No Menu by Osvaldo Forlino, Boon Tat Street

We had eaten at both Osvaldo and Forlino. The latter preceding the former. I guess No Menu (21 / 23 Boon Tat Street, tel : +65 6224 0091) is the natural progression after Osvaldo shuttered for whatever reasons. It's clear that family wants to do something down to earth for their food. From my personal observation, rustic and pricey. Rustic like Porta Porta, pricey like Valentino's. 

The theme behind the name of the restaurant is a dégustation styled experience in which a multi course meal of smaller portions is served. We went a la carte for this first visit.

Their bread was an in house focaccia. Damn this was nice. The wait staff was eager to bring seconds and thirds when we finished.

One of the reasons why the focaccia was going down fast and easy was what they call their spicy sausage from Calabria. In other words, nduja - a spreadable salumi made with pork parts and red pepper among other things. The other reason was their fruity EVO. 

We had vitello tonnato. Another item that made a good vehicle out of their foccacia.

The other starter was fiori di zucca - flower of zucchini stuffed with ricotta cheese. These ones were huge and wasn't what we were expecting. It was also the most expensive zucchini flower we've had. Two of them costing almost as much as what Valentino's charges for their grilled octopus tentacle.

The skin was fried to a nice crisp and on the inside, instead of a creamy texture, the ricotta was like hot milk. 

Pasta was cacio e pepe and squid ink. It was assumptious of them to split the plates for us and assumed that there was sharing going on. Not that there wasn't. But it would be appropriate for them to ask before doing so. While it would be considered thoughtfulness and a show of initiative if asked for, we didn't.

Not to digress further from the food, the cacio e pepe was disappointing. Not enough Pecorino nor pepper to live to its name and shame on that coming from Osvaldo Forlino. The squid in risotto on the other hand was really good. The menu mentioned there was lardo in it. While I couldn't specifically pick that out from the flavours, this could possibly be the tastiest dish of it's kind I've had. 

Dessert was tiramisu. Competent and brought back memories of the first time I had them years ago. But otherwise, not exactly outstanding or worth what they were charging.

No Menu is not cheap. Even though it is what they call themselves and what they try to sell, these guys actually do have a menu. It looked safe, traditional and not very exciting. And also expensive. That should have been impetus for what it is they do to be extraordinary which doesn't quite seem to be the case.

Reminder to self: I don't like the nasally voiced ang moh who picked up the call for reservations. Sounded condescending. The wait staff on the other hand were excellent.

The Betterfield, High Street

The Betterfield was disappointing and a waste of money.

In spite of truffle oil and truffle salt, their ultimate black truffle fries didn't taste very truffle-y. PS Cafe makes better truffle fries with just truffle oil.

The menu called this their ultimate seafood pasta. The standards were dismally low if these was an indication of anything ultimate from the restaurant. The seafood that were described included tiger prawns, squid, shredded crab, mussels, and scallops. The two tiger prawns were a little sorry looking and puny; we had maybe three rings of squid, shredded crab that barely registered texture, two mussels and a single tiny scallop. While the pasta didn't taste bad, it looked sloppy and the seafood appeared sad. For $35, it was criminal. 

I thought it would be fun to top up some Raclette cheese on the steak - the sorry looking steak which was supposedly Riverine rib eye. Didn't expect the steak to come tagliata styled too. The tastiest thing on the slate was the nutty torched cheese. And why the slate? It rattled every time I try to slice the meat. For $55, I'm putting this place on blacklist. Astons make nicer steaks.

They didn't even bother trimming the meat of the inedible sinews.

In retrospect, we could have gotten ourselves much better food in this part of town for what we paid here. To be taken into consideration as well, one could actually spend less and land a more satisfying meal. Note to self : NEVER come back.

The Daily Cut, Tanjong Pagar Centre

I've seen this The Daily Cut (#B2-16 Tanjong Pagar Centre, 7 Wallich Street) around but haven't actually tried their food until recently. I guess it would make things easy to just describe them as one of those places like Grain Traders. Albeit one that is a little less expensive, bigger portion for similar prices but less flavoursome. Service comes with a look like I owed them big time. 

I don't mind eating these if I'm in the vicinity but I'll definitely pass on the beef for protein the next time. They obviously didn't care that the meat they chose to put out were tough and sinewy.

Pho99, Amoy Street

This trip to Pho99 (57/58 Amoy St, tel : +65 6410 9600) was triggered by an unexplained bout of craving for some Vietnamese food. The truth is, there isn't much variety for Vietnamese food around as most of the places do the same things. We do have quite a few pho shops. Long Phung is just out of the way for me. I've seen the lunch crowd here at Pho99 so I thought they would be worth a try.

We had an order of their nui xào bò - macaroni with stir fried beef. It was tastier than it looked with all the fried shallots. A part of the appeal came from the fact that it tasted very homely.

We had pho bo too. Rare beef, sliced briskets and beef balls with smooth rice noodles. It's not bad. I just found the broth to be a little sweet and I was hoping for it to be more savoury. No real complains though.

And we also had some gỏi cuốn and chả giò. Summer rolls and fried spring rolls which were also pretty nicely done. The menu had described the latter to contain pork, prawns, beans, black fungus and yam. I'm surprised that they could stuff so much things in those rolls. I couldn't taste the meat, but I'm sure I got black fungus, yam and carrots. 

The sous vide Iberico pork jowl from Chalong

Here's back to our homegrown Thai/Japanese/French fusion charcoal grilled meat and rice shop featuring Spanish Iberian pork. 18 hours sous-vide Iberico pork jowl to be precise. Wow, this was nice. The tender strips of pork was fat laced and nicely charred. This pork jowl option came with a delicious Thai-ish sauce on the side that packed some heat too. I'm definitely coming back again. Two meat down with the gai left to go or until their dry aged prime rib actually arrives. 

Jade coin crodo from Da Paolo Gastronomia

I've just discovered the sugared and custard filled crodo from Da Paolo Gastronomia recently and rather liked them. That's led me to peeking at their crodo display whenever I happen by their shops and we saw this green icing glazed version which they described as jade coin. Heh! Green tea flavour it was, they mentioned. Apparently, Da Paolo isn't very good with working with green tea flavouring because we couldn't get much of that. I'm going to stick to the sugared and custard filled one for the time being.