Jiu Zhuang (酒庄), Dempsey Road

Heard about this place out back in secluded corner of Dempsey which I never realize existed. Jiu Zhuang (6D Dempsey Rd, tel : +65 6471 1711) is essentially a contemporary Chinese watering hole veneered with a mid 1900s Chinese decor burnish. There's a small selection of food and dim sum on the menu but the operating hours commences from late in the afternoon. Not exactly the time of the day I would normally go dim sum but what do I know? 

There's chilled tofu with century egg, some crab meat and ebiko. I thought this would have been better textured if there were more of the "blacks" to go with the liquefied yolk. Crab meat tasted like it was thawed.

The gem from what we had was their dumplings in double boiled soup with conpoy accompanied by nu er hong (女儿红). The latter, a Chinese rice wine from Shaoxing came on the side in an old styled wine cup so that one can add as preferred. The server had advised us to do a bowl per person because one would be insufficient for sharing. To their credit, they were absolutely right. After the first, we ordered another because the soup was really good.

We had stir fried carrot cake with X.O. sauce. There was supposed to be lup cheong in there, but it must have been so minced that it got lost in the sauce. Nothing really noteworthy here.

Jiu Zhuang's siew mai came with seaweed skin. The stuffings were pretty decent if unspectacular.

They are also apparently known for their whisky xiao long bao. I would like to think positive and applaud their enthusiasm with the whisky (I don't know what they used, it didn't taste classy but it probably does not matter) but I felt that the whisky element was a little too strong. There was little from the rest of the ingredients in the dumpling that was sufficient as a balance. Too little fat in the meat and far too little salt as well. Memorable in not a good way. In essence, this was a literal whisky meat dumping.

Lamb ribs and tongue from Bahrakath Mutton Soup King

I recall seeing some offal options from the last time I had kambing soup so today I managed to try some of the lamb tongue along with meat from the ribs from Bahrakath Mutton Soup King (#01-10, Adam Road Food Centre, 2 Adam Road). The tongue was a lot more tender than I had thought and I must say that I liked it. Ditto that for the ribs. Maybe I can try the brains the next time.

Huber's Butchery & Bistro, Dempsey Road

Here's some of the eats from the bistro of Huber's Butchery & Bistro (22 Dempsey Road, tel : +65 6737 1588) located just outside the butchery. The first thing that caught my interest in the current list of specials they were having was chanterelle on scrambled eggs. The eggs that arrived were more omelette than scrambled eggs but it was all good with the woody mushrooms. That being said, those eggs did need a little more salt.

That's the Bünder Teller - plate of cold cuts with pickles and cheese. If I'm not mistaken - it's air dried beef from the left, moving clockwise, some thinly sliced bacon and then ham. That came with a few wedges of creamy brie, pickled gherkins/onions and even butter. All of which I happily inhaled with their basket of baguette and rye. By the way, butter and pickles on bread are pretty good.

I'm definitely coming back again for another go at the other stuff in the bistro.

Chicken dum briyani and chocolate lassi from Shami Banana Leaf

I didn't realise that Shami's has dum briyani until recently even though I've patronized them many times since their early days back in the old foodcourt at Northpoint. So it happened that in the last visit, we inquired about it and they mentioned that the chicken version is available on Fridays and Sundays while the mutton one can be had on Saturdays. Pro tip - go during lunch or even better, call them and reserve a set because they do sell out rather quickly.

The rice was packed with flavours. I'm not sure if I want to go back to their regular briyani rice again after having had this. Buried underneath those flavourful basmati grains was tender bone-in chicken thigh. And yes, that chocolate lassi. Tasted like it was frothed up with those Hershey's squeeze bottle chocolate but I kinda liked it. Seems like there're a couple of more things to look forward to than fried fish roe.

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.