Revisiting Piedra Negra

We finally came back to Piedra Negra. And wow, it's been four years since the first time. Time does fly.

More ceviche from them. This one is named Mango Madness done with red snapper and sans cilantro. Sharp and refreshing but I'm sure it could have been improved if the mangoes were a little sweeter to balance the acidity in the ceviche.

These are tacos de camaron - shrimp tacos. Beer battered shrimp it was, pretty tasty but nothing much to write home about. Certainly didn't expect to see star fruit in tacos.

That's octopus stewed in its ink with capers, olives and onions. Chopped up bits of octopus that is. The flavour of the stew was amazing. I never knew that capers would work so nicely in there with the octopus flavours thinking that they might be overpowering - which in this case they were not. It's a pity the portions were a little small. The rice on the side was good too.

And then cochinita pibil, a Mexican slow roasted pork of sorts served with white corn tortilla. I Wiki-ed it and found out that the orange hue of the dish comes from annato, the seed of the anchote tree which also imparts some flavour. It tasted a little nutty and I thought it could have been awesome with more salt. I realised that after adding the pickled onions, habanero and some lime, it worked too. 

Fucking Hell at Artichoke among other things...

I ordered the beer because of the name. If anyone's wondering, it's a light golden lager from Germany named after an Austrian town which is actually called Fucking. The bottled brew was little bitter, light and pretty easy drinking. 

We had their babaganoush while waiting for the rest of the food. It's Artichoke's babaganoush so it's beyond the regular babaganoush as befits their contemporary Middle Eastern methods.

I was recently just thinking about how much octopus plates have been going around a number of menus of restaurants in recent years. Those tentacles have apparently entwined around the menu here as well - Artichok-ing out a plate of grilled octopus on truffled hummus. This octopus was very tender, very delicious sheathed under the fragrant char on the surface. Things that make you go hmmm. Very nice pickled peppers too.

What we really headed down for tonight was their smoked chicken which they had explained would be served in six pieces. Those six were much smaller than I had imagined. The preceding sentence should be interpreted as portions for one guy. But the bird was deliciously tender and smoky. Worked with that toum or not.

Dessert was their yoghurt muhallaebi. A creamy pudding/custard. Served with poached apricots, orange blossom honey, pecans and those brown crispy stuff call kataifi. This actually tasted like panna cotta. With the crunch and flavour of the kataifi, it kinda transformed into something else which reminded me of kunefe which are essentially made with those too. But we couldn't taste any of that orange blossom honey.

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.