Morton's USDA Prime burger again

Here's a trip back to Morton's bar for their burgers. It's been a long while since the last and it seemed that they're doing a consistent job with their burgers. That consistency unfortunately extended to the not so great service at the bar as well. Here's a heads up - those burgers going for $16 instead of the usual price for this month from 7 pm. 

I think they overcooked mine today, but still the quality of the meat was good enough that it was all forgivably so. I just wished that the grind for the meat was more coarse.

The little corner at Paragon with green stuff...

That's what the menu calls the Veggie Greens pasta. It's actually a primavera if you would. And this is one of my favourite things to order down at PS. Cafe at Paragon. I ate it once, remembered it and came back for more of it. It's basically pasta with asparagus, artichoke, French beans, broad beans, broccoli, capers and olive oil with spaghetti flavoured with shaven Parmesan cheese and a bit of heat from chilli flakes. Quite a medley. The sum of flavours, so to speak, are fairly clean with enough measures of savoury to make the plate delicious and the chilli flakes add just that bit of dimension. The textures of the vegetables and the al dente pasta was ...... one can exercise imagination. I don't want to abuse the word 'amazing'.

Seems like this particular pasta can only be found at the branch at Paragon.

And of course, the green key lime pie from the very same place. It hasn't really changed in appearance, but the filling seem to have a different texture from previously. Those green filling now felt a little more gelatinous and smooth compared to a more rustic texture back in the past. The taste was otherwise, the same.

Ban mian from Toa Payoh Central

Remember the ban mian I previously mentioned from the same coffeeshop (J99 Eating House, 186 Toa Payoh Central) as Fu Xiang Chicken Rice? This was it.

I have generally never been a fan of ban mian. Never eaten much of them until the past few years when I realised that there were options without soup. Also never understood trying to eat noodles in a floury tasting and scalding hot soup flavoured with ikan bilis under the sweltering heat.

This bowl was exceptional. Half the bowl was pretty much the ingredients that came with the noodles. Namely the chunky bits of minced pork, thick slices of fish, boiled cabbage and not forgetting, ikan bilis together with my choice of ee mee. Dry of course. For $4, this bowl had more than double the ingredients, quality ones at that, than most bowls elsewhere.

Ise Ebi lobster tonkotsu ramen from Keisuke's Tonkotsu King Four Seasons

Keisuke Takeda's fourth ramen shop (158 Rochor Rd, tel : +65 6333 5740) is doing publicity today (Mother's Day if you didn't realise). 500 bowls of Ise ebi lobster tonkotsu ramen on the go for $8.50. 

As per usual for myself (and probably countless others), we start off munching on the spicy bean sprouts after being seated and waiting for orders that we never really made to arrive. There was nothing to order since they served only one type of ramen today. 

Actually, I was pretty impressed with the broth. The flavour from the crustacean was well developed. It was almost a bisque....minus the cognac and butter. And a very enjoyable one at that. If I had to complain, I wished the noodles were a little harder. But hey, I got a molten yolk from my ajitama. It's a good sign.

I hesitated for a while after finishing up the noodles.

In the end, it was 'what the heck!'.

And I got myself a very enjoyable bowl of lobster porridge.

I got the winter bowl for today.

On their walls, was it the winter soldier?

Dim sum set lunch from Red House Seafood Restaurant

This was a pretty good deal for lunch. I hadn't even heard of Red House Seafood (68 Prinsep Street, tel : +65 6336 6080) until the recent couple of years.  The quality of the seafood certainly spoke for itself even though that spicy seafood plate. Their dim sum was also better than I had anticipated. Notably well done were the light chewy skins of the crystal dumplings with delicious mixed mushroom fillings and the spinach with scallops that were stuffed in the green dumpling. Even the humble siew mai was light, spot on with the flavours and tasty. Unexpectedly, I was spooning up mouthfuls of the starchy gravy from their oyster hor fun. 

Speaking of which, it's a real broth that's been thickened with corn starch in that hor fun gravy. Not the junk that one regularly finds elsewhere. The durian mochi was edible. I think I wouldn't mind at all coming back for a go at their dim sum.

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.