Thai Gold Food, Sunshine Plaza

Here (#01-14 Sunshine Plaza, 91 Bencoolen Street, tel : +65 68831575) be affordable home styled and tasty Thai food. When I mentioned home styled, I am describing the style - it's not meant to be a metaphoric abstraction that many people use for the sake of using because they don't understand what it means.

Normally the salads are the first to arrive because of the preparation time. But they got the salad order mixed up and we ended up with the yang moo (grilled pork) first.

Their pad krapow moo tasted very homely - unpretentiously tasty but needed a bit more salt. I think we liked the one from Diandin Leluk better for the flavour for the krapow moo.

I've never seen green curry fried rice in Thai restaurants around before. This one from Thai Gold Food was actually quite good - even though the flavour wasn't as robust as the punch from an actual green curry. It would also be the first time where I would describe such a dish as licorice-y from the basil. Embedded in the slightly damp fried rice, were also chunks of chicken and Thai eggplants.

I liked their yam mamuang. It was good after a spoonful of sugar and more than a few spoonfuls of crushed peanuts. Much tastier than the rendition that Sawadee Thai serves. 

If there was anything Thai Gold Food didn't do well at, it was their iced tea. I'm actually surprised this was lacklustre. These days, it's not so difficult to find a better representative of this beverage as it was some years back. 

Hajjah Mona Nasi Padang, Geylang Serai Market

Believe it or not, this was our first time at the current Geylang Serai Market. My last memory of the market was the old single storied place by the road - which if I remember correctly was at a different site? Anyway, since it was a first time, we were a little overwhelmed by the options. As chaos theory fate would have it, we ended up at Hajjah Mona (#02-166, Geylang Serai Market and Food Centre, 1 Geylang Serai).

Which also lead to my first urap. Aside from my first urap that is. This salad was more raw and herbal. There were bean sprouts, wing beans, something that looked like sweet potato leaves and some herbs which I couldn't recognize. I don't think all that rawness worked for me and it was precisely because there was some cooking of the vegetables that enjoyed it previously. But we managed to finish up the whole plate with help of the nutty sweet and spicy gravy from the quail eggs.

We had curried tripe - a curry that was rich and flavourful with coconut. That gravy was awesome with rice.

There was paru goreng too. In case anyone didn't remember, these are fried cow lungs. They aren't weird in flavour or texture and are more delicious than the looks suggest.

These were the quail eggs I mentioned earlier. Just quail eggs in a nutty/sweet/spicy chilli sauce.

Bonta Bonta, Japan Food Town @ Wisma Atria

I gather that Bonta Bonta (#04-39 Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Road, tel : +65 62623207) is a rice specialist that uses kinme mai - a rice from Japan that is processed with a patented buffing technique that helps preserves the nutrients by retaining the nutritious sub-aleurone layer. It is supposed to taste better too but I couldn't detect anything special from the rice which they served with their kaisen dons. In fact, it tasted ordinary.

The seafood for their rice bowls were pretty decent quality but not top notch if you catch my drift. These guys are rice guys anyway so I guess pretty good was good enough. That botan ebi had some deliciously sweet head fat and the uni they served turned out much better than what I had imagined in my apprehension. I may just come back another time.

White asparaguses and purple potato at 2it & drink

We returned to 2it & drink must faster than I thought we would. This would be largely because of the white asparagus season and we were pretty impressed with their white asparagus pizza the last time.

Today we had those asparaguses with tagliatelle in a butter sauce. This was amazing. The sauce even had the aroma of the asparagus. Pasta had great texture while the vegetable was tender and sweet with its asparagus-y flavour. Something not to be missed as long as they are in season.

That's their lamb shank with purple potato mash. Another good call here. The shank was tender but not fork tender. There was a nice flavour on the meat flavoured by the jus and some bits of fat. The mash was pretty tasty. I wished it were bigger though.

Profiteroles for dessert. Cream inside, not ice cream. Enjoyed this.

Timbre+, Ayer Rajah Crescent

Dinnering at Timbre+ (73A Ayer Rajah Crescent). I'm seeing that the hawker centre style of their setup resonates well with a lot of people. Myself included. Did anyone notice that in spite of the big ass fans and additional ventilation, this place isn't particularly better ventilated than many hawker centres?

We got some salted yolk wings from Two Wings. These deep fried wings were dunked in their salted yolk sauce before they were served. These were not bad. A little greasy though.

Here's a shrimp po boy from Dancing Crab Shack. At least that's what they call it. 6 fried shrimps and some coleslaw between buttered brioche. I wished they gave more shrimp. That buttered brioche made it all good though. While we enjoyed this, I don't think I'm getting it again. 

Big Bern's American Grill (from the original owner of Botak Jones), has what they call a lamb cheese steak po boy. Something they're saying is a first of its kind. Which I thought was a cool idea conceptually. The sliced lamb appeared to be sautéed with onions and mushrooms. The sauce was cheesy, had a bit too much dried oregano and the lamb flavours were barely discernible. Still we enjoyed this more than a certain cheesesteak than we had recently.

2it & drink again

A revisit. These guys have a nice salumi board. Even though it's pretty much the usual stuff - salami, mortadella, speck, and prosciutto di Parma - it was delicious. Especially good with their bread that's been doused with some of the olive oil.

There was white asparagus pizza from the specials board and it was pretty damn good. The mild flavours of those asparaguses and its sweetness came through in spite of all the cheese. With a few twists from the pepper mill, this was easily one of the most enjoyable pizza I've had in a while. The restaurant even did their spaghetti carbonara upon request, without cream. It turned out a wetter than I had imagined but I thought the flavours were quite good. Just needed a bit more pepper.