Hong Seng Curry Rice (鴻森咖喱飯), Redhill Food Centre

Man, this sure was a satisfying plate. While I enjoy Hainanese styled curry rice, I wouldn't say that I'm a big fan of the most of them because I'm generally not a starchy sauce person. A number of these stalls have starchy looking curry/gravy concoctions.

What worked for me here was the absence of those gloopiness. This plate of curry rice from Hong Seng (#01-74 Redhill Food Centre, 85 Redhill Lane) featured tender stewed chap chye (braised cabbage), savoury chai poh (preserved radish) omelette, strips of meaty braised pork belly and salty (enjoyably so if I might add) minced pork balls. All heaped over rice that's drenched in their mildly spicy curry and braising sauce from the meats. Comfort food as local as it gets.

Dinnering at The Lokal

I just realized that the last time I was here was almost three years back. In retrospect, we were glad that we came for dinner because we liked the food.

What did we like? Pretty much everything we ordered this time. Starting with their creamy chicken parfait with lots of bread to go around and caramelised onions to pair with. There's even house cured pickles.

This was just called fried pork belly on the menu. There's also blue cheese, obviously some radicchio, quinoa, some delicious beetroots and prunes. While it might not be apparent from appearances, the pork belly was pretty tender underneath that crisp skin. Like the chicken parfait, portions were hearty and the food was delicious. Much bold flavours going on for this plate.

Here's cauliflowers three ways - fried, pickled and pureed. Tossed with watercress, ricotta and skinned almonds. Can you imagine that? Skinned almonds. All whipped up with some nice olive oil. Tasty.

The only main we picked up was their lamb chops which came with some spicy couscous, pomegranate and yoghurt. Served on a Staub, no less. Each rib was small, tender and grilled to a nice medium doneness.

Octopus pizza and tagliatelle alla bolognese from 2it & drink

My first octopus pizza. One with olives and potatoes and a little bit of parsley. I don't understand potatoes on pizza but I can't say that this wasn't tasty. Double negatives! O_o Would have been great if there were more of the octopus though.

Alla bolognese is something I generally avoid for reasons that I'm not going into in this post. This particular one from 2it & drink was actually kinda nice. I liked that the ragu was actually beefy rather than too tart from too much tomato concentrate. In all probability, I'm never getting anything close to my grail for ragu in this country but I honestly don't mind having another plate of this.

The Butcher's Kitchen, Suntec City

I have mixed feelings about this place (#02-472 Suntec City Mall, 3 Temasek Boulevard, tel : +65 9616 0111). But let's start with a positive note. I liked their Hawaiian pizza. It had thinly sliced fresh pineapples rather than the usual little chunks of the canned variety and the ham that they used was of a much better quality than most if not all the other Hawaiian pizzas. The crust was thin and light, not Neapolitan styled, but had sufficient crisp and I enjoyed it.

This was where the good feelings about the place kinda diffused. The restaurant presented themselves to be a specialist for meats. The various cuts that they were offering had their origins listed on the menu and it did look to be a proper grill joint. But we were given butter knives to work with the meat. Their rack of lamb, decent quality by the way, was doused in a brown sauce. I'm sure it's not just me but I would think that a meat and grill specialist would treat their produce with a little more respect by having the sauce on the side. Even Aston's knows better.

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.