Another year, another Lawry's

Another year has passed. These guys have maintained their status quo as one of the best if not indeed the best prime rib guys around in this sunny island. I'm not sure how to feel about that these days but I suppose it does make deciding a little easier with the dearth of options. In further development of old news (the oxymoron!), Lawry's has also been raising their prices. Their Diamond Jim Brady has gone up by more than $60 over the past 9 years and it is almost $160 before tax and service these days. Ouch!

Heng Kee Curry Chicken Noodles (兴记咖喱鸡米粉面), Hong Lim Food Centre

So here's a bowl from Heng Kee Curry Chicken (#01-58 Hong Lim Food Centre, 531A Upper Cross St). The competitor to Ah Heng which is located just one floor up in the food centre. Both stalls have been around for many years and seem to share the same thin curry broth, but this one seemed to taste a little nuttier and sweet. Which can be remedied with their accompanying chilli paste. The noodles have also soaked up the broth allowing the flavours to permeate pretty much every mouthful. What I didn't quite like about Heng Kee is the way the chicken was chopped up. There were bone fragments that one had to be careful with and the texture of their tau pok was spongy and rough. If I had to choose between the two, I'm definitely going with Ah Heng.

That being said, the curry noodle which trumps for me in Hong Lim comes from Cantonese Delights. I know they're a different style altogether. But hey, they're all curry noodles right?

Paddy Hills, South Buona Vista Road

This spot used to be Lim Seng Lee Duck Rice which has relocated to somewhere in Little India. Today, it's Paddy Hills (38 South Buona Vista Road, tel : +65 6479 0800) - I suppose contemporary international fusion kinda fits the description of what they do. Food that's more fun than serious. One could simply also drop a moniker like 'a cafe' to describe them as well. Albeit one with a little more interesting food than the run of the mill establishments that we have everywhere.

What have we here? A sheet of seaweed with a bit of wet rice poking out at the corner, some white powder and an ivory dollop of something? 

It's what they're selling as ramen risotto. A tonkotsu ramen in risotto form. A paradigm shift of a dish with ingredients that many of us are familiar with.

It took some seconds for my mind to register, but in the end, I thought it was quite good. It's a lot less heavy than most risotto because there's no cheese and butter. The stock was pretty flavourful and it came with thinly sliced Japanese styled kurobuta charshu that was torched briefly and pickled shimeiji mushrooms. I rather liked this.

The powder is what the menu described as tonkotsu powder. I have no idea what it was and it didn't register as anything familiar when I tasted it. The ivory globule was a quail egg's yolk.

Here's their crab roll. Real crab meat stuffed between a sweet squid ink roll topped with ebiko and some other fish roe. Came with a kimchi slaw on the side. This roll was quite good. It's all crab meat and the sweetness of the buns work with all the toppings. I liked this too.

That's some Parmesan croquette served with jam. Couldn't taste much of the Parmesan to be honest and the potatoes are chunkier and less creamy than the usual Japanese croquettes. That's not a bad thing though.

D.O.P. Mozzarella Bar & Restaurant, Robertson Quay

Seems like quite a bit has changed down at Robertson Quay. We haven't seen D.O.P Mozzarella Bar & Restaurant (#01-04A The Quayside, 60 Robertson Quay, tel : +65 6908 0830) the last time we were here. Couldn't find out much about them either but it seems that the owner is a Luca Iannone from the Campania region in Italy and the restaurant seems to be featuring food from that region. By the way D.O.P. refers to Denominazione di Origine Protetta - also known as Protected Designation of Origin, the legal protection given to food whose characteristics or origins come from specific regions. Like how prosciutto di Parma should only come from the city of Parma.

DOPMBAR (my abbreviation for this restaurant) has a make your self antipasto board where we could pick a cheese (just Mozzarella types), a choice of vegetable and cold cut. We got ourselves a buratina, some grilled vegetables and bresaola. We also had pasta, scialatielli (some short noodle) served in a halved Caciocavallo cheese bowl with a truffle cream sauce and black pepper. Tasted as rich and aromatic as it looked.

Dessert was Mama Teresa lemon cake, presumably a recipe from the mother of the chef. Where else could the know how have come from? No where else I tell you! Like all food produce under the D.O.P., it only comes from mothers and grandmothers. Lol. Tasted like most of the other crumbly lemon cake we've had. That being said, it wasn't too bad thought. The lump on the side was mascarpone and chocolate.

Luke's : The kale salad and Luke's Blue Label Burger

The last time we were here, I mentioned breaking the steak and burger routine. I tried. So no steak today and no Travis Burger. Just Luke's Blue Label Burger which came naked by default. Before we get ahead onto the food, the bad news is that their poppyseed buns for their burgers isn't coming back. Apparently, they are illegal here even though it's for buns. I suppose the third world mentality of the authorities is incapable of transformation like the rest this country. True story.  

Ah yes, the kale salad. This was very nice. Ruffly leafy texture from the kale with the crunch of peanuts married to a perky citrus from a squeeze of lime, nuttiness from the dressing and mint. I'd order this again easily. Can't believe I've been overlooking it.

Presumably, the Blue Label burger is served the way it was because someone wanted the opportunity for the meat to shine. There's no cheese and the vegetable accompaniments are on the side for those that might want them. Sadly for me, I couldn't even figure out what was exciting about it. I wasn't able tell what was different from the Travis burger. It's a short rib blend if I recall correctly. Other than charring more, it didn't taste like it should cost more - which it does. Meanings that I'll be falling back to the tried and tested. While it sounds like I might have been exaggerating, those current sesame buns certainly feels a lot different from the old ones.  

La Tapería, Shaw Centre

La Tapería (#02-10/11 Shaw Centre, 1 Scotts Road, tel : +65 6737 8336) is a Spanish restaurant/tapas bar by the Les Amis Group. A little upmarket in appearance and like Les Amis' other restaurants, hallmarked by pretty good service from their staff. 

They opened a couple of years ago. Before they did, it was suppose to be called Terry's - also Spanish food to be led by a veteran from Manila, a chef named Terry who left because his understanding of what the restaurant was to be did not align with what the owners were trying to do. This place might have ended up differently and we could have suffered a culinary loss - or not. But we shall never know.

A fast forward to reality - the Terry's that was to be became La Tapería. To sherry-tint the establishment, there's a little interesting tidbit to them. The head chef Ng Wei Han, a local Chinese was previously from the defunct Au Jardin. Since 2007. Levelled up to become their executive chef in 2011 and was there till their last days. So what we have is a Chinese guy who's experienced in French cuisine making Spanish food. Cosmopolitan.

The first of the small plates was thinly sliced chilled Momotaro tomato with 50 year aged sherry vinegar according to the menu, olive oil and shaven bottarga. I thought this was refreshingly awesome. The thin slices upped the dressing to fruit ratio with the bottarga adding a fishy (yet tasty) saltiness to the sweetness of the tomato. Like.

Then came their patata bravas. Those potatoes were fried to a dry crisp with mealy soft insides. Pretty good.

This was served as fried eggs with blood sausage. Which we knew wasn't. It's actually eggs with chorizo and peppers. The mistake was realized when the actual fried eggs with blood sausage arrived and the restaurant didn't bill us for this. Classy because it was their mistake and they didn't make us pay for it but it did add an additional egg dish into our dinner.

That above was the actual fried eggs and blood sausage. There was some truffle reduction and quite a bit of mushrooms inside which is obviously not so obvious because of how the dish appeared. Those mushrooms tasted pretty good. Blood sausages were nice, but I'm pretty sure we've had better.

Sherried onion soup with saffron and almond flakes says the menu. There were little chunks of chicken too. This was by far the most memorable onion soup I could remember. If I had to describe it more accurately, it was actually an onion bisque. There was quite a bit of sweetness coming from those onions and sherry that went along with a savoury undertone. The second outstanding dish of the night after the Momotaro tomatoes. Now I wonder how much butter went into it.

Here be white asparagus with truffle and more eggs. Not bad, the asparaguses were sweet and juicy.

We had the charcoal grilled lamb rib confit with honey mustard. Pretty good too. Pretty glad that the honey mustard didn't mask the flavour of the lamb. The meat was scratch off the bone with a fork tender rather than fall off the bone tender.

Dessert was olive confit ice cream with raisin cream and Albariño syrup. So olives in itself, dried grapes and sugared fermented grape juice. At the base of the large ball of ice cream was something that tasted like bread pudding. We tried this for the novelty of having olive ice cream. Not bad, but not good enough to stop me from trying something else if I come back.