Min Kee Hainanese Chicken Rice, Amoy Street Food Centre

We stumbled upon this chicken rice stall (#02-94, Amoy Street Food Centre, 7 Maxwell Road) one weekend, saw the queue and decided to give it a go. The queue wasn't very long, but there were apparently a lot of phone orders for a large number of take aways - hence it was horribly slow. This turned out to be fairly tasty - a stall good enough to be a reliable go to place but won't get me any cravings for.

Min Kee's rice was the greasy kind and had a darker hue than many - at first glance reminded me a little of Delicious Boneless Chicken Rice and Big Bird. The meat I gather is deboned for any particular part of the bird. While very tender and edible, wasn't particularly outstanding. I'm not feeling much for the chilli sauce. But hey, at least now I know where to get some decent chicken rice in this vicinity during the weekend apart from Maxwell.

Maiden England @ Colbar

Woah, the Iron Maiden Trooper beer can be found at Colbar. Supposedly developed by Bruce Dickinson. For you young 'uns out there, Trooper is a song by Iron Maiden from back in 83 about the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War in 1854 at Balaklava. The tune still somewhat rocks these days, albeit more to folks from their era. The beer? It's hoppy, ale-ish and rather easy drinking stuff. There's supposedly limited editions of the beer which is brewed by Robinson Brewery in the UK. But I don't think I'm gonna get lucky with those here.

Paik's Bibim, Tiong Bahru Plaza

I've just realized that the owner of this chain Paik's Bibim (#02-111 Tiong Bahru Plaza, 302 Tiong Bahru Road) is a Paik Jong Won who is also the guy behind Bornga. Anyways, I've eaten at this fast food bibimbap joint a couple of times and in the midst of all their offerings, found that I enjoyed their pork bibimbap. What appealed to me was the variety of the vegetables and the textures that they created in the mixed rice bowl flavoured with the bulgogi minced pork. Just the thing I would be looking for when I'm trying to evade all the other greasy options and trying to eat a little healthier. This bowl was quite good with or without their gochujang.

Kin Cow, Chinatown Point

You know what? As I was Googling for a little bit of information on Kin Cow (#02-34 Chinatown Point, 133 New Bridge Road, tel : +65 6514 9265) I realized that there's a whole lot of same stuff that's duplicated across the web. With a small handful of exceptions. So I guess the local Burpplers along with some of those "bloggers" (or should I call them influencers these days?) and those IG-ers are truly a product of this country. Authenticity represented at its best. Deft hands at little but Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V of press release notes, scoured web page information stained with borrowed old cliches. Much like a certain particular news channel or a partially pay walled online paper. Little wonder the state of journalism in this country when both the supposed pros and the amateurs suck at it. Let me not digress any further now that I've ranted.

Not going to be further parroting on what's already easily found on the web, I could only discover that the people who run it have a similar chain of restaurants in Thailand. That's my basis for giving this shop a shot anyway. While I'm not so familiar with Thai beef noodles, I've to say that these weren't too bad.

I'd do the briskets over the ribeye (above) any day because the former was a lot more tender and flavoursome. In a reversal of roles, the ribeye was a little chewy and had much less flavour even though it was laced with fat and much more thinly sliced. We added extra tendons and those were slurpy and tender. Both bowls we had were using different soup bases. The "dry" bowl tasted more herbal.

The egg noodles are good with the soup-less option because there's bits of lard and the chillis on the side which helps. The broth from the soup kuey teow, the less herbal bowl, had the flavour of rice in it. It's been a long time since I've had that.  

I always liked the Thai pomelo salad yam som o. Kin Cow's version, as with most renditions that appear in this country are much more refined than the street editions. But it's still nice with the flavours from the bits of dried shrimp, toasted coconuts and some bite from the pieces of raw onion; all tossed together with the sugar/fish sauce/lime maybe and the chilled pomelo.

I'm probably coming back again.

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.