Old House (老屋), Neil Road

We've passed by this shop (25 Neil Road, tel : +65 6223 1633) numerous times and have been intrigued by the "dinosaur prawn noodles" that they advertise at the shop front. I was of course under no illusions about the description. Anything that isn't at least the size of those Thai river prawns doesn't deserve to be called dinosaur prawn noodles and I was pretty sure these weren't.  

I was right about them. But the broth was intense from the crustacean flavours and pork bone. There was the aroma of pepper amidst the flavours and each mouthful left the lips glazed with grease. Prawns were pretty tender but the pork ribs weren't anything to write home about. At $15, it was also rather small portions.

What was unexpectedly good was their white lor mee. The creamy broth was sweet from the cabbage accented by just a little bit of smokiness from the scorched thin strips of pork belly. The chewy noodles were just what I was looking for. I'd come back just for this alone.

We ordered steamed sting ray topped with garlic and chilli. While I couldn't shake off the nagging feeling that this was frozen meat because of the odd texture, the ray was actually pretty tasty. It also bestowed upon us dragon's breath. Hahaha!

Sap Thai Food, Amoy Street Food Centre

Wow, the food was not bad at all from Sap Thai Food (#01-58 Amoy Street Food Centre, 7 Maxwell Road). Their som tam mamuang was refreshingly tasty from the lime and fish sauce, boosted with those perspiration inducing chilli padi. Great textures from the toasted whole peanuts, fragrant thin strips of crunchy mango and things turned up a notch after I added some of those crushed peanuts and sugar. This mango salad packed more punch than the one from Gin Khao. I'd eat it again in a heartbeat.

The plate below is their fried Thai basil MaMa noodles. Yes, they're exactly those delicious chrome packet toasted instant noodles, stir fried with some krapow gai and topped with a fried egg. It's a pity they don't do pork here and these guys don't open in the weekends.

Wrap & Roll and the Obama Set

I haven't been to Wrap & Roll (#B3-19 ION Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn, tel : +65 6509 1555) because I had never been sure if the place was worth the time even though I've been curious about them. But I saw this Obama set which had apparently been created in response to a shared picture of the man having bún chả with Anthony Bourdain in Hanoi. Low plastic stool, cheap but delicious noodles, cold Hanoi beer? Maybe not quite there from Wrap & Roll, but someone had been fast to capitalize on that frozen moment in time. 

But as the kind wait staff had pointed out, nobody's getting the bún chả that the POTUS and Bourdain had been having. The portions that they had whipped up here weren't quite the kind that one would get in Vietnam and there was seriously way too little bún. But the sweet grilled pork was delicious with flavours that were quite akin to our local satay.

We had a gỏi xoài tôm khô. How do I even pronounce that? That really tasty mango salad with fish sauce and chilli, bits of dried shrimp, peanuts and laksa leaves?! 

And then a pretty enjoyable cơm sườn nướng. How does one pronounce this again? Again tasty pork chops that might have been marinated in the same stuff as the grilled pork from their bún chả. Loved the egg pudding on the side.

Lunch at Nogawa Japanese Restaurant

It's been quite a long while since the last time we were here for lunch at Nogawa (#03-25 Concorde Hotel Singapore, 100 Orchard Rd., tel : +65 6732 2911). 8 years to be precise - I didn't realise so much time had passed since then. This hotel which the restaurant is located was once known as Le Meridian from back then.

There was some sort of special omakase lunch set for the month. I wouldn't know if it was really omakase as the term intended but there was a variety and the food was prettily plated. The largest items from the tray was grilled sake (salmon) and sakura ebi kakiage that had mushrooms.

The set came with three types of appetizers. A sawagani tackling a ball of fried pumpkin concealing a chestnut core, some pickled vegetable which I couldn't identify and a fried ayu. Look at the burnt looking leaf on the right. It was carved out of steamed pumpkin.

There was a little pot of dobinmushi with maitake mushroom.

And five negiri sushi.

The closure for that set was some yuzu sorbet and oolong tea.

We also tried Nogawa's sukiyaki set

This was rather good. The thinly sliced beef was of good quality and delicious.

We ordered a asari and seaweed tempura which was done with a crisp batter. The flavours of the seaweed came through nicely in that batter and there were slices of mushroom in the tempura to make them "meatier" if you know what I mean.

An interesting looking rock. Or not.

The English menu describes this as steamed foie gras but it's a foie gras mizore mushi. Pretty smoky tasting and the foie was much more cooked than what we had expected.

And testing Google Map embed.

More desserts from Ji De Chi (記得吃)

So we came back for more desserts. That pink stuff up there was soya bean curd flavoured with rose. In essence (pun intended), the taste was a little bit like bandung. The bowl at the bottom was double boiled milk pudding with durian puree. See the stuff that's peeking out of the fissure in the middle of the bowl. In retrospect, while it didn't taste too bad, it wasn't such a good idea. The durian puree as flavourful as it was pretty much drowned out anything the milk pudding had to offer so the whole bowl tasted pretty much of just the fruit.

Hong Kong Street Lung Kee (香港街龙记), Ang Mo Kio Ave. 5

This cze char stall (Blk 151, Ang Mo Kio Ave 5) was previously Hong Kong Street Chun Kee, but it seems that they have rebranded themselves. I'm pretty sure little beyond the name has changed but I honestly have little to go by apart from their XO fish bee hoon tasting the same as I can remember. We tried a few dishes which we hadn't before from the stall. Their prawn paste chicken was competently fried - little residual grease and moist meat on the mid wings but I felt would have benefitted from a little more of those prawn paste. Sweet and sour pork was competent and it seems that these guys are upping the game with their rendition of the three egg spinach. This rendition has minced pork and wolf berries and the flavour of the broth was pretty impressive. Certainly a departure from the traditional lightweight version.