A paneer briyani from Saravanaa Bhavan

We needed to go Mustafa again and we stopped by Saravanaa Bhavan for a later than usual dinner. Sadly, their rice meals which I was looking forward to are only available in the late morning/afternoon part of the day so I ordered this paneer briyani because I didn't really feel like anything else. This turned out to be much better than I had expected. There was quite a bit of fragrance from the spices in the briyani, some nice warmth from the heat and I thought there was even a measure of smokiness in there. Awesome, so now I know this would be a place I can get a fix the next time I feel like having another.

Soup Restaurant (三盅兩件)

I've eaten at Soup Restaurant infrequently throughout the years. For some reasons, they have never been mentioned, so here're some thoughts.

Their samsui ginger chicken is their mainstay dish. Poached chicken, lightly seasoned after cooking and served with their ginger sauce and lettuce. Lettuce serve as wraps for the chicken. I quite like it, but I've never had it with the ginger sauce. As a testimony to their preparation, even the breast meat is tender.

Though the place is called Soup Restaurant, I've never thought much of their soup. In recent times, they've started offering coconut soup. Ingredients which are cooked with coconut juice. These are quite nice. The one above was featured with black chicken.

The standards of their sweet and sour pork varies, but the cut of the meat used was quite good. The fat is layered in the meat. The better outlets do pretty nice ones - crisp on the outside, reasonably tender meat and the sauce isn't overly sweet or excessive. In the other outlets they are......simply not mention worthy.

The vegetable dish which they are quite well known for are their stir fried sweet potato leaves. They taste like most Chinese stir fried greens.

I was introduced to their fried fish belly just this year. Often acknowledged as one of the favoured part of the fish. The fish belly is deep fried for a crisp exterior before a stir fry with the sauces which are absorbed onto the surface of the fried fish. This stuff is pretty good.

Tofu. Rough on the outside, tender and smooth on the inside. Quite nice.

We tried their mushroom bao because it was curious. The buns were made to look like mushrooms - similar to the char siew bao from East Bistro. Soup Kitchen has up the ante by making even the stem of the mushrooms. They looked more like stubby knobs than actual stems. These were filled with chopped mushrooms.

Because there are a number of outlets, cooking standards vary. I haven't visited much of them but if anyone were to ask me, I'd recommend the one at Toa Payoh Central. 

Back in El Mero Mero

A quick one for a recent revisit to El Mero Mero. We skipped the starters and headed straight for some of their tacos and Josper grilled mains.

But it didn't mean that we wouldn't take advantage of some of their magaritas during the happy hour. The one with the dried orange in the background was done with mezcal, tasted like it was more potent and was smoky.

These are their Kurobuta al pastor sans cilantro. From what I could gather, the fillings are supposed to be vertical spit roasted meat and shaven off much like shawarma. Didn't look like it, the flavours were spicy with some heat and in my opinion, wasted with so much ongoing flavours on Kurobuta pork. While I rather enjoyed the tacos, I didn't think there was a point to the choice of meat.

And those are a second take on their Dorper lamb tacos which we had previously. Delicious stuff. 

This was our first roasted poblano pepper. Looked a little progressive if you know what I mean.

There were grilled corn in the pepper and the creamy stuff might have been made with corn. Can't be sure of it. Couldn't figure out what was the white powder but I'm guessing powdered cotija cheese?.

Grilled octopus. The corn cream that it was resting on tasted like it had some cheese in it which made it really delicious. Those black smudges on the plate were black garlic paste, also nicely paired into the dish. It seems that there's been some good grilled octopus dishes going around the restaurants in recent years.

Another shot at Tino's Pizza

The last time we were here, we noticed that they had a lamb pizza so we came back to see if it was any good. It's our first lamb pizza. This time round, we picked their "Neapolitan" pizza base to compare. Interestingly because of that base and the choice of the lamb pizza with its seasonings, this pizza which was chewier bready-ier tasted like a naan - or possibly even something northern Chinese like a bread from a region like Xi'an. What could have been improved were the actual thin slices of lamb which were dried out and almost devoid of the meat's natural flavours.

There was peanut butter fries with bits of bacon. This was better tasting than I had imagined.

Keisuke Kani King, Cineleisure Orchard

So I finally got down to Keisuke's Kani King ramen shop (#01-03 Cathay Cineleisure Orchard, 8 Grange Road, tel : +65 6262 6968) in town and gotten myself a bowl of their crab broth ramen with rich soup. Medium flavours and oil with hard noodles. From what they had mentioned, their kani broth is made from swimming crabs and chicken bones. I wonder what are actually those swimming crabs that were used. With all that flavour and sediments, this broth was some butter, a splash of milk and a dash of brandy away from being an actual crab bisque. I thought the crustacean-y flavour were pronounced and quite enjoyable.

For what it's worth, I didn't think so much of the similar kani ramen bowl I had previously down at Keisuke Tokyo which could have been the predecessor to this current rendition. That might just have been the version 1.0 of things just like how their ise ebi ramen could have been a market test for the viability of the Lobster King.

Revisiting Brasserie Gavroche

An overdue revisit to Brasserie Gavroche. Have been wanting to come back for a while now.

The bread is pretty nice. There's a hard crusty exterior above the soft chewy insides. Flavour is wheaty. Good with the butter, plain while mindlessly chewing or to mop up sauces from their plates. Tonight, they were constantly topping up as soon as they saw the basket empty. We went through three baskets. 

We had a mâche salad with lamb sweetbread. I don't do salads very often but this I had to order because, sweetbread. The exterior of the offal was nicely browned, Malliard reaction creating the so tasty flavour which by the way, paired up nicely with their onion confit vinaigrette on the greens. Délicieux.

Onion soup was kinda boring though. I think more cheese would be great and there was a lot more sweetness from the onions than savoury from the other ingredients. The stock didn't taste like it was made with beef broth. Having said that, it wasn't a bad onion soup. It just wasn't my kind.

Welsh lamb saddle was very nicely done. The accompanying pink garlic confit was sweet and delicious while the mash potatoes were creamy. Delicious jus too. I'd eat this again easily.

Here's their rump steak made with Irish grass fed Angus. One of the cuts of beef that I haven't ordered very much or at all. It was definitely not ribeye tender, but a lot more tender than I had imagined. Meat was grainy and the beefiness was of a lower and perhaps.....less ethereal quality. I think many people would simply dismiss it as being gamey flavoured. Not bad but it was just good for an experience. The green peppercorn sauce was nice though.

I didn't think this was a good tarte tartine. The pastry was flat, more like filo rather than puff pastry and it wasn't very buttery at all. The apples were nice but that was all to it. Maybe these guys just aren't great with desserts. I remember feeling let down the last time too.