Tiong Bahru Bakery, Raffles City

We're generally not big on this place (#B1-11 Raffles City, 252 North Bridge Road) even though we've stopped by a couple of times for bites and coffee. Maybe it's because that I don't eat here much that I didn't realize that I should be asking them to heat up my baguette when I ordered one. I didn't so they didn't. I just thought that it might have been good practice for them to ask if we would like it so. 

Anyways it was cold and quite hard. There was barely enough butter so I had to ask for extras. This doesn't have anything on the one that Cafe Gavroche serves. Kinda sad that I can actually make comparisons where they have actually underperformed for something so simple that it doesn't even requires much skills to assemble. By the way, that matcha almond croissant doesn't seem to have any green tea taste at all. I got suckered into trying after seeing phrases like 'a delightful invention overflowing with mouthwatering matcha goodness' floating about. 

Ryo Sushi, Orchid Hotel

There are few things about the almost year old Ryo Sushi (#01-06 Orchid Hotel, 1 Tras Link, tel : +65 6443 3463). The chef is named Roy, an anagram of Ryo. Hahaha. There are only omakase sets for dinner and the restaurant terms itself as a sushi diner. I have no idea what a sushi diner is.

Here be their $98 sushi omakase.

Zensai was some warm edamame with salt.

And some soy marinated hijiki.

Then came the truffled onsen tamago with ikura. The first of courses with ikura.

While I understand that these not so freakishly small wooden spoons are in line with the aesthetics of the restaurant, they are not the best tools for eating the egg.

Sliced fishes are laid out before the assembling of the sushi.

The first piece was tai with a squeeze of lime and a brush of shoyu.

Followed by ika with some black salt. They refused to elaborate on what that black salt was and we left it at that.

Next we shima aji with a brush of shoyu and some yuzu pepper.

Then kanpachi with just shoyu.

Aburi nanban ebi. Sweet and delicious paired with a nice char aroma from the torching.

Aburi hotate with salt and a squeeze of lime. Another sweet and delicious that's also paired with the char aroma.

Aburi kinmedai. Yummy.

This was a sliced up Ishigaki gai. Something seasonal. The clams were restless before they were shucked and were still in their final death throes, squirming slightly when I was taking the photo. The flesh was a little crunchy and sweet.

Akami marinated with shoyu and a light sprinkle of yuzu zest. It's a little different from the simply shoyu marinated or non marinated tuna that we usually get in our nigiri.

Then otoro, again with a brush of shoyu. This was sublime when the fat from the tuna belly melted.

The first of two gunkans we received in the course was ikura. Also the second of the ikura item that they served.

The second was uni. This was very nice.

Then a kani temaki. I couldn't identify what was mixed in the minced crab meat. I had originally thought it to be kani miso, but it didn't taste like those and the restaurant refused to comment on what it was.

The finale/highlight of the sushi omakase was a mini uni rice don. Uni that was crushed and mixed with the rice along topped with a few slivers of sea urchin, more ikura and some freshly grated wasabi. Very nice.

It all ended with a light clear soup.

I thought that there wasn't a dispute to the quality of their fishes but I could also see how they could price themselves like this and still make money. Frills are minimal and the fish were carefully portioned.

Yet another night at One Night Only

We tried the meat loaf this time round. For perhaps the first time since we've came here, we weren't impressed by the food. Oh, the corn bread and creamed corn were still delicious - it was just the meat loaf. It was relatively bland and I suppose the texture reminded me of a poorly made meatball. For the first time in a long while, I found something that tasted better with ketchup. It's like that.

Good news is, their shrimp étouffée is still as good. I didn't get a photo of their strawberry milkshake but it doesn't appear like the usual pink shake. They've blended frozen strawberries with vanilla ice cream so it looked pretty much like their vanilla shake. We had that malted too.

More food from Tian Fu Ren Jia (天府人家)

We found ourselves back here for more dinner. Yeah, we got ourselves another order of those sour and spicy potato strips on rice (酸辣土豆丝饭) again. Something savoury about those crunchy potatoes that made them so tasty when you're hungry.

芙蓉蛋饭

That's their fu rong egg rice. There's apparently nothing inside their fu rong egg except some spring onion leaves. No lup cheong, no prawns, no undercooked strips of onions or bean sprouts. Just mostly egg.

干煸四季豆

Their fried green beans with dried chilli is pretty good. There's actually bits of minced pork in there as well. The beans were thoroughly cooked with a soft crunch. Not as salty, spicy or oily as one would generally expect from these Chinese cooking.

鱼香肉丝

The other item we had was simply called garlic sauce shredded meat. Both the English and Chinese name on the menu doesn't quite describe the dish which is shredded pork - with potato strips, wood ear fungus, chopped garlic, chilli and vinegar. Pretty appetizing stuff that's good with rice.

Spring Court (詠春园), Upper Cross Street

I recall reading somewhere that Spring Court (52-56 Upper Cross Street, tel : +65 6449 5030) is the oldest Chinese restaurant in Singapore. We must have passed by this area a few hundred times while being none the wiser that that the establishment held such accolade. To be fair, there wasn't any indication that it was so as they had been set up in another location back in 1929; that location doesn't exist anymore. Moved a few times before settling in the current premise in the 21st century.

The restaurant charges for stuff like wet napkins and pickles. Personally, I'd pay for those because I like their pickles which are made with sliced radishes and lotus roots. I suppose those agree with me because there's quite a bit of sugar that's gone into them to ease up on all the sour from the vinegar. Their particular balance works for me. Not forgetting, they do a pretty good fermented bean chilli sauce too. Note to self, chrysanthemum tea here is kinda thin.

Their roasted chicken stuffed with minced prawns is one of the dishes that I thought was rather nicely done. The chook looked fried rather than roasted. Minced prawn is layered under the crispy skin and meat.

Spring Court is known for their poh piah. These were expensive and huge. Are these supposed to be filled with prawns and minced crab meat inside? Because I don't think I got any. Each slice of the roll were two large mouthfuls for me, packed with stuffings. The stewed radish/vegetable stuffings were pretty tasty and I'm quite sure it's a unique recipe of their own since it doesn't quite taste like the regular ones. Our spring rolls were also pretty wet today so I guess they didn't drain the stuffings properly.

Along with their poh piah and prawny chicken, this cabbage with dried scallops is also part of what's listed as their signature dishes. I caught a hint of ginger in those soft cabbages but this was otherwise pretty good. Those dried scallops were so tender.

We got a serving of their lala beehoon. That reads as braised rice vermicelli with clams. I believe those are Manila clams. The noodles as one might have guessed have soaked up all the flavour from the stock that was used to braise them. Didn't taste so much of those clams in that stock but it was packed with flavour the same. This item is something that's not listed on the menu but can be requested for.

There's a whole bunch of other items that looked good, but we only had so much room. Will likely be back.

Hunan Cuisine Restaurant (密斯湘菜馆), Mosque Street

Hunan cuisine, also known as Xiang cuisine is known for being spicy. The comparison that comes to mind would be with Szechuan food which is also reputed for their heat. The chillis/peppers and their application onto dishes from these regions work differently from what I understand. The former is suppose to pack more direct heat while Szechuan cuisine which is famously associated with the mala element is more nuanced.

Hunan Cuisine Restaurant (7/8/9 Mosque Street, tel : +65 6225 5968) obviously serves Hunan food. By the way, the location is right where the old Teochew institution Lee Kui used to be

We had a pork tripe stir fried with garlic shoots and chillis. Both the red and yellow variety. We had opted for the least spicy option (小辣) but it was still quite a bit of heat to handle. To their credit, there was a nice umami with the dish that made it very addictive even with the heat. Sweat inducing heat that is. The chilli, garlic shoots and strips of pig stomach formed a medley of textures. Awesome dish to be had with white rice.

And we had dumplings. These were rather ordinary. I had the impression that Chinese dumplings had thick skins but these hadn't. There was supposed to be vegetables in them but I could only taste pork.

That's stir fried green peas with dried pickled mustard (梅干菜) and chilli. The flavours were unexpectedly much better than I had imagined. There was some aroma coming from the peas, a nice aromatic saltiness from the mustard and  heat from the chilli. 

The restaurant has double boiled mutton soup. We ordered it sans ginger and cilantro/coriander because I wasn't about to let them ruin the flavours.

The heated pot of soup was a little milky, peppery and just a little bit herbal. Bolstered with bit of heat from slices of chilli, cloves of garlic, some meat and gelatinous sheets (凉粉?) which had soaked up the broth. We were also getting that mutton flavour in the broth so this was nice.