Joo Chiat Beef King, Tiong Bahru Market

I got enticed by the beef tendon kuey teow from the Joo Chiat Beef King stall (#02-35 Tiong Bahru Market & Food Centre, 30 Seng Poh Road). It was only much later that I recalled that I had ordered exactly the same thing from that branch at Chinatown Food Centre previously. Well, one thing for sure, their soup was consistently quite lightweight. I would have liked a beefier flavour but I've nothing against this one. I thought those rice noodles were quite satisfying. The only difference between this bowl and the previous time was perhaps, the tendons this time round wasn't as tender. I didn't get any radishes in my bowl today as well.

Note to self, avoid the coffee from the coffee stall with a long queue nearby (#02-33) and also the one from the stall call L21(#02-21). Bad coffee.

Serangoon Gardens Fried Prawn Noodle, Redhill Food Centre

Did these guys (#01-51 Redhill Food Centre, 85 Redhill Lane) used to come from Serangoon Gardens? Anyways this was quite a delicious plate of stir fried Hokkien hae mee. I'm getting a hit of the prawn flavours from the gravy that's nicely coated over the noodles. Chilli has got a good amount of heat going on and the whole plate plays nice together with the squeeze of lime and the fried lard. Will definitely re-visit. 

Magic Shrooms Burger from Wolf Burgers

This was not bad from Wolf Burgers. The Mushroom Swiss that's better than the Mushroom Swiss if you catch my drift; that comes with also sautéed onions and some truffle oil.

Traditional Hainanese Curry Rice (中国街海南咖哩饭), Redhill Food Centre

Let's do a little comparison on the food between this stall (#01-03 Redhill Food Centre, 85 Redhill Lane) and Hong Seng. The gravy and curry over here had much less punch and their stewed cabbages were much lighter tasting than the garlicky rendition from the latter. I thought the pork chops over at Hong Seng were tastier while the squid from this stall had a more springy texture. If you're confused as to which might be better, you're on the same track as I was. While I possibly feel that Hong Seng had stronger flavours going on and maybe are a notch up on the whole, I didn't dislike this at all and would have no qualms giving this another go.

Which might not be a bad idea since there was enough dishes that I was spoilt for choice.

Menya Sakura, Boat Quay

Menya Sakura (69 Boat Quay) had not even been on my radar until I came across the 1 for 1 vouchers for their foie gras ramen from JPassport. What was their foie gras ramen you might ask? It's apparently something that's on a limited run featuring sous vide foie gras wrapped in chicken charshu. Soft chunk of liver that was creamy and chicken that was super tender. There's pine nuts, some mushrooms, menma and watercress in this bowl.

I read that the broth was a mixture of chicken and shoyu. What I could definitively tell was it didn't taste like the sum of its parts. I might have imagined that there was something slightly herbal in the flavours and couldn't quite related it to any of the regular bases that most of the ramen use for their broth. Not getting any of the yuzu that's supposed to be in there as well.

I liked the chicken with foie gras and the ajitama but I don't think the rest of the bowl made much of an impression.

Re-revisiting Keria Japanese Restaurant

We're back in Keria. Today we had an interesting otoshi. It's a shumai and the stuffing was some sort of tofu with seafood flavour. A seafood flavour that was reminiscent of those frozen Ajinomoto shrimp dumplings that I used to eat as a kid.

We had some kanpachi sashimi.

And of course, their stir fried mentaiko cabbage too.

Keria has some delicious stir fried gyutan with negi. Those savoury sliced tongue were chewy and beefy, contrasted by a mild sharpness of the raw negi and the sweetness from the stir fried ones.

Their mini steak don came with some kind of wafu dressing. Sweet, tangy and a hint of ginger.

A bit more chewing had the fat in the beef melted and the flavour came through.

There was a spaghetti with aonori (green laver), some dried chilli and karasumi. The latter is dried mullet roe, the Japanese equivalent of bottarga. Interesting combination of the delicate laver, umami saltiness from the karasumi, garlic and a very mild heat from the dried chilli.

Unfortunately, their hamu katsu was a bore. It's a ham katsu that was so thin that there was possibly more breading than the ham which tasted like the cheap pink variety.