Grand Mandarina, New Bridge Road

Grand Mandarina (#01/02-00 Thye Shan Mansion, 325 New Bridge Road, tel : +65 6222 3355) opened about a year ago and I had never heard about them until recently. From what I could gather online, they're a new player in the local scene with no ties to any of the better known restaurant groups which could mean that they are a little bit more interesting with what they do rather than the usual formulaic themes.

The restaurant is located at a spot just a short walk from Outram Park MRT exit at Bt Pasoh's side.

This was chicken and cordycep soup. It happened to be soup of the day which is going for less than $2 due to some promotion that they were having. Pretty well done double boiled soup and just for a song, I'd easily return for them.

One of the items that they are apparently known for is their honey glazed barbecued pork loin. Char siew in other words and yes, it was as good as people were saying. We had seconds of those glazed pork which possessed a light sweet glaze shattering crunch. The meat was relatively tender and fat layered.

Fried fish skin with salted egg yolk, curry leaves and chilli padi. Rather addictive. Even for the pieces that had gotten a little bit soggy.

This was described as soya poached foie gras with 20 year "Shao Xin" wine jelly. The idea was good, but the foie gras tasted funny. It was livery without the buttery element, might have something to do with the poaching. The Shao Xin jelly sounded impressive if I had understood that 20 year part correctly; the flavours were present but not extraordinary for something that sounded like it had been aged. Did I read this wrong?

Their stir fried vermicelli with pork collar and XO sauce was not bad too. The generous amount of sprouts lent texture to each mouthful of noodles.

Steamed rice rolls with scallops were quite ordinary.

Those crystal dumplings aren't my thing. The dominant flavour was chinese mushrooms which I'm not big on in the first place and we've definitely had better done crystal dumplings with mushroom.

Competent if ordinary har gow.

Also competent if ordinary siew mai. If I'm giving the impression that these were mediocre, dispel those impressions. 

Their phoenix claws with black bean sauce was a mishap. Those chicken feet tasted a little sour (not quite the vinegary manner) and that sour didn't come from the sauce. We stopped after a couple of bites and feedbacked to the restaurant. They were gracious and took it off the bill.

That's pan fried carrot (radish) cake with lup cheong and a sprinkle of chicken floss. Again, competent.

We liked the char siew bao. Skin was fluffy enough, sufficiently voluminous for balance of proportions between meat & bun and the fillings were more savoury than sweet. 

The other let down was the salted yolk custard buns. There's not enough salted yolk flavour and it was a little too sweet for us to like them.

Apparently, the one thing Grand Mandarina seems to be known for is the empurau fish; reputed to be the most expensive edible fish from Sarawak in Malaysia. Expensive like a couple of thousands of dollars perhaps for a single fish. Obviously, it's not going to be something that's landing plated on my table anytime soon.

Sugisawa, Robertson Quay

I remember reading about the origins of chirashi which began as a way to utilize the unattractive looking cuts of fish that were leftovers from making nigiri sushi or sashimi. On certain occasions, I've actually tried to relate that possibly dated (or geographically inapplicable) fragment of history to the ones that we're having. I'm pretty sure that's not how it works these days here with the most of them far too prettied up or voluminous to be treated as discards. 

This chirashi donburi from Sugisawa (30 Robertson Quay, Riverside Village Residences, tel : +65 6235 0212) could just possibly be one of those bowls that fit in to the category of repackaging remnant cuts of fish - plus a little more on the side. Either that or the knife work was especially lacking in finesse. The quality of the fish had passed the decent muster but wasn't extraordinary.  I didn't quite take to the extra chewy slice of octopus tentacle. What I liked was the sakura denbu. Not so many places include them. And the butter fried scallops were actually rather good. Weren't overcooked at all and had that residual natural sweetness intact.

Chir Chir Fusion Chicken Factory, 313 Somerset

Just to be clear, I didn't queue to get into Chir Chir (313 Orchard Rd #B3-04/05/06). I happened to be there at a time when the insane queue hadn't yet begun for dinner. Their food was a fairly interesting experience if not altogether anything new.

I liked the grape salad with honey and ricotta but the restaurant doesn't used freshly toasted flatbread and was careless with the freshness of the nuts that they used. Otherwise, the rest of the food was pretty much how it looked. Those "cajun" spiced chicken with cheese & cream weren't as heavy as they looked though.

I could eat it again, but I sure as hell wouldn't queue for it.

Gurih Restaurant, Arab Street

ayam lado hijau

sotong hitam

sambal paru

begedil & sambal telur

sayur lodeh

Pretty decent nasi pandang from this shop (150 Arab Street, tel  : +65 6299 1643) located at the junction of Arab Street and Victoria Street. The proprietor claimed that the food is Padang styled and that we should expect their sayur lodeh to taste different from the local variety. Since I don't really have any frame of reference for actual Padang styled food, I don't know any better. In retrospect, perhaps the gravy was less rich than some local renditions, but the savoury depth was impressive. Their sotong hitam had an unexpected but welcomed hit of heat and I rather liked the ayam lado hijau too. 

This looked to be a fairly dependable frills free comfort food place I could come back to again.

Tracy's Special Udon from Tracy Juice Culture

This was the other item that we noticed many people ordering down at Tracy Juice Culture. Granted that there wasn't that many things that one could order from the shop apart from their beverages. This was a mushroom udon of sorts. Why so? The "broth" was pureed mushroom and totally delicious. Served piping hot, topped with some broccoli, a couple of cherry tomato, mock meat and some dried mushrooms. Not complaining here but I've observed that the consistency of the broth is not always consistent.

Neh Neh Pop

New ice cream shop brought to the world by the folks at Artichoke. It's at where Overdoughs, the old pastry shack selling baklava is. Speaking of which, the one encrusted with crushed nuts is the baklava flavour. Although it says orange blossom flavour for the ice cream, I'm pretty sure I tasted something like rose. It's not bad.