Cacio e Pepe, Chu Lin Road

The name of this restaurant (3 Chu Lin Road, tel : +65 6760 3534) refers to a Roman pasta dish which involves mostly cheese and pepper. Strangely, it wasn't available on the menu. Or perhaps, they had just wanted it to literally mean cheese and pepper and nothing more. By the way, there used to be another Italian restaurant called La Noce that used to be in this very unit.

We had bruschetta. Something that we normally don't do but somehow did today. This was actually quite nice. The bits of garlic came through with the juicy bits of tomato and crispy bread.

That above was portobello mushroom. We had the idea that it would be a large mushroom cap but it turned out to be three little ones. Baked with crab meat and prawn then topped by a cream sauce and lashed with aged balsamic vinegar. It tasted much better than the looks suggested.

We had lamb chops too. This was really nice. The meat was "perfectly" salted and peppered and the medium doneness was good. It was suppose to come with peas but I think they ran out of peas or don't do peas anymore so we had even more tomatoes. Those were also nice.

Those lamb chops came with a Gorgonzola sauce. While we could taste the cheese, it wasn't one of the better of such sauces we've had. But since the lamb was good on its own, we didn't think it was worth a complain.

Lobster linguine. The bug came with lots of meat. Sauce was a lobster tomato bisque thingy. Not bad if you didn't mind getting your hands dirty with the hard work of getting all the flesh out from the claws and dropping a few pretty pennies for it.

Dessert was a molten lava cake which I've been avoiding for a long time. This one had rum, so that made it a little better than most.

And because we've just had that awesome affogato at Senso recently, we didn't think that this one was worth further words.

A ragi dosa from MTR 1924

Ragi dosa is made with spiced finger millet flour. The millet flour component contributes as a healthier alternative to the regular fermented rice flour pancakes if one is inclined towards things such as battling weight loss, gaining additional calcium, regulating blood sugar and avoiding gluten and all that.

If not, this was just a nuttier tasting dosa. One that is still aromatized by the spices and savoury the same. Slightly crisp at the edges, chewy as it goes inwards. Always a treat though with their delicious chutneys which more likely than not, reverses any health benefit that one might extract from having that ragi option. As such this is simply a choice of the lesser between two evils. Both are evil. 

Between this and their masala dosa, I'd definitely inclined to pick the latter.

Tandoori chicken in the Subway

Yes there is a tandoori chicken limited time option at Subway now. I'm pretty sure that no one is under the illusion about the meat having actually seen the insides of the tandoor. So there wasn't any point at all in comparing them to real chicken tikka or tandoori chicken. It was a weak but still credible marinate that did the job. Credible because it did taste like what it was supposed to be, albeit lacking the depth of flavours from the actual thing. Weak because all the vegetables that came with the sub was actually sufficient to subdue most of that flavour.

Shinzo, Carpenter Street

Once upon a time in a restaurant called Hinoki, there were two chefs Gary and Lawrence. Both departed and ventured into their personal restaurants with Gary down at Hakumai and Lawrence in Shinzo (17 Carpenter St, tel : +65 6438 2921). Just like rice and heart.

So here's some sushi from their tempura/sushi lunch set. I guess I kinda liked it. Their chutoro was outstanding and there was a gunkan that featured some sweet shrimp that was pretty good. Sweet and oceanic if that meant anything. 

Halfway through, the chef presented a complimentary nigiri which had torched marlin (with what I thought might have been a strip of spicy mayo and yuzu salt). I'm assuming that the fish is the mekajiki many of us are familiar with.

Chwee kueh from Tangs Market

Tangs Market is a small cache of local goodies. It's probably a little more expensive than the ones that one can get at hawker centres but it's far from being a tourist trap. Not to mention that some of the stuff are actually pretty good. Like these chwee kueh. Steamed piping hot rice cakes topped with chai por and the option of delicious savoury/spicy chilli sauce with that bit of kick from the heat. In the words of an old horror flick, enough is never enough.

Yomoda Soba, Japan Food Town @ Wisma Atria

This was yet another shop from Japan Food Town. The previous occasions when we were here, Yomoda Soba (#04-53 Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6262 3467) had a queue which looked long and slow moving. By a stroke of fortune this time, we managed to walk in and got ourselves the last empty table. Shortly after we were seated, the queue appeared. Phew! 

It seemed that the majority of the non-soba/noodle items were not available. Out of what was, we decided to try the tori tempura. I guess these weren't too bad, but didn't seem to quite match up with those from Menya Takeichi.

There was a hot spicy soy milk chicken soba. This was pretty good. The creamy broth was savoury and came with a little heat from the rayu and ball of spicy miso minced meat. I think there were little chunks of chicken inside too. I liked this enough to come back again for it.

This was their hot tomato soba. Not that it wasn't any good but on hindsight, it might have been a better idea to have gotten the cold version which would have been much more refreshing. That dashi broth that came with the soba had tomato flavours in them. And just that tiny hint of yuzu too. I'll definitely be interested in getting the cold one another time.