Brunch at MeatSmith

This was a brunch at Meat Smith. Everyone succumbs to brunch. Especially businesses. We have the lazy weekenders. I'm one myself so I don't judge. And smart businesses that caters to those lazy weekenders. So Meat Smith does brunch too like most other ang moh places that survive in the harsh rental economy of the country. But unlike many of the clones of clones, Meat Smith stuck with their own identity. One with a Southern and bbq personality. 

Their brisket and eggs were nice. Those briskets were fall apart tender and rather flavourful especially along the fatty and charred edges. If I had to criticize, it'll be the doneness of those sunny side ups - they weren't over easy. 

We liked their biscuits. A little dense, a little sweet and also crispy. A little more generosity with their country gravy is definitely in order but otherwise no complains with the accompanying porky sausages and scrambled eggs. 

Another weekend at Huber's Butchery Bistro

We had lunch at the bistro because we paid a visit to the butchery. I wanted to order their leberknedelsuppn again, but the Oktoberfest menu is no longer being served. #sad

These guys do pretty good lamb chops. It's the same Australian lamb that they sell at the meat section. The cooking was quite spot on, nothing fancy and that's usually how we like our lamb chops.

I've seen people order their spicy Italian pork sausage which is served in a brioche like a hot dog. Sensitive word for tubed meat in between buns for our neighbours up north these days but I digress. The sausage tasted quite like chorizo, albeit a less intense version of it. The brioche wasn't very buttery and I guess it was just too dry and crumbly for a hot dog bun. It started falling apart at almost every bite.

Huber's plum cake is pretty good. Quite a bit of the fruit on a light cake served with cream on the side. This stuff was pretty much the crumble that we had in their Oktoberfest menu sans the crumble part.

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.