Yang Gui Fei (羊贵妃), Smith Street

The play of words involved in the name of this shop should bring a smirk or a chuckle at least. Yang Gui Fei (18 Smith Street, tel : +65 6100 0629) does food from the city of Xi'an, a northern region of China that is the home of a large Chinese Muslim population; and I hear too, famed for the discovery of the thousands of buried terracotta soldiers that served standing as sentinels to the soul of the first emperor of China.  The latter point not withstanding, it means there will be lamb! Was it anything like the real McCoy? I can't say because I don't know. But the food was pretty good.

Chilled tofu with with diced century eggs and soy sauce. The equally chilled bits of century eggs had developed an interesting texture akin to cooked mushrooms.

These pickled string beans were an excellent wake up for the taste buds. Boldly sour and packed some heat in the midst of their crunchy textures.

The gui fei deep fried lamb ribs were a signature from this shop. Basically deep fried lamb ribs in a savory cumin (amongst other spices) batter. Cholesterol bomb? Sure. Delicious? Sure as well. Batter was tasty and crispy, wrapped around fatty lamb meat on the bone.

All that grease also meant that it doesn't take very much before you'll want to stop.

Yang rou pao mo was a very nicely done broth, made with broken bits of flatbread that will soak up all the flavour and slices of lamb. The broth was really nice. I meant, it was close to ramen grade broth kind of nice. Like a sort of lamb rendition of tonkotsu. Someone start making that already!

And some sour plum or haw juice to cut through all that grease. Who's kidding whom?

Emerald Green Tonkotsu from Ramen Bar Suzuki

I guess I came back here much faster than I expected. I ordered their Emerald Green which was a powdered Parmesan cheese and basil flavour of their tonkotsu ramen.

In spite of the sodium bomb that it was, I liked it.  Pity that they don't entertain requests for additional cheese. The cheese added a dimension to the broth which was countered by a light touch of basil that skimmered on the surface. Their 'harigane' option for the noodles was not much harder than the previous visit.

Liked it enough to finish up.

A tokusen toroniku shoyu ramen with Iberico pork cheek from Ramen Santouka

It's been quite a long while since my last foray to Ramen Santouka (21 Cuppage Road, Cuppage Terrace, tel : +65 6235 1059) and it seems that they've upgraded their pork cheek ramen, using Iberico pork. While those slices of grilled pork cheeks were still tender and salty and ready to break apart in the mouth, I cannot in honesty tell the difference between this Iberico cut and the one that I had previously. The noodles were exactly as I remember them....not exactly my cup of tea for texture, but I would maintain that this shoyu broth is still my preferred one from this joint. With so many ramen-ya these days, I guess these guys aren't the force to be reckoned with anymore.

Now that I've tried it, time to move on again.

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.