Chicken rice and Hokkien hae mee from Chatterbox

I've finally tried the much talked about chicken rice from Chatterbox. I think the taste was okay. Okay as in passable quality and flavour but not outstanding kind of okay. Chicken came in pretty generous portions for something that's single serving. It'll be my first and last time because I expect much more out of $27 than just decent. 

We tried their Hokkien hae mee. I'm going to call it not bad at all. The plate of noodles was slightly saucy, properly stir fried without any sogginess and we're seeing lots of ingredients in there. There're scallops and huge prawns which one will never find in the hawker renditions as well. The chilli that they provide on the side was pretty good. This costs as much as the chicken rice if anyone's wondering so while I kinda liked this, I don't think I'll be having them with any regularity.

Pancake Boss, Bugis Cube

The portions that Pancake Boss (#04-15 Bugis Cube Mall, 470 North Bridge Road) makes for their martabak were unexpectedly large. Fillings were much more generous than the one from JTown Cafe but something was off from the way the prepared these. The chocolate rice and cheese shreds barely melted even though this was freshly made on order. I need to go back to JTown again to be sure which is the better.

Venue by Sebastian, Shenton Way

The name of the restaurant refers to Sebastian Ng, former chef of the defunct Ember. Venue (#01-02 Tower 1 Downtown Gallery, tel : +65 69049688) is his current place - a venue (yeah) that's more casual and ambiently clinical. The menu has diversified/restructured compared to the more traditional setup at Ember and I suppose I could say that it's also more aligned to what people like from the perspective of portions.

That's the breaded lamb cutlet with romesco and some balsamic. I found the lamb flavours a little weak. I'm getting some of them from the fat and not so from the meat. Otherwise this would've been quite tasty. No excessive grease from the frying and no complicated flavours contending with one another.

The Jerusalem artichoke soup was good. Creamy and sweet. Also nicely paired with the crispy duck bits that also served as the salty counter to the sweetness of the soup. Good for returns.

We had these things called lamb riblets which are kinda like satay. Flavour is very Middle Eastern and the meat was very tender. As non-descriptive as it may be, I'm going to say that it's nice. 

Great angel hair pasta with shaven bottarga and mentaiko. Those eggs provide a salty/savoury/umami accent against the main flavour profile from the sorrel pesto. The noodles aren't green themselves but seem to be well coated in the pesto - which tastes quite like shiso. Tangy and refreshing. I'd eat this again.

For those of you who have been to Ember, might recall that they're pretty well known for their pan seared Chilean seabass with truffle yuzu butter sauce. The good news obviously at this point is they've brought that into the menu at Venue. The dish of firm and flaky seabass was as delicious as I remembered it.

The mushrooms with toast were supposed to come earlier. Due to an order misinterpretation, they came after the seabass which was incidentally a good thing since we now have bread to mop the yuzu butter sauce clean from the plate. These mushrooms were chopped up, doused with truffle oil. No idea what kind of mushrooms were used.

Here's grilled octopus on a bed of pureed bean and some burnt butter with capers. I'm running out of adjective so it's nice. The tentacles had a bit of bite which I thought was a good thing even though I too enjoy the very tender renditions.

Burnt cabbage with shaven Parmigiano Reggiano and chive oil. Our token greens/fibre for the meal.

And finally the dessert which is called apple "pie". It's more like caramelized apple in some crispy pastry. Filo maybe? With crumbles and an eggy tasting rum and raisin ice cream. The latter was quite good. Could definitely get that rum and alcohol flavour. As a whole, I liked this.

Hitsumabushi to hotaru ika from Man Man

Spring has arrived in Japan and the firefly squids are finding their ways into the nets of fishermen and eventually into the market or a restaurant. Man Man has whipped up a seasonal bowl of hitsumabushi with the hotaru ika. I tasted some shiso there with the squids.

Satay babat and nasi ayam sambal at Geylang Serai Market

That's a mix of tripe (babat) and chicken satay up there from Geylang Corner Food Stall. Those tripe skewers were tender and tasty. 

I followed the queue on this for a tray of nasi ayam sambal with ayam lebih. The stall was simply called Nasi Ayam Sambal (#02-129). The sambal, which seemed to be a signature of theirs was a little nutty, sweet, spicy and salty. While it was quite atypical of Malay sambal and stood on its own merit, the flavours were overwhelming on the rice which was already pretty tasty on its own. I thought the fried chicken was passable but also atypical of most ayam goreng, the meatier parts of the bird are a little dry. I'd pick Mat Noh & Rose for nasi ayam over this anytime.

PS. Cafe, Ann Siang Hill

PS. Cafe has been around for a number of years now. I remember it used to be just a cafe at Project Shop Blood Brothers. Besides the setup at Dempsey, this (45 Ann Siang Road) is the only other location amongst the branches that one can actually consider to be a sanctuary by virtue of location. I can't say that I'm a fan but occasionally, we end up here. 

They do Bloody Mary here. This one was made with some lapsang souchong infused whisky and the thing that suckered me into ordering one was the bacon and blue cheese stuffed olive. Yes, just one olive and I couldn't even tell it was blue cheese. Bacon was oddly dry and grease free. No lapsang souchong flavour as far as I could tell. Sometimes these wannabe fancy editions are just that. Wannabes. Yes, I'm measuring this against my yardstick.

There's a section for Asian food on the menu. Ordering Asian here is akin to doing so at the old Island Cafe or Chatterbox. The rendition one gets will never be the same as the hawker centre/coffee shop. It will be spruced up. And it will cost easily several times more than the "street value" that many would consider exorbitant. 

This was an oxtail nasi goreng. It's a Malay styled fried rice with a chunk of oxtail. Like I mentioned earlier, one will be hard pressed to find this outside because there is no such dish. There is nasi goreng and there's oxtail whathaveyous. But not as one.

I'll trim further verbosity here. Oxtail was not bad. The nasi goreng was a respectable fried rice and not just an attempt at nasi goreng. What really impressed me what their house made achar. There was enough acidity from the pickling. The flavour was reminiscent of those that my grandma used to make and there's even string beans in them. I've never seen string beans in achar before.

Their hae mee here was exceptional. The broth had a rich depth of crustacean sweetness. Flavour was impressive and the bee hoon has all that captured in its collective strands. The bowl contains more prawns and thinly sliced pork than the "street rendition" and was honestly much tastier than most of them. There's quail eggs and lots of kang kong. I'd eat this again.

We had affogato because this was a pleasant hideout and we wanted to avoid going back out into the sweltering heat so soon. The espresso for their affogato was thick, bitter but not so aromatic as coffees go. So it kinda works with the ice cream but doesn't quite work for me as a coffee.