Some charcuterie from Carne Meats

Carne Meats are apparently a house brand of Indoguna Singapore, a local food purveyor which I've never took note of before. Anyway, they had a counter where they were handing out samples of their charcuteries and pan fried sausages down at Meidi Ya and we were impressed enough to get some of their smokey air dried meats back. They were actually pretty good.

Butahage, Liang Court

This shop from Hokkaido has got to be the first butadon specialist that has been set up on our shores (#02-32/33 Liang Court, 177 River Valley Road, tel : +65 6268 4821). It's taken over the corner where Shakey's used to be. Good riddance to that since this shop was a much worthier use of limited space.

Their menu is pretty straight forward. There's just grilled pork over rice bowls with literally a couple of sides that you could order. Those rice bowls come in various size options and a Premier version featuring Japanese pork which is supposedly limited to 30 servings a day. That's the Premier version up there; tender, fatty and savoury sweet slices of grilled pig in their tare glaze resting on top of Yumepirika rice. Which I inhaled in no time. We definitely liked this and will back to try the USDA pork bowls.

Udon Goen, Food Republic @ Wisma Atria

Yes, that is indeed a big assed pile of katsu from Udon Goen (#04-02/14, Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Road) in Food Republic. And no, we did not try out any of the udon because it would have meant passing up on this katsu curry. A tonkatsu and torikatsu rice plate with curry made with tonkotsu broth. All that for an affordable $10.80. How's that for something different?

Here's the part where I mention that there are indeed differences with their curry with say, the generic Japanese curry. It was more savoury than sweet-ish from the undertones of the tonkotsu base. The big assed slab of chicken katsu had a rather bland crust while those pork katsu tasted a little salty. While these guys might not hold up in comparison versus the old guards of fried pork, they do represent an uncommon quantity to quality value. Udon Goen charges a dollar for additional curry which one is likely to need since the regular serving doesn't quite have enough to go around.

The unadon from Nakajima Suisan

This piping hot teriyaki glazed eel freshly off the grill was not bad at all. The meat was tender and well, the picture speaks for itself. My fondness for this place grows. By the way, those yellow shreds scattered on the plate are eggs.

Some sushi from Oceans of Seafood

Here's some nigiri sushi from Oceans of Seafood (200 Turf Club Road, #02-06 PasarBella @ The Grandstand) down at PasarBella. The cooked food area seems to have revamped a little with some of the older stalls disappearing and some new ones taking over the previously empty spaces. This order of sushi was actually not bad if I might say. It was very affordable for one (that chutoro was merely $3 because of their ongoing bluefin tuna promotion) and it tasted very decent. I'm aware that the tuna was barely not-akami. And there was an interesting kurogoma tamago that had a nice sesame aroma in the grey-ish sweet egg.

Yoyogi, The Grandstand

An old friend had told me about Yoyogi (200 Turf Club Road, #01-12 The Grandstand, tel : +65 6468 8826) a long time back when they were still at Mohammad Sultan. I agreed to check out the place and subsequently only managed that visit a few years later today. This was a lunch of their truffle set.

Which started off with dainty slices of kanpachi with shoyu and truffle. The truffle looked to be of the jarred variety, it's not expensive stuff and was definitely not aromatic like what one would generally expect. The fungus was mostly just a little nutty. Not sure what to make out of this starter. The fish was so thinly sliced that most of the texture was indiscernible and the flavours consisted mainly of just the ponzu. With a little truffle.

The next item that came with the set was chilled truffle capellini with ebiko and crispy sakura ebi. The portion was literally just a few mouthfuls, but this was delicious. The serving plate and fork were also chilled for the serious chilled noodle experience. I sure hope the a la carte portions are much bigger because I can see us coming back for it.

The soup was simply described as a black truffle dobinmushi.

There was some seafood in it. The truffle flavour was much too little to even warrant mention but the soup was quite nice.

The highlight of the truffle set was their ohmi gyu donburi; with the same black truffle that they had used for the rest of the set. We were taught to plunge our spoons into the middle of the egg to scoop out the liquid yolk which would then be drizzled over the bowl of thinly sliced beef and rice. 

It was then that we realised that the preparation of the rice was done with a rather heavy hand with the vinegar. In spite of the fact that ohmi gyu had a high ratio of fat to meat and the bowl was doused with the egg yolk, none of the rice bowl came across as rich. There was enough vinegar to have somehow "balanced" flavours and I'm not sure if that was such a good thing. But then, I'm not complaining. We were just not so impressed.

This black truffle set should have ended with a dessert of yuzu sorbet.

But because we were sitting at the counter where certain prized cuts of tuna were chilled, we gave in to a post dessert dessert.

Note to self : The portions here were lightweight. Needed to get more food afterward.