Joo Chiat Beef King, Chinatown Food Centre

Here's a bowl of beef tendon kuey teow soup from Joo Chiat Beef King. I was initially thinking that the broth could do with a little more flavour, but this light broth slowly grew onto me with each mouthful. The tendons were suitably tender and rocked with the chilli sauce. This could also be the first time I've had these beef noodles with boiled radish.

The best of Good Years

I think I've figured out what are the best things to order from Good Year Chicken Rice (at least for myself that is). Meat from the thighs (also known as ji wei) and breast, a serving of livers, braised eggs and tau kwa. And of course, their chicken rice balls. 

Murugan Idli Shop, Syed Alwi Road

If you didn't already know it, Murugan Idli Shop (81 Syed Alwi Road, tel : +65 6298 0858) is based off a chain from Chennai selling stuff like idli, vadai and dosai. This shop in Singapore has been around for some years and I've been wanting to come down for the longest time. The design of the shop sign is a platter of five steaming idli, so guess what's good here?

We started with a couple of idli. Their ghee podi idli were those steamed rice cakes coated with spice powder and ghee. It was pretty damned good with the chutney that they had ladled over the tray. So good that I scraped the banana leaf clean of them after I ran out of those delicious idli. See the bowl of sambar over at the side? That rocked too.

Some tasty lemon rice in a little plastic bowl served with a helping of delicious chickpeas in an even smaller bowl. Both were easily inhaled.

We tried a meduvadai. The Indian donuts were piping hot and tasted freshly fried with a crisp exterior that covered the moist, dense and soft insides. These fried snacks sure helped us mop up the chutney.

And in the spirit of adventure, I tried their jigarthanda; a sweet milky drink made with agar agar.and The name translated into "cold heart"? It didn't turn up looking like what I had expected, but I guess it was pretty much the same thing. Something sweet and cooling for our recent sweltering heat.

Same old comfort food from Komala's

I've had a recent craving for something quick and dirty and Indian recently and hey, this briyani poori set looks exactly the same as what they served some years ago. I enjoyed it as much as I did back then, especially that payasam for sweets. By the way, this was also the first time I've ordered their badam milk. This stuff was thick, spiced up, milky and sweet. I almost choked on those sediments in the drink.

Mentai butter udon from Tamoya Udon

Hmmmm...yum, how could I say no to mentaiko and butter in that warm slippery udon? And the added bonus to this was the left over mentaiko infused broth which functioned effectively as a dip for their tempura. Speaking of which, their tempura broccoli was quite good and it seems that there's tempura-ed tamago these days as well too. 

Gyo gyo gyo gyooo....za! Gyooo....za! Gyoooooooo....za!

Here's more gyoza from Gyoza-ya. There're now toppings of cheese, mentaiko miso and one with snow crab stuffings. The former which is actually not on menu has both sliced cheese and shredded mozzarella. With all these intense flavoured toppings and aburi, I'm pretty impressed that they managed to not overwhelm the pork fillings in the dumpling. The one with the crab isn't too bad as well.

So I finally got to try their jya jya men which was basically a bowl of flat noodles tossed with sliced cucumber, scallions and a miso meat sauce. I liked this, I think the combination of textures were pretty good and the miso made everything savoury and tasty.