ebi and even a cheese & basil rendition. There were free flow hard boiled eggs and steamed rice for dinner, but those eggs were difficult to peel. Half the whites were lost, stuck to the shells. Or maybe I just suck at peeling eggs.

Red Pig Korean Restaurant, Amoy Street

It was almost a full house slightly before 7pm on a Tuesday night. Food here's (93 Amoy St, tel : +65 6220 7176) not too bad. The service staff seemed to be overwhelmed and there weren't any refills of the banchan. I was wondering if it's because of the limited wait staff are constantly having to run from table to table.

To note - one should wait for the charcoal grill to be heated up before attempting to cook that galbisal as I doubted that the servers took enough notice when they assisted in the cooking. Having a grill that was still heating up only meant that there wasn't enough heat for you to get respectable grill marks onto the meat without them getting overcooked. Meat doesn't come salted, but that's easily rectifiable. Their signature Red Pig cuts of marinated pork were pretty tasty in a spicy, nutty and sweet sort of way. What was outstanding was their crispy seafood pancake which was a medley of textures from the exterior, the chewy insides, bite from generous portions of squid and crunchy spring onions.

The Burger Bar by Fat Boy's Concepts, Far East Plaza

The Burger Bar (14 Scotts Road, #01-16A/B Far East Plaza, tel : +65 6737 3315) is run by the people that came up with Fatboys. The idea here is for people to build their own burgers and the options are pretty much similar to what one gets at Fatboys. With some bits of upgrades (more options for toppings, sauces, orders taken through iPads and blah blah....). Back at Fatboys, I remember being put off by the beef patties that they were using. What I didn't like about them were the poor meat to fat ratio, blandness and that they were generally overdone and not delicious. I hoping for an upgrade to the patties that they had been using now that this place had happened but these guys here used exactly the same beef as they did then.

That was really the weakest link for my order of cheeseburger with cheddar, pickles and peanut butter. They even had the soft brioche freshly toasted and the only thing that hadn't worked for me was the very forgettable meat. Which made it such a pity. I'll happily top up the difference and head across the road for something real the next time I want proper beef in my burger when I'm in the vicinity.

KL Hokkien mee at Malaysia Boleh

This is from Ping Ge KL Hokkien Mee stall down at Malaysia Boleh (1 Jurong Point 2, #03-28), a little food court that specializes in Malaysian Chinese street food which opened October last year. I haven't had these dark soy sauced noodles in some years, the last time being in Kuala Lumpur where I really enjoyed them.

How does this one stack?  Not as smokey as I was hoping for and a little lacking of the fragrance from the dark soy sauce element. But it was still enjoyable, piping hot with crispy bits of fried lard from the fired wok of what looked to be a pretty competent stir frying cook. The chilli that they provided on self service was pretty good stuff going with those savory sweetish and greased up thick noodles. I certainly wouldn't mind having these again, but the other options there like prawn noodles and even chicken rice look pretty darned appealing too.

Another literal look at the lamb skewers from Jia Yan

For reasons I will not venture into, things have gotten a little slow lately and nothing new or interesting have come by in the way of eats. So this was just an updated (clearer) picture of the lamb skewers from Jia Yan. And more of them as well. This second visit made me realize that there were actually some sesame seeds sprinkled over the lamb which I could taste and I had somehow missed totally during the previous visit.

Yes, this made a relatively fuss free (no need to think) dinner. I promise that I will start looking elsewhere so that I can at least make some comparisons between shops.