A mega maguro katsu don from Maguro Donya Miura Misakikou Sushi & Dining

It's always a mouthful handful trying to enunciate type the name of our friendly neighbourhood hon maguro specialist. Here's a hefty maguro katsu donburi from Maguro Donya Miura Misakikou Sushi & Dining which features tuna wrapped in seaweed and then battered in panko before the deep fry. The resultant crust was rather firm, crisp and dry while the meat on the inside was moist and fully cooked. It was probably much too thin a slab for any lesser doneness which I was actually hoping for and I was glad that they didn't overdo the tonkatsu sauce. In retrospect, I very much prefer tuna that is less cooked or even raw.

Fish paste noodles in shark cartilage broth from Cove99

Well there's wolfberry, some pieces of cod and bitter gourd as well. I've been kinda fascinated with fish noodles after being introduced to them years back. The fish flavour and the springy texture are what sets them apart from the regular flour ones. This one was pretty good. I thought it was a much better deal than the cod fish soup noodles at Amara. I'm definitely coming back (72 Peck Seah Street, tel : +65 6224 0991) for another bowl sometime.

Restaurant Manchurian (满族全羊铺), Smith Street

This space (18 Smith Street, tel : +65 6225 8663) was previously occupied by Yang Gui Fei, another Chinese restaurant that also served lamb. Now that Restaurant Manchurian has taken over, the decor of the interior seems to have been upgraded - albeit into something touristy tackier looking. But the menu still has a lot of lamb so giggity giggity goo! Manchuria if my interpretation holds, refers to a northern region that covers China and Russia. The part that falls under China is commonly referred to as Dong Bei (东北). And hence by association, I could assume there would be similarities between the food here and those from Dong Bei Ren Jia?

Anyway, here's a scratch on the surface of what they restaurant serves over two visits.

Here be lamb skewers. These here were more expensive than those skewers that can be found in the main road shops. But from the aroma that hit us when they arrived, we couldn't complain. 

They had stir fried long beans and eggplant which were really good. The flavours of both vegetables came through even with the seasoning. No mean feat since these vegetables were light on the palate in the first place. Those eggplants were also really tender.

Imagine xiao long bao with stuffings of minced lamb rather than pork; in flour wrappers that were thicker like mee hoon kuey. Wrappers that were filled with "juices" from the meat/fat stuffings. That was pretty much how their boiled lamb dumplings were like.

Something they described as dry pot cauliflower (干锅花菜) that came with little strips of pork belly. Another tasty vegetable dish.

We had a lamb hotpot somewhere along the way. Delicious spicy herbal broth filled with root vegetables, generous potion of meat and a flat noodle portion that was cut from a single strand.

The above lamb chops were a specialty of the restaurant. They were boiled lamb ribs served with two dips. A garlic infused soy sauce and a fragrant chilli oil. One was supposed to dip each rib of meat into the soy sauce and then the chilli oil for flavours. I thought that these were quite similar to the boiled pork ribs from bak kut teh minus the broth and using mutton instead of pork.

There was braised pulled lamb served in griddled bread. To be honest, this wasn't one of the dishes I had preferred, ironically because of the well done braising. The flavours had permeated the meat so much that I couldn't tell that it was lamb. But otherwise this was a pretty good Chinese "burger".

And there were crunchy vinegared strips of potato that the menu describes as potato silk. Vinegar that made us believe that we had cleansed ourselves of the grease and fat from all that mutton after a few chopsticks-ful of the potatoes. This stuff was good too.

Poh piah from Tangs Market

Ouch, this was the most expensive poh piah I've ever had. $3.50 a roll which is more than twice what most people usually charged. Then again, I thought it was pretty good. What's more - the roll was packed, thick and was larger than the size they're usually rolled into. Each slice could barely fit into my mouth.

A shio iwashi set from Nakajima Suisan

There were a couple of hon maguro parts available last night at Nakajima Suisan and then my eyes fell onto something that was possibly even more uncommon. Freshly grilled sardines with just salt. And I knew I had to order them. 

Was that a good fish? Sure it was. The skin was a nice crisp and the meat was tender and moist and almost boneless. Well, almost because most of those bones were so fine that one could just eat them. What I had enjoyed especially were the regions in the head and the belly just past the gills. Those livery bittersweet dark parts. 

Bakmie and sio may from JTown Cafe

We finally got back to try the bakmie from JTown. This was their bakmie ayam cabe ijo - the one with a green chilli stew and bits of chicken. I liked the green chilli stew. There was sufficient flavour going on to be likeable and heat to keep the flavours interesting. The noodles were okay. Would have like them more springy but they were okay. Wouldn't be in a hurry to come back but I wouldn't mind eating them again if I'm in the vicinity.

The sio may on the other hand I didn't take to. The staff paraphrasing my order had called it siew mai which I guess is what sio may was. It wasn't exactly siew mai as most people here would know of it. It was a sort of fish cake and it wasn't even fish cake that most of us were familiar with. These were basically chewy pieces of flour flavoured with some fish. It was as far removed from what is commonly regarded as fish cake as those mutants from The Hills Have Eyes are from humanity.