Ippudo without ramen

Ippudo's forte has always been ramen. It still is. This other outlet at Mohammad Sultan (207 River Valley Road, #01-55/56 UE Square, tel : +65 6887 5315) previously branded with a 'Tao' has become another Ippudo SG which actually serves up some izakaya-ish plates at dinner. 

The nitamago ikura wasn't quite like how I imagined it. And that's largely because the quality of the ikura was questionable. The textures of the roe was off, didn't quite burst in the mouth and the flavors were flat.

I liked their kuromame cream cheese. I'm not sure if that's just cream cheese in there with the black beans. There was a little sweetness that could've been honey and perhaps, there's mascarpone. For the quantity of the cheese they gave, I think a little more crackers would be nice.

Then there's beef tataki. Which was actually pretty okay-ish if tiny in portions. The flavours weren't amazing, but the ponzu dip helped. The strip on the side was some kind of spicy yuzu paste.

Little tasty crabs frits they do too. This was pretty good, freshly fried.

We ordered some tori hatsu. Of course it's not as good as the King. But - pairing the chicken hearts up with onions was actually quite a good idea.

The gyutan was actually not bad at all. I'd order this again if I revisit.

Crispy corn which was actually quite tasty as well. There was sufficient crisp from the light batter, the corn was still a little juicy and everything had that light smokiness from....paprika I think.

The scallops here were unfortunately mediocre. It's obviously frozen from the texture alone and the char markings looked wrong. And to further bring them down, it was topped with their substandard ikura.

I liked their sanshouku gohan. It's pickled nozawana greens, mentaiko and shredded egg over warm rice.

And some sliced brown sugar chiffon rolls to finish off. 

The ikura bugged me quite a bit. I'm pretty sure that if they had simply used good or even just decent quality ones, it would have upped the experience by another notch. And that would have been an easy thing to do since it's also an ingredient that needs zero preparation or skill. The scallops were the other main disappointment and the beef tataki.....well, has room for improvement.

It's probably just me, but they should also get the word 'tapas' off their menu. Why bother with a coattail that no one will ever associate you with anyway? It just seems to be an unnecessary dilution of an identity.

A kedgeree lunch at home

More Good Year

We came back too Good Year based on the recommendation to try the regular chicken rice. You know what? I liked this too. The regular rice actually tastes the same as the rice ball so in effect, there's only the textual difference. And it was definitely good enough to eat naked which isn't a problem since I don't really think much of their chilli sauce. The portions of the chook were indeed generous.

Personally so far, I think they're just good for their chicken rice. Nothing much could be said of their sides of greens or the just passable braised pork skin. 

More tales from the French river horse

I was initially bemoaning about how Hippopotamus had started to lose the identity it has created here by selectively trimming the menu. Trimmed what I felt were some of the good stuff I meant. They've taken off the old XL ribeye which they sold for a song (not exactly, but...). The burger with foie gras was also off and there's totally no longer any foie gras at all on menu. Fast forward to today, the blue cheese sauce on the side is not longer available too. That was a travesty! :P Along with a couple of sides options that I liked like the beans. Basically, the menu was really starting to look very generic and the place could've been Sizzler's for all I knew. 

But we happened to be here and order we did some items that we hadn't had before. Their blue cheese burger turned out satisfying beyond expectations even though it was a little small. Though the patty was little overcooked from what I normally prefer, they had the decency not to load junk into the meat. What obviously worked for me with the burger was the generous amount of blue cheese that they used. 

There's a new item which was basically fried bacon with poached eggs and a beefy red wine sauce. That's really good as well. Steak tartare was surprisingly, quite edible. Our only gripe was that the beef wasn't quite as well chopped up as we would like resulting in stringy bits of connective tissue. The spicy sauce that they used for the tartare was unexpectedly heady. Tasted like Thousand Island, rum and Tabasco.

A hotdog from The Brat

This unit (#B2-39 Plaza Singapura, 68 Orchard Road) used to be the Bratwurst Shop. I'm not sure how many times it has changed hands, but I vaguely recall that the original used to be set up by a family that lived in Australia for some time before coming back to set up a sandwich shop. I'm pretty sure that the original owners from that time are no longer around though.

Well, it's now just The Brat. A hot dog and burger place (the same...) and here's their English brat with some stinky sauerkraut. It was baguettes, not hot dog buns and they were toasted before filling the dog. I liked it; the pork brat was fatty, flavourful, smothered in a little bit of creamy mustard and the baguette was crisp. But I just couldn't shake off the feeling of knowing that even I could probably do this up at home for a small fraction of the cost. By the way, there's bottled Asahi Kuronama here.

Kimchi fried rice from Kim Dae Mun

This fried rice was pretty damned good. I liked that they used enough kimchi in there to flavour and that the rice was wok fried upon order. There were bits of miscellaneous vegetables for texture, some thinly sliced pork, enough grease to be good without being excessive and topped with a fried egg. I'm definitely coming back again.

On another note, their gamjajeon (potato pancakes) were quite good eating with crispy edges and their garlic/soy/chilli/vinegar dip. It didn't look pretty at all. Just tasted savoury and delicious. Today's kimchi on the side also tasted a lot better than the last time as well.