North South Cuisine (南北名厨), Beach Road

Here's another shop (321 Beach Road, tel : +65 6299 3197) which I've possibly passed by on numerous occasions without noticing until today. Affordable frills free food here. One of the cool thing about them was that they're open daily till past midnight so it works for supper as well. The food was mostly North Eastern Chinese with a smattering of localized flavours that caters to the local crowd which swarms them during lunchtime in the weekdays. One can even detect Thai influences in some dishes.

From the cold dish list, these was thinly sliced pork belly with soy sauce and minced raw garlic. The sharp pungent garlic gives you dragon's breath.

Following were some thinly sliced beef in soy sauce. I'm not sure where it's cut from but the textures were rather interesting and undulating.

We were debating over tan tan mian or zha jiang mian. The zha jiang mian won and it was a pretty rustic and straightforward rendition. I meant that in a positive way.

We ordered a basket of juice laden xiao long bao which bursted in the mouth when you bit into them. These were pretty decent. The bursting of the hot porky juices in the dumplings was satisfying.

And pan fried guo tie stuffed with minced pork and vegetables which had a savoury crispy base. A little greasy here.

Some cheese crusted steaks from Chili's

Every once in a while, something draws me back to Chili's. This time round, it's their cheese crusted steaks which seem to be something on menu for a limited period. Something totally unimaginatively appealing. Were they any good? I think I like the fragrance of the Parmesan crust much better than the cheddar bacon. More crust would have been great as well.

While Chili's does not serve the most memorable food out there, they're what they are.  Honestly, there seems to be little room for complaints; however I need to get this off my chest. They don't serve very good beef here. I've had better for sure. For less as well. In fact, for what they had charged here after discounts, I could've eaten at Aston's twice. No cheese crust of course, but much better bang for buck quality of meat and flavour. 

Foie gras tonkatsu with truffle from Tampopo

It seems that Tampopo has just upped the ante of their own game by introducing truffle paste into their foie gras stuffed tonkatsu. This item has already made it into their regular tonkatsu menu if anyone's wondering. If anything could be described as indulgent, this would be one of them. Needless to ask, I was sold. How did that taste? It was exactly like what I had in mind with both the flavour of the black truffle and the fatty melting liver coming through like butter across those tender layered pork beneath a crispy breaded crust.

Itacho Sushi's new spot and blue fin tuna

Itacho Sushi has been working on their new outlet (ION Orchard, #B3-20) for a while now and it's finally opened recently. It seems that they've decided to up the publicity factor by introducing a limited offering of bluefin tuna on their menu which one can have on sushi, sashimi or even a don.

On hindsight, the regular bluefin slices tasted the best. These guys here aren't exactly the most skilled at doing aburi-ed anything and any other add on anything else simply detracts from the natural flavors of the fish. Say, aren't they suppose to be on the endangered list or something?

Moving away from tunas, there's mantis shrimp and snow crab on sushi now. The shrimp was actually pretty tasty and sweet even though I suspect it's been frozen. As for the snow crab.....don't waste your money.

mantis shrimp 

bluefin tuna roll 

engawa 

kani miso

tamago with seaweed

assortment of bluefin tuna, hamachi, Kagoshima wagyu 

bluefin toro

snow crab 

cod liver

A negi miso rosu katsu from Tonkatsu by Ma Maison

That would be Tonkatsu by Ma Maison in case you didn't know. They had these miso sauced katsu which I was curious in measuring up against the ones by Tonkichi. As it turned out, the ones from Tonkichi tasted sweeter while these were more salty. I'm not as favourably disposed towards Tonkichi these days as I was in the past but I think they still do a dryer crisp breading compared to here.

Fu Xiang Chicken Rice, Toa Payoh Central

This place (J99 Eating House, 186 Toa Payoh Central) was a good call for chicken rice and the stall certainly had the queue to back up the quality of their food.

Let's see what they did right here. The flavour in the rice was a little lighter than I expected and it was a little bit greasy. Still within what I considered the boundaries of a properly done chicken rice and this case just meant that their ginger/garlic chilli sauce gets put to used. Now to the better accomplishments...

The turn over must have been quick that their roasted chickens had the opportunity to be served warm and still with that slight crisps on some of the edges of the skin. Their livers were just so pleasantly creamy and the roasted pork was tasty with their lightly crisp crackling and balanced meat to fat proportions. Sure puts some of the supposedly branded names to shame.

I was told that this particular coffee shop is well known for their ban mian as well.