Komala's Fusion Restaurant, Syed Alwi Road

We needed to be at Mustafa so we dropped by for a late dinner at Komala's Fusion Restaurant just across the road. This branch (87 Syed Alwi Rd, tel : +65 6444 0444) of the Komala's group of restaurant actually has table service. A man can order and pay without having to go to the counter. A man does not need an order chit.

I couldn't tell what was the fusion portion of the name referring to but if I had to venture a guess, it's probably the Chindian offerings that they had. Which was strange since many Indian restaurants already have Chindian on the menu.

We had dahi puri. These were just passable in my limited experience. Certainly did not beat the ones from the neighbouring Raj or Kailash Parbat. I suppose there was much more of the yoghurt than any of the other flavours going on and maybe I prefer the yoghurt to also be more chilled.

What we liked was their paneer fried rice which was from the Chindian section of their menu. This was actually better than most of the Chinese fried rice around. The aroma from the cumin and wok, the texture from the basmati rice and bits of vegetables; it was not bad at all. Pleasantly surprised. I think it would benefit from chunkier pieces of the paneer though. If anyone's familiar enough with Komala's, their mint chutney which comes with their dosai works pretty well with the fried rice. 

Nothing (not really but...) like a really smooth chilled plastic cup of sweet rose milk to beat the heat and to wash down the food.

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.