Hon maguro fin shioyaki set from Nakajima Suisan

Here's grilled hon maguro fin with salt. Nice char and unctuous tender meat beneath that. As enjoyable as their nodo.

Fakruddin, Desker Road

I understood that Fakruddin (19 Desker Road) is a Bangladeshi restaurant and they are known for their briyani.

That plate above was their lamb/mutton briyani. What was different about it was that these guys didn't use basmati rice that we're used to seeing for briyani. The rice here was a short grained variety and there was even potatoes along with the mutton. The flavours of the rice was a little buttery (from ghee) coupled with the aroma of the spices they had used to cook it. I thought this was delicious. I meant "I'm definitely coming back again" kind of delicious.

The other rice that they had was bhuna khichuri. From what I managed to discover, it was rice with dal (lentils). Pretty tasty, but this was not buttery like their briyani and the mutton in the rice was measly. Actually, it was mostly bits of bones. But still tasty the same and comforting.

We had vegetables. Spiced and stir fried sliced gourds of some sort with egg. Tasty stuff.

And a spicy mash that packed a little bit of heat which the proprietor mentioned was made with yam. Due to the intensity of the spices, we couldn't actually tell that it was made of yam. But it was delicious. 

We spied kheer in the refrigerator out back and got a serving. This if you didn't already know is a dessert of sweet and milky spiced rice pudding. It's mostly cardamom flavoured, but there is occasionally saffron and nuts as well. In the rice were also a bunch of really plump raisins. We were already pretty stuffed at this point and if you have noticed, this meal was carbs heavy. But still we managed to finish it. Mmmmm....

BeerThai House Restaurant, Golden Mile Complex

It's been quite a while since the last time I stepped into this building. For some reasons, we had never headed this direction for Thai food even though it was one of the things that Golden Mile was known for. So today, it's BeerThai House Restaurant (#01-96, Golden Mile Complex, 6001 Beach Rd, tel : +65 6297 7644).

We tried their boat noodles. While we weren't expecting it to be anywhere close to the standards of the last one we had, this bowl here turned out not too bad. The vermicelli had soaked up all the flavour from the broth.

We had tom yum goong nam khon. The version of the tom yum goong with milk. And that's evaporated milk, not coconut milk in case you were wondering. In this dangerous looking bowl, were bits of sliced fish, squid, shrimp and fish balls. The tom yam broth packed quite a bit of sour and heat.

That unwittingly triggered a certain, usually dormant inner masochism which prompted me to spoon mouthful after mouthful of it into my mouth even though my lips were already burning. 

I don't know what's the name of this dish but it's essentially a krapow moo with century eggs. Quite salty, rich from the eggs and bits of pork fat and good with white rice. 

And there was som tam with salted egg. A salad of papaya strips refreshingly spicy with squeezed lime, crunchy textures and full of bold flavours.

This was a steamed squid dish with chillis and lime. It was a lot more zesty than I had anticipated.

Changing lanes at Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐)

Here're some stuff that I haven't actually eaten before. A relatively new mixed mushroom dumpling (shimeiji, shitake, oyster and enoki) with a light infusion of truffle oil. I kinda enjoyed it. It was more mushroomy than truffle-y which was really what I was looking for. All wrapped in their signature 18 folded dumpling package. The other thing's the beef broth noodle. No beef with this at all and pun fully intended. As much as I enjoy cow, Chinese styled preparations have generally not been my thing so the broth was actually good enough for me. A little bit of heat, a little bit of spice, some bovine aroma and comforting slurpy noodles.

Revisiting Jia Yan Restaurant

In the midst of chuckles drawn from the hilarity of the menu's English translation, here's some stuff we had at Jia Yan.

That's stir fried cabbage with dried chilli and a sauce that contains fermented beans. The flavour was not bad, growing onto us as we ate and the cabbage didn't taste as undercooked as it initially looked. 

This was suan cai yu where the pickled mustard greens were buried at the bottom of the bowl. The fish was I'm guessing, dory. The cheap and plentiful fish with soft crumbly texture that is commonly found locally. This didn't taste bad even though I generally don't like dory. But the texture was exactly the way it was, almost disintegrating as it was picked up with the chopstick. Those pickled mustard tasted like preserved Szechuan vegetables minus the heat.

Here be boiled dumplings (水餃) with egg, chives and little shrimps (三鲜). These dumplings were pretty juicy and the dominant flavour was the "green-iness" from the chives. Or should I even describe that as verdant? o_O Not bad.

And yeah, we didn't want to skip the lamb/mutton so we ordered some skewers and ribs infused with cumin. And other spices. I need to make comparisons regarding the skewers at this point. Those skewers in Restaurant Manchurian (满族全羊铺) might have cost 50% more but were also better done in my opinion - not to mention that lamb was really their forte whereas Jia Yan does a smattering of what can be loosely described as Dong Bei (东北) and Korean food.

The king of kings or so they say at Lian Hua Chun Fruit at Balestier

We were looking forward to a durian fix at Combat Durian and realized that their stall was not open. So this was an opportunity to check out a neighbouring stall a couple of minutes walk away (279 Balestier Road) by the junction. The seller told us it was wang zhong wang (皇中皇) but the bouquet didn't feel as full bodied, that almost alcoholic bittersweet creamy richness wasn't quite there and the seeds weren't as small as they had claimed. The smell that was left on my fingers was a little off too. 

All in all, it wasn't worth the $56 that they had charged. Maybe it's psychological, but now that I think of it, those guys did behave a little weaselly. You know what they say about being bitten once so I think I'll stick to buying from Combat Durian which by the way isn't going to be opened till the middle of the year. Heads up folks.