Balaji Bhawan, Syed Alwi Road

We came to Balaji Bhawan (103 Syed Alwi Road, tel : +65 63417797) because there was something that I had been reading about that they have on the menu. Namely the dal batti churma thali which was what I was interested in trying. So I’ll just be talking mostly on that and omitting other points of interest. Like the restaurant being a little dim and dingy and also that service was slow and reluctant. Air conditioning needs upgrade as well.

Back to the dal batti churma thali - well, it’s apparently a food item representative of Rajasthan in India. A thali (platter of dishes often with rice or bread) that contains dal batti churma. Which comprises of the dal, batti and churma. The dal which is the commonly known lentil stew, the batti which is a hard wheat roll/ball eaten with the dal and the churma which is also made of wheat and cooked with ghee and sugar (or jaggery as well) to make up the dessert. This thali here was also served with curried potatoes, vegetable korma, dah/dhal, raita, some spiced basmati rice, a couple of poori, a papadum and also gulab jamun.

The two doughy lumps were the batti and the one on the right was the churma. The former was a dense, dry and chewy bread which could be eaten with any of the dips or curries while the latter had the texture of a lump of wet ball of crumbly sand that tasted buttery and sweet. All in all, I had thought that the entire thali was quite enjoyable. Until the sweets. Both the churma and the gulab jamun were a sugar overload for me.

Their pudina parotha was also quite nice. Could taste the mint in the bread.

While waiting for the main orders, we passed the time with a raj kachori as dinner was only served from 7pm and there was chaat available. This was like a giant puri done up like the yoghurt version with peas and potatoes stuffed in the crispy shell. But this chaat looked sloppily made with insufficient lashings of chutney. Looked nothing like the regular chaat of any sort which would generally appear more messy and with more toppings. This looked quite sad.

Hong Boon famous Thai styled herbal duck noodle, Maxwell FC

I'm not an expert on Thai duck noodles so I don't know what exactly about these ones that make them Thai styled. The proprietor sounded local, looked a little frustrated, a little young and a shade too green for what he was doing. The stall (Stall 48, Maxwell Food Centre, 1 Kadayanallur Street) looked relatively new so if these guys were famous from elsewhere, I haven't heard about them before.

So was it good?  The mee kia according to the guy running the shop was imported from Thailand. I'm not sure if that meant anything in particular, but the noodles had pretty nice texture and the tender duck was infused with the herbal aroma from their braising sauce. What I thought could have been improved on was that the flavours for the noodles. It tasted bland and I'm not sure if the intention was so that we could eat them with the chilli sauce which you could help yourself to. One little saucer of it along with a few sprinkles of that dried chilli powder made for a lip searing experience. This was pretty much what saved the bowl.

The soup was....well, balanced for a lack of a better description. Flavours were pleasant and not overly strong. But it was also rather oily. Certainly not how I remembered these duck noodle broth. I wonder if it has occurred to the proprietors that trying to explain the slow service by claiming to be new to this industry is simply shooting oneself in the foot - or both feet, when you're trying to pretend that you're famous?

Some Asian rice dishes from Ikea's cafeteria

So we have some familiarly Asian rice items on the menu at Ikea (this is the one at Alexandra Rd). A pretty decent nasi lemak which I had no complains over. For just $4 with all things considered, it was cheaper than most food court. Yes, that came with one of their chicken wings, an otah, a hard boiled egg as well as a very thick slice of cucumber. Big and thick. Sambal was kinda unique, never had one like that and while it bore some similarities with the generic sweet and spicy variety, it wasn’t the same thing.

We first discovered their lotus leaf glutinous rice a couple of years ago during the CNY period where it was on a limited run at the Tampines outlet. I wonder if these were outsourced from some factory. Anyways, we kinda liked it because the rice was soft and moist and there were ingredients like ginkgo nuts, lup cheong, chicken, salted egg yolk and mushroom. Not that it was unusual, but it’s cheaper than what one will be paying for from a restaurant

Re-savouring Saveur Art

Just a quick update with this re-visit to Saveur Art.

Saveur's pasta, chorizo, grilled prawn, chopped kombu, chilli oil

The pasta starter here is different from the one at Saveur. This one had diced prawns and chorizo while the other has chicken. Both had very nicely timed noodles with a firm bite which I liked.

spiced pumpkin velouté, chive cream

A sweet spiced pumpkin soup. I couldn't tell that it was chive cream. Even if it was regular cream, it was a little too little to make much of a difference.

egg confit, truffled potato mousseline, macadamia nuts, brown butter

I remembered liking this a lot from the last visit. I still like it a lot. The bits of macadamia nuts were aromatic and had a very good crunch which really worked with the egg and potato mousse.

roasted stuffed quail

This was definitely my favourite plate from the dinner. Quail was roasted medium well-ish and was stuffed with foie gras. On the side, more of that grilled foie and some mushrooms.

sautéed forest mushrooms

As it says, mushrooms.

grilled pork belly, provençal artichoke barigoule

I remembered that the pork belly wasn't bad at all, but there was a little too much fat on some of the pieces and I'm now at a loss for how to further describe it.

Hong Kong Wanton Noodle, Plaza Singapura

The Taste of Japan Group from Hong Kong which is responsible for Itacho Sushi has opened up a very straightforwardly named wanton noodle shop called Hong Kong Wanton Noodle (68 Orchard Road, Plaza Singapura #B2-25, tel : +65 6694 0923). One does not simply walk into Mordor mistaken their offerings for anything else. Not with such a name.

Honestly, it's not too bad. The noodles were wiry and had some bite. It's much better than most of what is passed of as Hong Kong styled wanton noodles here. While it will never be the same as the genuine article, good enough is good enough and what was the very thing they said about not letting perfect become the enemy of the good? Especially when you have no better option on hand? We've had Noodle Place and Mak's opened up here as well. I suppose we do have an appetite for this particular brand of wanton mee. 

Usman Restaurant, Serangoon Road

I heard about this place (238 Serangoon Road, tel : +65 6296 8949) some time back but never got a chance to drop by until today. While the address just stated Serangoon Road, a more accurate description of the location would be corner of the junction of Serangoon Road and Desker Road. Food seems to be Pakistani/Indian.

Their palak paneer tasted freshly made. You could taste quite a bit of the spinach from the puree which I suppose also meant that there wasn't too much of any other things (whatever those may be) added as part of the flavouring. The paneer had a rather rustic texture.

The keema on the other hand tasted a little burnt. It was smoky like what keema should not normally be. Some of the peas were charred, so I guess it was really burnt at some point.

Those seekh kebab that they had were made upon order, so it's as fresh as it could get. What I liked about it was that it wasn't infused with excessive herbs so that we could taste the meat.

The naan was also a little burnt. One's garlic and the other sesame and both were pretty decent if one would look past the char. The bread reminded me of an overdone Neapolitan pizza crust.

The only drink we had was their lime juice. It's not bad