CiBO Italiano, River Valley Road

CiBO (#01-01 Loft @ Nathan, 428 River Valley Road, tel : +65 6385 1310) I have gathered is run by the folks from Donna Carmela. An Italian deli/bistro incidentally similar to what the defunct Riciotti used to do years ago.

The menu has antipasti plates that one can choose from what they're selling at the counter. I hope to see some rotation there. Those mini peppers stuffed with goat's cheese were quite good. A nice catch hovering between the aroma of the peppers, pungence from the cheese and some sweetness. The baby octopuses were oddly kinda stiff.

There's a sandwich on the menu called puccia - apparently a savoury flatbread indigenous to the region of Puglia in Italy. This felt/looked/tasted like foccacia; stuffed with rocket, mortadella and some pickled peppers. The menu doesn't quite specify what goes into them so I'm guessing it's what they feel like for the day.

One of the uncommon occasions that vongole is featured in this blog. I love clams, I just never thought very well of vongole that's done locally from past experiences and that has perhaps rubbed off onto me for a very long time. This one was quite good even though the there was quite a bit of the residual tang from the perhaps, generous use of wine. Clams were plump and tasty. Wouldn't mind eating again.

When we ordered the carciofi fritti, we didn't expect the portions to be so big. While I'm no expert, this item felt Roman - something that's not such a common sight around these parts. And it was a lot easier to eat than they looked. The fried batter was thin and we don't get fresh artichokes so quite often around here.

Tiramisu here is ok. Not a bad one, but not particularly memorable neither.

Ju Hao, Tiong Bahru Plaza

I first noticed Ju Hao (#02-112 Tiong Bahru Plaza, 302 Tiong Bahru Road) when I saw them at Square 2 at Novena some time ago. From what I read, they were previously operating in the food court at Lavender and had worked with MOF to reinvent their business. 

The first thing that struck me while looking at the menu was the reminder of Din Tai Fung. There were enough similarities that one could be forgiven if they were to think them a clone of DTF. With the number of parallels that could have been drawn, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the kitchen people actually came from DTF. 

They are even priced quite similarly.

Here's some garlic spicy pork with cucumber thing. These aren't bad, but it's not exactly very mention worthy either. It's a lot less spicy than it looked.

Behold that pork chop fried rice. Doesn't it just look DTF? Well actually, there was a difference. Ju Hao is less heavy handed on the five spice marinade on their pork chops. I'm considering this a serious alternative though.

Even the xiao long bao looks similar, but one can tell that the DTF ones are made with more delicate skin and greater finesse with the folds. These above are actually salted yolk xiao long bao and they're pretty good. Blows the salted yolk sauce shit that's been going around out of the water.

That's some three treasure signature noodle. Not very tasty at all and their beef briskets were kinda tough. That "special" sauce with the noodles didn't taste so special. I wonder if restaurants these days even understand what the word 'signature' means. Note to self, never order this again.

Uncle Chicken, Havelock Road

If you recall the Uncle Chicken that I've written about previously, yes, this would be that same Uncle Chicken which has moved to the current premise (729 Havelock Road, tel : 1800 244 2536). The shop had shifted from Alexandra to Bedok and now an air conditioned place in Havelock. And wow, they even have a toll free line these days.

Inevitable comparison mode on, this pretty respectable but definitely not the same standards of boiled chicken that Sin Kee does. The bird was tender, but it's not the same degree of slurp off the bone tender. It seems that there's even soya sauce chicken to be had. This must be a first for the family linked chicken rice business.

To address the other two parts of the chicken rice trinity, Uncle Chicken's chilli packed some heat and lime just like how they did previously. But their rice seemed different. I recall that rice being quite similar to how Sin Kee does theirs but today, what we had was dry and the taste was quite bland lightweight. Which I guess might be a good thing since the chilli gets put to good use.

Prices sure have gone up though.

Pizzeria L'Operetta, Icon Village

I've been wanting to try the pizzas at Pizzeria L'Operetta (#01-78-81 Icon Village, 12 Gopeng Steet, tel : +65 6222 9487) for quite a while since...quite a while ago. Yes, they are run by the same people that gave us Enoteca L'Operetta. So that's finally come to pass.

We got ourselves a margherita di bufala which turned out to be pretty enjoyable. I liked that the tomato wasn't sharp. 

There was a chittara alla carbonara off the menu with mushrooms which tasted off though. Pun unintended. It was creamy, not so cheesy and lacking the depth of smokiness and pepper. As a cream sauce pasta, it wasn't bad. It just wasn't a carbonara.

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.