Da Paolo Bistro Bar, Rochester Park

This was the other Da Paolo (3 Rochester Drive, tel : +65 6774 5537) left today that's still a proper restaurant. The food is nothing much like their restaurants in the past. It's much easier to label what they do as generic European rather than specifically Italian. Of course, the lines blur these days.

Here's some pea soup with Gorgonzola cream and a tagliatelle with sweetbread ragu. That pea soup was surprisingly quite good. It was sweet, smooth and creamy; peppered and drizzled with light Gorgonzola cream and some chorizo. I enjoyed this. The real reason for me coming here was for their pasta with sweetbread ragu. Sweetbread is still a rarity here. I think there was mention of bone marrow in the sauce as well but I certainly didn't taste it. It wasn't bad. 

While I wouldn't say that I disliked the food here, I am pretty sure at this point and forward, Da Paolo will unlikely be a consideration for me if I'm feeling like Italian. Maybe it's the rental at Rochester. The portions were also a little small and prices a little high for those small portions. One can certainly venture guesses at their business goals from why those things are and the direction their food is taking.

Tian Shui Chicken Rice, Tanglin Halt Food Centre

Until recently, I've never noticed this chicken rice stall (Stall #22, Tanglin Halt Market, 48A Tanglin Halt Road). Since then, I've eaten at it twice so here's some thoughts.

Their chicken was slightly chilled and doused with a sticky sauce which was different from the majority of chicken rice. Can't say that I'm a big fan of that sauce but it's probably just me and gloopy sauces. The meat from the chicken was pleasantly tender. Rice was grainy and inconsistently flavoured across and when there was some flavour, it was lightweight. In a nutshell, it would look to be another faceless stall that delivered competent if an ordinary plate.

Until that chilli sauce with a respectable heat that peaked fast and sustained a consistent but gradually increasing burn, topped with a citrus-y note. If one were to take a step back and examine the triage that made chicken rice, it certainly made sense to not have that much flavour in the rice. The chilli, which rocked by the way, would have killed it. I'm still trying to figure out what's in their soup. Not the commonly available thin cabbage broth they're doing.

Red bean soup from Tanglin Halt Market

This was the second time I'm getting this from stall #10 at the food centre beside the market (48A Tanglin Halt Road) which actually sells bee hoon. I thought it was good because of the mandarin peel that was used to flavour the soup and the beans were whole and soft rather than mushy and broken. Just the thing for the recent rainy days.

Recent developments with McDonald's

So, here's the ebi burger from McD. I'm just wondering out loud here if any other countries are getting this as well. I'm sure that generally, fast food is not terribly exciting and this largest chain out there would probably qualify as one of the least interesting ones. What I didn't expect to find in the ebi patty was that there were actually whole little shrimps in them. The texture was there if not any exceptional flavours. Which would probably have been drowned by that wasabi mayo anyway. 

In other news, they are also doing this green tea latte which comes with a shot of espresso. I've been drinking this stuff more often that I'd like to admit.

Hanare Japanese Café, Tanjong Pagar Road

This casual shophouse eatery (99B Tanjong Pagar Road, tel : +65 6222 1976) was opened by Teppei-san of Teppei/Hana Hana, both of which were merely a couple of minutes walk away. We came by for lunch. This was one option for a taste of their talked about barachirashi bowl without having to queue (at Hana) or put yourself though an outrageously advanced reservation (at Teppei).

Their barachirashi set includes some of the buffet spread during lunch. This represented very good value for a couple of reasons. The first being the quantity of raw fish that one gets in that barachirashi bowl. There's a very generous portion of cubed raw fish with ikura. While one doesn't get premium cuts of fish since this isn't priced for it, it's a decent meal with decent quality freshness that you won't walk away hungry from. Which leads me to the unlimited rice that you get as well. It's excellent with the furikake if you're out of fish. What was pleasantly surprising, was their use of grated wasabi rather than the paste. 

This was the rice meal portion that came from their buffet set. It's steamed anago with rice. Steaming soft rice steeped with the sweet sauce and flavours from the eel.

Salted egg curry chicken from Curry Times

By happenstance, I chanced upon another monthly special at Curry Times (238 Thomson Road, #02-33/34 Velocity @ Novena Square, tel : +65 6354 3206) a day or two before the dish git rotated out just like the previous time I visited. This time, it was a salted egg curry chicken. Really? I've never come across something like this before and it sounded too good to pass up. When the dish was served, it looked disappointingly nothing like what was shown on their menu. I was initially feeling a little let down thinking that they had passed off what they claimed to be salted egg curry chicken by sprinkling some crushed salted egg yolk over the top.

Until I took the first bite of the cubed chicken without the salted egg crumbs. The flavours of the salted egg hit me and I realized that they had, as I initially imagined, infused the salted egg into the curry itself. There were also some finely sliced chilli padi that added additional spikes of heat on that already moderately spicy nutty curry. This was so good.