Clinton Street Baking Co. & Restaurant, Purvis Street.

Clinton Street Baking Company (31 Purvis Street, tel : +65 6684 4845). From Manhattan's Lower East Side to Southern Singapore. We were definitely intrigued. Breakfast styled food has a certain inexplicable appeal anywhere in the world.

Here's their Southern Breakfast. Eggs, fried green tomatoes, sugar bacon and cheese grits. We liked this. Everything about it I guess. Those sugar bacons were literally sin incarnate. Sugar to make you fat, burnt ends to infuse you with carcinogens, both to feed cancer cells and the hardness to wreck your teeth. But sin was delicious.

We got pancakes because CSBC was known for them. We liked them too. I'm going to save myself the archetypal descriptions of nicely done pancakes because I'm sure we know what they're like. And they're like that. These lemon curd and coconut pancakes do have curd that's a little sweeter and eggier than it was citrusy sharp. But still very enjoyable. 

And sides of ham steaks (seriously steaks?) and rosemary maple sausages.

We had ran out of space but their apple pie and bourbon shakes looked and sounded good. With what we've ingested in a single seating, it's already enough calories that'll last an Ethiopian for a couple of weeks as all those richness crept back up our throats to settle into our double chins. So I guess we'll have to come back another time for those.

Apfelbaum

We got this from Juchheim at Takashimaya, the stall that sells baumkuchen or the cake probably known as Japanese kueh lapis to many. Just to clear the air, Juchheim is Japanese and that baumkuchen that looks like kueh lapis ring is a cake of German origins. So it's a Japanese brand doing a German cake in Singapore.

Anyway, this Apfelbaum has an apple inside; an apple marinated in lemon juice they said. Very nicely balanced sweet and tart while retaining more crunch than we had expected.

Japanese Restaurant Suju, Mandarin Gallery

I've been wanting to try Suju (#04-05 Mandarin Gallery, 333A Orchard Road, tel : +65 6737 7764) since I discovered them a few years back, but I haven't had the chance until very recently. Their food is not exotic by most stretches of imagination. They do not serve unusual frutti di mare or bugs. But they do deliver a solid teishoku experience.

tamago yaki

premium tempura course

australian wagyu sirloin steak teishoku

The quality of the food spoke for itself. Which was good. And so was that spoken for by the crowd during the weekend lunch and a tell tale sign of a rather large percentage of Japanese clientele. Their tamago yaki was bouncily delicious, piping hot with a sweet and savoury taste. Steak was competent and tasty while the sashimi from the tempura course was pretty good quality. Hell, even the tomato from the 6 appetizer tray was sweet. Loved the miso topped nasu too.  I think you get the idea.

But as much as I thought that their quality commensurated the prices they charged, the food can cost quite a bit. But hey, it's not like I'm not willing to drop a little more dole for good food. The only gripe I had was the pickles that came with the rice. I had expected radish but this place serves cabbage - spiked with ginger.

I wished we had started coming earlier though. 

Janggut Laksa and the Queensway Original Curry Chicken

I've had the Katong styled laksa (an appropriate description?) at Queensway Shopping Centre (1 Queensway) from some years back but have only taken note of the names of the stalls in the more recent ones. This Janggut stall which claims to be the original Katong laksa started off in a push cart stall from the 50s. And there's the other 328 Katong Laksa stall located in the same floor nearby which also claims to come from Katong. 

I'm not about to go into which came first or into their history. Just this Janggut stall which also shares its triangular premise with the curry chicken stall. This laksa was fairly rich with coconut milk, flavoured with the aroma of dried shrimps and had a humming heat from the chilli. Pretty good stuff. Pretty generic of me to describe as such as well but I know of no metrics to measure the quality. 

The chicken cutlet rice with curry ladled over coming from the curry chicken stall kinda surprised me by how delicious it was in a homely sort of way. Even if the chicken cutlets were mostly pre-fried. And yes, I had both servings in a single seating. A guarantee if any to send one into a post lunch coma.

928 Yishun Laksa

I've had laksa from this shop (Blk 928 Yishun Central 1 #01-155) several times over many years but had somehow never mentioned it. Until now that is. It's the laksa without prawns. Pretty popular laksa without prawns. One gets crab sticks instead. And the prices have been creeping up, albeit slowly. But their rempah has a pretty good flavour and the resulting gravy has what I opine to be a good balance for flavour, coconut milk and viscosity. It's not thin like some pathetically weak bowls, nor is it so rich that it cannot endure. That and their chilli paste with a nice hum of heat and the flavour of dried shrimps.

All in all a very decent bowl. 

Balestier Frog Porridge arisen from the ashes

Not exactly trotting along the metaphorical lines here but this coffee shop (567 Balestier Road) was gutted by fire a couple of years ago. If you Google Map this address and get the street view at this point of time, you can still see the 2015 picture that shows the place still boarded up from the renovations. I remembered that the place was left as a charred husk for a while before they fixed the place up. And yes, in that literal way it is back from the ashes of the old stall.

Anyways, the stall is called Balestier Fresh Frog Porridge today, a different name from previously. One might assume that it's a different stall, but I'm thinking it's the same. The same luxuriant kung bao gravy that works its comforting sweet slow burn from the sliced bits of chilli padi and tender slurp off the bone frog meat. I should come by more often.