Chilled tomato soba with fried eggplant from Yomoda Soba

That's the current tomato soba from Yomoda Soba. Unlike the previous version which uses regular sized sliced tomatoes, the current bowl features skinned cherry tomatoes infused with the flavour of yuzu. Cool huh? That and tomato puree in their smoky dashi along with fried eggplants. Totally refreshing.

From what we had heard from one of the staff, their chicken tempura has been reduced to the skinny fried chicken today because people had been complaining about their overly greasy tempura batter. I don't remember the batter being that greasy but what we had today doesn't really qualify as tempura anymore. They weren't even that bad in the first place.

Revisiting Nanjing Impressions (南京大牌檔)

Here's back in Nanjing Impressions because we kinda liked what we had the last time round.

That's the beauty porridge which we had previously. It was the first thing that arrived just like the last time.

We ordered their shredded duck fried noodles. This was pretty good. The noodles were full of bite, sweet and smoky at the same time. I must admit that there was more than a slight reminder of char kuey teow. Albeit one that's much less greasy.

The menu has this as tofu in shrimp sauce. It wasn't any particular shrimp sauce that most people from this part of the world would be familiar with. There was something offal-ish/liver-y about it with a sweetness just on the edge, possibly from the shrimp roe. Personally, the flavour was quite a new experience for me.

One of the items that intrigued me was their baby rooster stew with fried sesame buns. It tasted just like regular chicken. Those fried sesame buns weren't as fragrant as I had imagined them to be.

Lunch at Crackerjack

We came to Crackerjack for....well, lunch. With their brunch menu that is.

Ordered their bone broth after hearing about it and seeing pictures of it. Not impressed. The broth was too sweet for my liking and I was expecting something savoury.

Their brunch/breakfast plate was ordinary. The cauliflowers were nice. Bacon was dry. Sausage was boring. Scrambled eggs unexceptional. That slice of sourdough was just that, saved by the salted butter.

What I liked was their bourbon mashbill grits. Now bourbon mash bill are a bunch of grains that are cooked and then fermented to make bourbon. I'm assuming that this dish of grits uses those grains. The server however mentioned that there is bourbon in the grits. We tasted none of that mentioned bourbon. 

But this was tasty. A slightly cheesy kind of tasty. Those brown stuff on the top are crumbs of chicken scratchings.

The other mention worthy was an overpriced drink that they call coconut horchata. The menu says coconut water, lime zest, brown rice and cinnamon. We had one sans ice which I think is the only way this should be had. Ice would have watered down this concoction far too much and the flavours while very pleasant isn't something that holds up to dilution.

Pura Brasa, Tanjong Pagar Centre

We've noticed the renovation boards up at Pura Brasa (#01-16 Tanjong Pagar Centre, 5 Wallich Street, tel : +65 6386 9678) weeks back while wondering what kind of new Spanish place it would be. So today we found out. I came here with relatively low expectations. There was no reason to expect them to be special or different from what we already have.

By the way, the restaurant serves Estrella Damm on tap. It's the regular version and not the Inedit brew created by Ferran Adrià of El Bulli. I found the Inedit to be a much smoother drink.

While I have mentioned keeping expectations low, I entitled myself to certain pre-conceived notions. I was thinking that the patatas bravas might have been deep fried, a little smaller and crustier; made with mealy potatoes rather than waxy ones. Just like those patatas we had at Tapas Club or La Tapería. This was not to be. These were okay. Wouldn't order them again though.

The menu mentioned unbeatable quality at unbeatable prices for their jamón Ibérico. While I can't say much about unbeatable prices, I'm pretty sure it doesn't quite come across as unbeatable quality. The pictures on the menu looked much better than the ones that they served. One could possibly construe those pictures as....misleading?

While we're getting the flavour from the jamón, it wasn't so impressive. Guess that's why there's no proud declaration of pedigree on that menu. The accompanying pan con tomate was pretty nice though.

I'll not be coming back here for jamón Ibérico.

We ordered a vegetable timbale with goat's cheese. The cheese appeared in the form of a thin crumble spread on too much vegetables. We requested for more cheese and the restaurant obliged. Still not getting enough punch from those extras. The vegetables were not bad but nothing to write home about. Guess what am I not ordering next if I come back? 

Fortunately, they did a pretty tasty octopus. The meat was tender and there was a good amount of salt flakes to get the flavours going. However, I do feel that a bit more char for the crust and aroma would have improved it. A healthy drizzle of good quality EVOO would have made a better finish. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed this. The potato that came with it had a nice smoky flavour and bits of what I thought to be pork.

That's a Black Angus sirloin. Don't judge me for ordering that here. It's okay. Edible stuff. They got medium rare at medium, but these guys are a Josper Grill braggart and not a steakhouse so I let it slide. From the thinness of the cut, the meat wasn't impressive looking. Again, it's nothing like how it appeared on the menu. Another reminder is served at this point to not order again.

Machida Shoten, Japan Food Town @ Wisma Atria

I've been wanting to try Machida Shoten (#04-40, Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6262 3214) for quite a while. Let's just leave it at the lines being discouraging for most of the times we were there. We happened by this time and saw that there were still some empty seats.

The noodles in this shop are of the thicker variety. Something akin to the Chinese yellow noodles. I picked the hard option for doneness. Anything lesser would have been a little too soft for me.

We had a shio bowl. Not just any shio bowl but their rendition which comes with a small pat of butter and some black garlic oil. The broth was creamy and flavourful to the point that I thought it would have passed off as tonkotsu easily. But then again, shio is just a flavouring while the base of the broth was probably made with pork in the first place.

Machida Shoten is known for their Yokohama styled shoyu tonkotsu bowl. Also known as ie-kei styled ramen pioneered by a ramen-ya from the said city back in the 70s. From what I gather, it's a "style" of its own these days. Right down to the three sheets of seaweed. A first for me for sure. We had one to try and found the shoyu flavour rather pleasant. Between this and the shio bowl, the latter had packed a bit more flavour. Didn't see that coming. 

They had Iberico pork on the menu. These were surprisingly large ribs marinated in some sort of sweet soy sauce. A significant portion of those ribs we had gotten today were fat as well. Meat was reasonably tender and quite easily taken off the bone.

What we thought was pretty good were their shrimp gyozas. They contain only chunky pieces of shrimp. No pork or any vegetables. I thought they were pretty good. Will come back for them again. I very much prefer these over those at Keisuke's Gyoza King or Gyoza-Ya.

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.