Otto's Deli Fresh, Raffles Holland V

We noticed this place (#02-01 Raffles @ Holland Village, 118 Holland Ave, tel : +65 6694 3291) under renovation some weeks ago. It's opened by a veteran chef, a Otto Weibel who is former director of kitchens for Swissotel The Stamford Singapore and Fairmont Singapore for 26 years. While he probably doesn't do the cooking, the person that he has hired to run the show in the kitchen looks credible. Profile says Saint Pierre, Portico Prime and LaFite at Shangri-La Kuala Lumpur. So that all sounds like it's going to be good. Right?

We were prompted with freshly delivered oysters and we yielded. These were briny and delicious.

We had their burratina roquette salad which I felt was so understated by the menu which only mentions jamón Ibérico de Bellota, an ambiguous sounding balsamic buerre noisette and a non existent cherry tomato chutney. The latter's flavour I'm glad, was non existent because the salad had absolutely no need for it. The balsamic butter sauce, a.k.a. dressing for the salad was impressive. I'm honestly not sure what's in it, but I tasted something buttery, balsamic vinegar and honey. Nicely tossed and with the creamy burratina and jamón Ibérico, it was wow! I'd eat this again.

Expertly done barramundi to showcase the quality of the fish. Just salt and pepper. Crisp skin with a crunch paired with moist and tender meat. Just like how they did it at The Naked Finn.

Lighting was exceptional, so here's another angle of the fish.

Another frills free and well done item off their grill was their Junee Gold lamb rump. The meat was grainy, tender and lamb-y with respectably etched char markings on the surface. If you like lamb and don't mind a bit of their gaminess, this would be good.

Otto's Deli Fresh has a nicely done affogato. Almost as impressive as the one at Senso. One can taste the strength of the espresso underneath the creamy foam.

We gave their Valrhona hot chocolate a go because it looked interesting and a number of people were having it. It's not bad. There was some salt to bring out the flavours of the chocolate and the hazelnut but it's not as thick as I imagined for $9.50. So while this was much more complex, it didn't quite pack the punch of a hot chocolate at say...Starbucks.

Revisiting Baba Wins'

There seemed to have been some recent shakeup with the menu at Baba Wins'. The meat and potato stew which we liked from the last visit seemed to have been taken off amongst a number of other items.

On the other hand, there was also bunch of new specials which they claim are Peranakan heritage dishes which are not commonly found these days. Some of these dishes were items owners used to cook at home. There was a special called Assam China. It's a pork based tamarind curry with fermented soy bean (tao cheo) and salted fish. This was delicious. Made us eat more rice than usual.

We also tried their ayam buah keluak, something that certain people would consider a benchmark dish for Peranakan cooking. While I've had some tasty buah keluak dishes in the past, this one didn't taste quite like how I remembered the flavour. Something about this dish was quite muted and I couldn't really put my finger to it. An unfortunate weak link from what we ordered tonight.

Something that we've never had before was their chinchalok omelette. A pan fried omelette that's cooked with fermented baby shrimps and chopped string beans. The flavour from the chinchalok was a little more subtle than I had imagined but it was a nicely done omelette with a light crunch from the legumes. Not too greasy and the flavours were pretty clean.

The other pretty kickass dish was sambal lady's fingers with chopped prawns. Again, well done by not being excessively oily and the flavours of the sambal was outstanding. So good with white rice.

Some lemon beer from Rang Mang Shokudo and fried chicken thoughts

I saw lemon beer on the menu at Rang Mang Shokudo and decided to try it. It's regular beer that has the lemon slushy added to it. So it's like Tiger Radler that's less sweet.

Meanwhile, the sauces that came with their tori karaage were wearing thin. To the point where I thought having the fried chicken without anything else is probably the best way to eat them. None that I've tried so far was particularly outstanding and most of them tasted like they have a mayo base that formed the most of the flavour profile. Does anyone think the curry sauce taste like the MSG laden Twisties? No?

Chalong, Guoco Tower

This thinly shaven Black Angus sirloin over rice from Chalong (#B2-21 Guoco Tower, 7 Wallich Street) was tender and pretty damn good. So was the accompanying red wine sauce they had and the soft boiled egg with molten yolk. Those mushrooms that they had on the side were also delicious. I can certainly see the appeal of what they're doing as a single serve comfort food with sufficiently hearty portions.

I'm going to have to come back and try their sous vide Iberico pork jowl which they claim is their best seller. How the story went was that the owners have had a similar pork dish in Chalong, Phuket. They were so impressed by it that it inspired their grilled pork jowl and they named their shop after the region.

Bikinis from Park Bench Deli

The edible kind of bikini after the small Spanish sandwich. This came with jamon, a couple of cheeses and mayo maybe. It was hot, soft, salty and cheesy. Works with beer, for breakfast or both together.

And while at it, one last dip of their Hot Butter Ball before it goes away.

Tomi Sushi, Millenia Walk

This was my first time at Tomi Sushi (#02-12/13 Millenia Walk, 9 Raffles Blvd, tel : +65 6238 1123). I've seen them around for a while but had for some reasons felt that they're a little expensive. Every now and then they have a maguro fair where the tuna items goes at discounted prices. We took advantage of it to see if the food was good. It probably matters to some that these aren't hon maguro. Just yellowfin tuna.

Some aburi mentaiko to start. Spicy, salty and excellent with drinks.

Apparently ankimo is in season so we had to have some. I always find it difficult to resist these creamy and delicious foie gras of the sea harvested from an ugly-demon-fish-with-a-bioluminescent-bait. :P

What interested me was their maguro zanmai. It featured the almost all the usual suspects of tekka maki and the pairs of akami, chutoro and otoro nigiri. Their otoro was sublime and I guess the rest were okay. Actually I was disappointed with the chutoro because obviously they don't provide very good cuts which some places do. Also, I'm not so sure these shari had the right ratio of vinegar to rice.

This platter would have cost more than half a hundred dollars if not for the maguro fair and honestly, the portions were kinda tiny.

JPassport holders get to redeem a free pair of aburi toro nigiri for every meal sets ordered. These were pretty good.

There was chi ayu tempura on the seasonal menu so we ordered some. The bittersweet fish was crisp and delicious.

We also had maitake tempura. I've recently just learnt that these mushrooms are also known as Hen of the Woods.