Paik's Coffee, Tiong Bahru Plaza

We've seen this coffee section just on the side - back when we visited Paik's Bibim and we've had their espresso before. Granted it looked like a rather run of the mill kind of place that sold various types of iced coffee drinks and didn't look nor smell like it did serious coffee. We stopped by one day for some more of the espresso and tried their salad bun.  Which was mushier than I had expected. Not that it tasted bad. It tasted like the generic Japanese kind but I suppose a dryer potato salad would have made quite a bit of difference. Before I forget, this place sells pretty good espresso. That's a double up there bound to perk pretty much anyone up.

Fish & Chicks, Cineleisure Orchard

We didn't like this salted yolk fish and chips at all. It was a waste of time, money and stomach space kind of bad. The fish was mushy and that sauce (and fries too) was forgettable.

Trying more stuff at Tsukada Nojo

We managed to return to Tsukada Nojo at another one of those times when there wasn't a line out at the front. The restaurant was still pretty filled up though. And yes, this was exactly the same place as the last time in Chinatown Point.

This time, we tried the nikumaki onigiri with cheese. That was basically a rice ball wrapped in pork belly and topped with some torched cheese. This stuff was pretty delicious. One could just wrap the leaf of lettuce around the rice ball to eat.

We also tried the regular tori nanban after having had the spicy one the last time round. The difference was that this wasn't spicy. That was me being Captain Obvious.

The noodle option this time round was what was described as 'beauty noodles'. I don't know what that was exactly or if it was green tea or spinach that coloured it.

Tasted the same as the egg noodles the last time round. Some of the green colour seemed to have bleached into the broth though we didn't detect any change or addition of flavour.

Nasi lemak from Toast Box

I'm afraid I'm about to do the inevitable comparison again with a recent eat for this nasi lemak from Toast Box (#01-110 Tiong Bahru Plaza, 302 Tiong Bahru Road). I thought this wasn't too bad at all. What could have been improved was a little more salt for the flavouring in the rice but it was otherwise, personally, a more satisfying eat than The Coconut Club. Well, it's a bit more satisfying. This one had nasi lemak sambal which wasn't too shabby but possibly because of the savouriness, the other sambal which is normally reserved for their laksa works with this rice nicely. They could also work on toasting their peanuts.

Not that this was that much cheaper given all considerations.

More from Sari Ratu

We were so taken in previously by the curried beef tendon from Sari Ratu that we came back for more of them. And more of other items as well.

Other items like their begedil/pergedel (eggwashed and deep fried potato patties) and telor dadar (omelette).

They do a very nice chunky sambal goreng too. The cubes of bean curd and tempeh were much larger than what I'm used to seeing in most Malay cooked food stalls.

And tender sweet brinjals.

These are their sambal hijau/merah. Green and red chilli....well, salsa would be a rather accurate word to describe them rather than sauce. The red chilli had an amazing depth of smokiness and much less heat than I had imagined while the green chilli was a little more tangy. Both were great with the brinjal, begedil and white rice. They charged a dollar fifty for it and it's worth every cent.

So other than the starfruit juice, we finished up with some tel botol. I've seen these bottled tea around before but never had them for some reasons. Today's a first time. These tea are unexpectedly smoky tasting.

Eat Chicken Rice, Koufu @ Cineleisure Orchard

At $8.90, I couldn't resist trying the truffle chicken rice from Eat Chicken Rice (Koufu Food Court, B1-01 Cineleisure Orchard, 8 Grange Road) and finding out for myself what it was all about. Even though I had some idea how it would probably taste like. I suppose I was spot on about the truffle that they used which was of the jarred variety and that the chicken while tender would not be slurp off the bone tender since these are the smaller non-GM-mutants - which most of us aren't so used to having. The chilli was lime-y, garlick-y and a little ginger-y at the same time while packing a respectable heat. Soup on the side was also kinda nice.

So what did this all mean? I felt there were too much flavours going on for the truffle chicken rice. Wanting to taste the truffle meant no chilli and the chilli was actually kinda nice, so something got plain wasted there. I didn't think it made much sense to have the soy/sesame sauce ladled over the plate that contained the rice since things would definitely get wet and mushy. Also I've had $4 chicken rice, good chicken rice by the way, in town that felt like it had more meat that was more satisfying so I'm not driven by much at all to pay $8.90 unless something was truly compelling.

So what did that all mean again? I'm not sure. I might not mind giving them another go if I'm there, but I don't think they would be worth any special trips down to the basement of Cineleisure.