Lawry's this year

Lawry's has new hires for the service staff it seems. One in particular was oozing the lack of motivation. But their prime rib is still nice. Expensive no doubt but it's the best we've got even today.

Back in Dehesa

It's been a while - almost two years since we were at Dehesa. JP wasn't in the kitchen today but we still had pretty good food.

We tried the crispy tripe that we missed the last time. Crispy with a little bit of chewiness flavoured by chilli, romesco and garlic chips. 

The duck hearts are still amazing. I will still eat them again in a duck's heartbeat.

Dehesa has also gotten themselves a successful plate of flavours through olive oil marinated octopus on anchovy flavoured mash covered in torched lardo.

Their steak tartare was a flavour of their own - perhaps not as bold as the French ones but still delicious the same. That piece of golden brown thing on the side are fried potatoes. Dehesa's rendition of patata bravas. And it's really good fried potato.

I liked the salted padron peppers. A bit of smokiness from the char and the aromatic flavour of the pepper. 

This was a different way of doing the ox tongue from the last time. While I liked this, I prefer the previous method.

There was figateddu on their specials board. A sausage made with pork meat and liver and according to them - blood. There was delicious richness from the blood paired with a saltiness through the coarse textures. Yum! And yeah, more of their crispy fried potatoes.

We tried their croqueta. The insides were very creamy and tasty but these guys were seriously running out of jamon iberico.

Last plate of the night was pig's skin tagliatelle. There was a lot of bite from the cubed pork and pig skin "noodle" - the latter which gave off much flavour and collagen-ic stickiness the more you chewed them. 

If there was anything that I thought could have been improved, it would be for these guys to update what they currently have on menu. The one on their website is out of date and it's quite obvious that they don't bother updating on social media. While I occasionally enjoy surprises, I enjoy even more knowing what I'm going to eat.

Bistro Du Vin, Zion Road

Les Amis’ restaurants have generally been a good bet. Granted that we haven’t been to all of them so only the ones we’ve had are spoken for. We’ve had a couple of good meals at Bistro Du Vin at Shaw. It’s been a very long while since. This was a first visit to this particular branch (56 Zion Rd, tel : +65 6836 6313).

I recall past experiences with the bread in most French bistro places as something to keep your mouth busy with butter and nothing much to forward to. Those things probably only excel at being mops for sauces. The bread here was warm and crisp. Much better than the teeth wrecking hard shelled baguettes that I’m used to associating them with.

Delicious creamy foie gras terrine with figs from the specials on their board. Am happy eating them with their baguette once we ran out of toast. That green sliver on the side is pickled chilli which actually works with the rich foie.

We got ourselves a sardine tart. Brittany sardines, the menu said. Sardin-y in a good way the fish should be. That came with a tasty tomato base which I unexpectedly enjoyed and a nice buttery pastry.

The memorable thing about their lobster risotto was the lobster and those beetroot & baby carrots. Those beetroot tasted like those French beetroots that Le Bistrot Du Sommelier serves when they're in season. Lobster was sweet and quite liberally salted. But I didn't quite like the stock for the rice. While crustacean-y like it should, there was something in it that I didn't quite take to. Avoid in future.

Pan seared sea bream was really good. Tender firm flesh underneath crisp skin. Even the ratatouille was enjoyable, not too tart.

No life at Machida Shoten

Here's a post without life at Machida Shoten. Apparently, it doesn't have to be all about life. The lack of it tastes pretty good too.

To celebrate no life, we eat mentaiko. Mentaiko with rice and butter!

After folding the mentaiko and butter into the rice, add a little of their fragrant black pepper. For a little more awesome-ness, a splash of shoyu.  

These guys do have very nicely done fried rice. I think it's good enough to give Din Tai Fung next door a run for their money.

Not forgetting those shrimp gyozas.

Even more food from Tian Fu Ren Jia (天府人家)

I've decided to compile this from a few visits. If anyone was wondering, I am not affiliated with the establishment nor do I have any stakes in them. 

辣子鸡

La zi ji is a dish of Szechuan origins. It's basically deep fried chicken stir fried with dried chilli and some other stuff. Chicken was nicely fried without being excessively greasy. The heat from the dried chilli slowly built up but I have the impression that it is localized for a palate that might not be used to a great deal of spiciness. YMMV. In any case, this was quite tasty.

酸耳芥蓝子

Pretty decent stir fried kailan they do here.

麻婆豆腐饭

That's mapo tofu rice. The mapo sauce had a distinct flavour of fermented beans - which was a good thing. The heat was moderate and I liked the aroma. It's a however a totally different thing from Chen's which was a little spicier and had a much stronger hit from the Szechuan peppercorns. Still, this was leagues better than the local variety which is honestly not very good in my view.

黑椒鸡肉炒饭

That's black pepper beef fried rice. I had the idea that it was beef with a sweetish black pepper sauce but it was really just black pepper in a fried rice with minced beef. It wasn't bad - in fact, it was a better fry than what the majority of the cze char stalls can muster these days. I thought it needed a little more salt or fish sauce. Not much flavour coming from the beef too. 

咕老肉饭

One of the dishes these guys do differently from what we're used to here is sweet and sour pork. The pork comes in slices rather than chunks. The slices are also pretty thin so the texture of the meat is mostly crisp from the batter with a bit of chew. I can't say that these were not nice.

尖椒肉丝

We ordered this a couple of times. This first time had the bottom of the plate pooling with the sauce and oil. The second time didn't have any of that at all. In any case, this was stir fried strips of green chilli and pork. Very tasty. The chillis were wilted enough to be tender and without the rawness. Again, it's a dish where the heat builds up. But nothing to tear over.

酸菜肥肠饭

This was described as sour veg pig gut rice on the menu. Which of course refers to pickled/salted lettuce and pig intestines. The use of pig gut as a description of the intestines in Chinese restaurants always amuses me. Yum.  

糖醋鱼饭

Pretty decent sweet and sour fish rice here. The portions of the fish appear to be much more generous than those from our local stalls. There're also less aromatics/vegetable fillers.


And yet even more....updated 1/8/2017

花卷/锅贴

That's a hua juan on the left, a steamed bun that's normally twisted in appearance. The Chinese variety comes with scallions while the local variety usually doesn't. It was a little hard for a steamed bun and less sweet than I thought. Those guo tie are fine but don't expect them to be in the leagues of Jin Hua.

木耳炒肉饭

This was stir fried pork and black fungus - came with pretty generous portions of black fungus. The sauce was light tasting. I'm not sure what it was but the flavour was rather generic. In retrospect, this would be something I wouldn't mind eating if I'm looking for something lightweight.

担担面

Here's the most diluted looking dan dian mian I've come across that's at 小辣. I had initially thought little of it but after a few mouthfuls, it kinda grew on me. The broth was light, savoury and had flavours from the chilli oil and a bit of peppercorn. Kinda reminded me of a thinner counterpart to their mapo tofu and I wouldn't be surprised if this was their generic "Szechuan spice" base for a bunch of their dishes. Not what I had in mind for dan dan mian but it wasn't half bad. I suppose I'm just used to those with either a thicker broth or a nuttier gravy.

豉汁鱼片饭

This was sliced fish with black bean sauce. Not exactly the black bean sauce I had in mind because it didn't look anywhere black. There wasn't much of those fermented black beans to be found and the flavours were kinda thin. In contrast with their sweet and sour fish rice, this had much less fish. Now I know I shouldn't be getting any of their dishes with black bean sauce in the future.

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.