Saveur, Far East Plaza

Association with big names by the way of alumni-hood is a pretty sure fire way of drawing attention. For Saveur (Far East Plaza, 14 Scotts Road, #01-7B, tel : +65 6736 1121), I'm reading Guy Savoy, Fi53fty Three (once upon a time locally) and Tetsuya in Sydney. The restaurant opened a couple of years ago IIRC and made some waves with the queues they garnered. I didn't pay much attention at that point because I had thought that they were just another one of those places trying to create affordable local interpretations of French bistro food. Not that I have anything against that. It doesn't work all the time. And it is not really uncommon knowledge that the path is not easy and it's much easier to fail at it than one would think. 

But there are bright spots. Saveur is one of them.

Remember that their name of the game is affordability. These guys managed to pull off a modest piece of foie gras, nicely pan fried and well flavoured in a pool of creamy lentils. I would have loved for the portions to be bigger, but it would be asking too much for what they charged. It actually tastes pretty good.

There's a small 'Premium' section in their menu. There's only three items and one of them was their entrecôte, a 300g ribeye. The steak was not bad at all and I wouldn't mind eating this again. Even though they had it slightly overdone from the requested medium rare. However this piece of meat certainly also blows the affordability image that they're trying to maintain out of the water. For one, one can get something similar for less in town. If I top up another 8 bucks, I could have a nice rendition with proper table service down at L'Angelus.

Potatoes au gratin here was lip licking good. The spuds were buttery, creamy and filled with garlic flavour. I liked that they were not shy with the salt. 

Tarte au citron was decent. I would have liked more lemon curd than custard.

The pistachio panna cotta fared better with me. What really worked was the layer of crushed nuts that brought forth the flavors, pairing nicely with the creamy green pudding.

We tried the duck confit which I didn't take a photo of. It was honestly pretty decent duck for what they charged with the food being very valid effort. I could eat two of these and still get change with what some French restaurant charges for their confit. Will come back another time.

A recent China Street frittering

Nothing has really changed with China Street Fritters (#01-64, Maxwell Food Centre, 1 Kadayanallur Street). They're a specialist doing their very focused variety of wu xiang, trumping most competitors if not all at what they do in their curated selection and remains somewhat a bastion of consistency and nostalgic flavours in our ever evolving food options. The food's good. I just thought I would update a picture from a recent eat in the way of fiddling with my current Canon S120. Still trying to figure out some filters and what works for which conditions.

Hey, those delicious liver rolls that they make actually have braised preserved mustard greens in them too! And the egg & lard fritters are still awesome.

A special nasi lemak from 1983 – A Taste of Nanyang

This was a stall down at the Cookhouse food court at JEM (50 Gateway Road, #05-01) that sold some local dishes. Such as beef rendang and chicken curry with rice. This was their special nasi lemak which was basically a pre-configured set with their works. It was kinda expensive as nasi lemak went, but these are food court prices and it didn't taste too bad. The fried chicken thigh was crispy on the outside at least and the rice was decent if not exceptionally fragrant. The only real gripe that I had was the sambal which works only with the fried egg for me because it was far too sweet for my preferences. I was hoping for that to be more savoury.

Breakfast at Kampong Corner

Today's serving of lontong (which I've mentioned previously) literally had our lungs flooded with the gravy. Well, not my own lungs obviously, but that from the additional top up of the paru goreng which soaked up the gravy in their tiny lung cavities. It's become a little bit like a beefy chewy tau pok if you would. 

There's also that soft roti jala which was accompanied by a bowl of nutty rich chicken curry on the side. This was so much better than I had in mind. And definitely one of the better breakfasts I've had in a while. If you're not doing your heart any favours, be sure to not do them for the right reasons.

I hope these pictures do justice as a tribute to our local "artisanal" dishes. Each individual component was an effort. I don't know how to cook them, but I do know that the sambal takes a lot of ingredients to simmer over hours. Ditto for the rempah for the gravy which eventually also serves as the cooking gravy for the long simmers that soften the vegetables. Those beef lungs need laborious effort cleaning and deep frying as well. Roti jala is something that many don't make in house anymore and you'll find that most of them aren't tender because they're probably mass produced stuff that's chewy. These local eats need some recognition.

Re-visiting Swaadhisht

We're back in Swaadhisht for a re-visit. No goat meat for us this time round, but there was lamb.

We ordered a neichoru with mutton ishtoo. The former is ghee rice.

While the ishtoo is stew. One that was made with quite a bit of coconut milk, curry leaves, onions and generous quantities of cracked black pepper it seems. As the name implies as well, there's chunks of mutton inside. This stuff packed slow building heat and was pretty darn good. Ghee rice or not. It got me spooning mouth after mouth.

We ordered curd rice. Which is rice mixed with unsweetened yoghurt. There's generally a variety of other items that can be added into the rice and yoghurt mixture. This was the first time that I've had them with both coriander and ginger. That really got to me. Note to self, never order curd rice here again.

That's gobi 65 which wasn't on the menu. But the restaurant was able to fry them up on request. Very nicely crisp cauliflower done here. The batter had excellent flavour and texture.

Big prawn noodles from Albert Street Prawn Noodles

In my limited experience, big prawn noodles seldom live up to their names. They seldom if ever feature prawns which are genuinely big. But then, I'm always thinking along the lines of those river prawns from Thailand. As my memory serves, Wah Kee and Island Cafe are possibly those that live up to the description. The latter didn't even call theirs big prawn noodles and was already a different class altogether.

So this is the one from Albert Street Prawn Noodles (#01-10, Old Airport Road Food Centre, 51 Old Airport Road). I ordered the most expensive bowl to see what theirs is like. The stall it seemed started off back in 1963 but was manned by a relatively young chap. He didn't look like he was around 51 years ago, much less selling prawn noodles then.

Their prawns weren't so large after all. I wouldn't even consider them meaty. What bothered me most was that some of them weren't even cleanly de-veined. Yikes. Broth had a pleasant crustacean flavour and was sweet; a noticeable contrast to the more savoury broth from the Whitley Road Big Prawn Noodle stall nearby. I quite liked those firm yellow noodles that were paired with some crunch from the blanched sprouts. Those noodles were strongly scented with fried shallots and their spicy pungent sauce.

All in all a pretty decent bowl but for $12, I expected better. While I didn't dislike it, I also won't be in any hurry to come back since there's so many other options for food at Old Airport Road.