Grandma Ban Mee (老妈子板面), Amoy Street Food Centre

Maybe because of the name, I had expected the stall (#01-07, Amoy Street Food Centre, 7 Maxwell Road) to be manned by an old lady. As it turns out, a less than middle aged couple were the proprietors. 

I've never been much of a ban mee person. Never understood why people would cumulatively waste so much of their precious lives queueing for it repetitively. Or how they could enjoy something that was served steaming hot in the sweltering heat of our climate. This one is different. It's dry and there's some edgy looking chilli paste in it. Along with shredded wood ear fungus, marinated mushrooms, fried shallots, dried shrimp and dried anchovies. And what looked like a poached egg. This bowl packed a helluva umami punch if you asked me.

The heat from the chilli was "more bass than treble" if you know what I mean. It had a presence from a slow burn, isn't particularly sharp or prickles so much as far as edgy looking chillis go. But it was fragrant and had enough heat to make one sweat. Played nicely with that umami flavours going on from the other ingredients. I picked up some of their sambal belachan to go along  - added a nice tangy zing and more heat. I'm liking this.

Cumi Bali, Tanjong Pagar Road

I've walked by this shop a number of times and wondered throughout all those times if they were good. Yes, it's one of those things and we finally dropped by to find out. According to their website, Cumi Bali (66 Tanjong Pagar Road, tel : +65 6220 6619) has been around for 21 years. From when those 21 years came about I don't know but by my deduction, it's probably been a while since that claim was made. 

Don't think these fellas are very much into updates or the internet. The site is still saying things like 'Best viewed on Internet Explorer 8 and above' so I gather that it could have been 6-7 years back since the last time they updated and apparently they don't know that these days Chrome's the boss.

Sayur lodeh (coconut curried vegetables) was quite nice. I think there was quite a bit of shredded coconut sediments in the gravy - the flavours of which were quite dangerously addictive over white rice. Vegetables were stewed till soft.

I've had countless fried potato balls and these ones are possibly the largest and freshest tasting ones I've come across. They're known as perkedel on the menu, which is pretty much the same thing as the local bergedil - the eggwashed deep fried potato patty. These ones tasted like they were made to order; had a faint crisp on the exterior and didn't feel overly greasy for something that had just gone off the deep fryer. Nice.

One of the items that Cumi Bali is known for are their sate madura. As the name implies, it's satay which is done in the style similar to how it is done in the Javanese island of Madura. These are made with chicken. Definitely the largest satays I've had - ever. I'm pretty sure these are the largest satay in the country. Look at how these big ass skewers are relative to the fork! And because these were glazed with plenty of kecap manis, it was sweet, smokey and caramelized with burnt ends. Damn these were good.

There was some sambal belachan was served in a little stone bowl. This thing made the addictive gravy from the sayur lodeh even more addictive.

Cumi Bali is also apparently known for their cumi bali - a namesake dish of barbecued squid with a nutty rempah which tasted like satay gravy. It was also the most expensive item we had for the night. The tentacles of the squid are chopped up and stuffed in the body. While it was relatively tender, I thought more char would have really up the ante on this dish.

Numazu Uogashizushi, 100AM

Another sushi shop has opened up and this time at 100AM under the new Itadakimasu cluster of restaurants by the Parco Group. According to Parco, Numazu Uogashizushi (#03-K1, 100AM, 100 Tras Street) is one of the few sushi restaurants to have coveted auction rights in Numazu fish market located at Numazu Port for premium quality seafood that will be flown to Singapore directly from the market. Hmmm....really? This place looks middling level for sushi. I'm not quite feeling the premium quality.

Here's a maguro set and some random aburi items which we got. The tuna based set wasn't as expensive as the one we previously had from Tsukiji Sushi Takewaka; featured more generous portions of fish, knife work with little finesse and what appeared to be quite amateurish sushi making. I thought the chutoro nigiri that came in the set were barely not-akami. The accompanying chawanmushi was quite nice, but the kanijiru was actually pretty bad. The crab added nothing to the flavour of the soup and the meat was mushy and fishy in a bad way.

Those aburi nigiri items were decent. Actually, those ebi and hotate were pretty good. I suppose this shop looks like it would be fine for some not so serious/traditionalist kind of sushi. For some reasons, this place reminded me of Ryoshi Sushi Ikeikemaru.

Som Tam, Orchard Central

I've noticed this place (#08-13 Orchard Central, 181 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6238 6872) for a while but for some reasons didn't pay attention to them probably because of that generic sounding name. As it turns out, Som Tam is managed by the Jus Delish Group who happens to run Gin Khao as well as a few other places.

I wanted to try their som tam because it was their namesake. The papaya salad arrived in a jar and came with what tasted like a Chinese plum sauce. The som tam sucked. There wasn't much of the fish sauce or citrus going on. For some reasons, it was really garlicky as well which threw us off. This was definitely the worst one we've had.  

Their tom yum "Black" was kinda nice. The colour came from squid ink that was added. The broth had some sweetness from the onions and seafood, was a little tangy and also had spikes of heat from the chilli. Those prawns were deliciously sweet.

This was their satay gai. Chicken satay with a sweet glaze that tasted like it could have come from Tori-Q. I'm not seeing the Thai fusion element here because this appeared to be simply pseudo Japanese. There's even some Japanese sesame dressing to go along with them which would have resulted in a flavour overkill with the already sweet glaze on the chicken.

What unexpectedly turned out pretty good was their sautéed beef pad thai with truffle oil. Yes, truffle oil. This era's most overused ingredient which likely does not even contain actual truffle. This plate of fried rice noodles however, was actually quite enjoyable. The truffle aroma never took main stage. In fact, it was just hovering in the background throughout the dish - even after the crushed peanuts, dried chilli and lime. Liked it better than I thought I would.

Here's some grilled yellowtail collar. The menu called it kama shio so I expected some salt. That salt was virtually non existent but the Thai shrimp chilli (tasted quite like our local sambal belachan) that accompanied it paired off pretty well. Actually, the other thing that complemented this grilled fish was that sauce that came with the som tam.

Dessert was a chocolate chip basil gelato with D24 durian paste. Don't knock it till you've tried it because it's actually pretty good.

Hungry Bazterdz, The Arcade @ Collyer Quay

One cannot help but notice the Tarantino-esque slant to the name. This was a halal coffee and sandwich shop down at The Arcade (#01-06 The Arcade, 11 Collyer Quay, tel : +65 6816 3213) not ten seconds away from Good Old Taste. I had meant, a serious sandwich shop - the kind that have been popping up in recent years properly educating the blessed how hearty sandwiches should be.

I had a Mighty Cheese Steak. Their four cheese sauce was cheesy in a Cheez Whiz manner. Kinda similar to the one at Park Bench Deli with a couple of differences. Their hoagie option comes in toasted baguette with a nice light crisp instead of the seemingly softer bun from PBD. Where PBD was ahead of the game came from their thinly sliced beef which wasn't the case here. These here weren't so thinly sliced nor were they sufficiently tender that each bite involved pulling at the meat and trying not to spill them all over. I might come back another time seeing there's a couple of other sandwiches which looked like they were worth trying.

A semla from Konditori

We made the trip down to Konditori (33 Bussorah Street, tel : +65 209 8580) because we knew that they had semla - possibly the only place in this country that has semla since Ikea doesn't seem to have that anymore. In the end, we were kinda disappointed that the bread wasn't flavoured with cardamom like how it should have been. The cream didn't taste quite like how I imagined it and the only other flavouring that was involved was some almond paste in the bun. That one from Ikea was actually better tasting. What a bummer!