Boon Tong Kee, Boon Keng

  

Boon Tong Kee has been around for well over three decades and is possibly the most famous name for branded chicken rice chains in this country. Their rise to fame back in the day in Chinatown came from making chicken rice which is by the way still pretty decent these days; in the recent decade, it's also a bunch of other tze char options from their menu. Very much the way Pow Sing is.

This is the branch that most people refer to as being in Boon Keng (Blk 34 Whampoa West #01-93, tel : + 65 6299 9880). The outlet with decor that could have been a blast from the past and the service crew hasn't been overrun by foreigners.

I was about to comment that the boiled/poached chicken that they serve was just passable. After a bit more thought, it was actually not bad. I've had worse in many other places. Places that survive by the virtue of them being the only shop in the locale and people didn't really have another other choice. In Boon Tong Kee, the residents in the vicinity have that choice and I'm sure they chose here because they did like the smooth and tender chook sitting in the soy and sesame concoction. The rice was grainy, not excessively greasy and rather light. But I seem to recall better flavours coming from them back in the past. I'm not a fan of their chilli sauce.

This kailan stir fried with minced garlic was the obligatory green of the day. It was ok, I'm not particularly a big fan, but I don't dislike it neither. It was really just okay.

I liked their crispy skinned tofu. They have somehow managed a crispy skin, lightly salted that is separate from the silken steaming tofu that is on the inside.

Stir fried pig liver in claypot was good. The doneness of the livers were perfect. 

We ordered their deep fried shrimp toast out of curiosity as they cost $16 for four pieces and that was the minimal quantity per order that one could make. It was actually rather good in spite of some minor apprehension. There was a lot of real shrimp that was pressed into what tasted like shrimp paste. 

Beef Nikumashi Ramen from Buta God

Ramen Champion (201 Victoria Street, Bugis+ #04-10, tel : +65 6238 1011) has concluded the results of their second year and it seemed that Ikkousha has won for the second consecutive round. Three stalls were rotated out for newer competitors. Buta God, with their young chef Mamoru Kanaya is one of the new entrants.

What Buta God brought to the table in their bowl of noodles was notably different from the rest. 

The pork component featured thinly sliced marinated pork belly rather than charshu and their eggs were poached rather than hard boiled. On top of that Buta God simmers a tonkotsu based soup with some sort of sukiyaki blend; I'm detecting the trinity of shoyu, mirin and sugar. The result was a broth that was rather sweet, reminding me more than a little of Yoshinoya.

I picked the beef option because they seem to do limited runs of 20 bowls a day. As expected, it was like a ramen version of a gyudon. That was pretty much the only difference between this and their regular pork based bowl. As much as I generally dislike Yoshinoya, those guys actually struck a better savoury balance with the flavour and their sliced beef were also thinner than this one. I guess a buta god was simply not so good with gyu. I managed to finish my broth so I guess it wasn't terrible. But something about the sweetness makes me think that they're going to have a difficult time against the current reigning champion.

Shin Kushiya, VivoCity

I've been spoilt by Kazu, so most kushiyaki to me are trying to get there. Except for one or two others (or perhaps three) that are noticeably above the crowd, the rest are well...... trying. Shin Kushiya (#02-120, Vivocity, 1 Harbourfront Walk, tel : +65 6275 8766) has been around for quite a while and I've never had to chance to drop by until recently. I've been told that while they aren't they best there is, they're better than the most. I personally think having multiple branches brings the questions of quality and consistency into the equation, but I'll not dwell on that here.

Since there's pictures, I'll try to summarise. I will strongly recommend against the calamari and lamb persillade. The former is 60% batter, greasy and belongs to somewhere at the top of the list of worst deep fried calamari I've eaten. The latter is just overwhelmed by the mustard and frankly, for what they were charging, I expect better quality and quantity of meat.

The rest are decent. Their foie gras seemed to be dusted with a super thin crumbly skin which gave another dimension to the texture of something that generally just liquifies in your mouth. Don't mind having their grills again, but doesn't exactly make me hanker for their food. I think I could attribute that partially to their quality of char aroma which wasn't really quite up there.

The uni/roe/truffle oil pasta was a pretty nicely done plate of noodles. I can only gripe about how little uni one gets for the money they are charging. Pretty expensive I must say.

Their mochi desserts are actually pretty nice.

hamachi 

fried calamari 

foie gras 

kawa 

gyu

quail eggs, mentaiko sake, pork belly

 lamb persillade

chicken filet with mentaiko 

pasta with uni, a couple of roes and truffle oil

Hougang 6 Miles Muah Chee, Toa Payoh

These black sesame muah chee were pretty good (480 Toa Payoh Lor 6, HDB Hub B1-01, Stall 21). It was definitely more aromatic than the regular variety due to black sesame that's been added into the chewy dough and I noticed that each piece that was pulled off was glazed individually with shallot oil before being coated in the sugared peanut powder which also had crushed black sesame seeds in them. I wonder why do they have 6 Miles in their name. 

Yi Jia South Village Seafood Restaurant, Toa Payoh

Heard about this tze char from a friend and decided to check out the scene from their outlet up north (#01-298, 21 Toa Payoh Lorong 7, tel : +65 6250 6537). Most of the plates of food from what we had observed from the neighbouring orders looked good. But I think we made a few mistakes ordering as newbies here.

Their stir fried sweet potato leaves with garlic, ginger and fermented bean curd was pretty good. Really appreciated the fact that the leaves were not fibrous.

Stir fried kang kong with garlic was competently done as well. There was enough savouriness and the vegetable had the prerequisite crunch to denote freshness.

This was when things started getting a little "off the main path". These deep fried prawn balls in Thousand Island sauce were a little too single dimensionally sweet. So that meant that you probably wouldn't want to eat more than a couple before all that cloy got to you. Oddly, their Thousand Island sauce actually tasted like greasy Sugus. Don't know what that is? Go Wiki it. 

Funky dish number two was deep fried chicken with strawberry sauce. This and the previous item were in the orders because they sounded interesting and were also signature dishes by Yi Jia. It turned out that these experimental pairings didn't work together well. At all. There was too little balancing tart from the strawberry of their creamy/milky sauce. Couldn't even pretend it was lemon chicken and the cloy manifested again after a couple of pieces. To top that off, the quality of the meat was really mediocre. This was mistake order number two.

Thankfully, their royal pot which was their take on a sort of traditional Chinese frutti di mare made the cut. Am pretty sure I would like to come back judging from the crowd and what we spied coming out from the kitchen. Hey, no fake crab sticks in the fried rice here! We'll stick to more conventional items from the menu the next time.

Keng Seng Abalone Noodle House, Upper Thomson Road

This was the much less crowded looking of the two ba chor mee neighbours (246A Upper Thomson Road). The other being Meng's Kitchen that offered a much more satisfying looking (prettier?) bowl of noodles which drew much more crowd. The operative word here is look.

Keng Seng's differentiates themselves by adding a slice of abalone into their noodles. It's $3.50, noticeably cheaper than the above mentioned neighbour and doesn't include the sliced pig liver nor shrimp that the picture in front of the stall depicts. But I thought it was done decently and I liked the texture of the noodles here better. The sparing amount of deep fried lard hidden in the noodles were crispy and fragrant. What really got to me though, was the accompanying no-nonsense bowl of soup that came with the noodles. My not so Spidey senses told that it was definitely pig stomach soup. A peppery one at that and it was good. Good that I asked for refills.

Now that I'm encouraged, I'm likely to come back another time for their more expensive bowl that features crayfish.