Mala xiang guo from Tian Fu Ren Jia (天府人家)

I've never had much experience with mala xiang guo with the exception of a pretty unpleasant one once in town years ago. I thought this one was pretty tasty. These guys don't have the variety that many of the mala xiang guo shops in town have but it's definitely works for me as a convenient quick fix. The middling heat (中辣) was manageable, possibly turned down a notch or two to suit the locals. I like the combination of savoury heat, salt and spices. There's few options for meat, some bean curd products, vegetables and mushrooms. I can see us coming back.

Scaled by Ah Hua Kelong at Bar Stories

Ah Hua Kelong is a local fish farm. They've a couple of cooked food restaurants showcasing the seafood they work with and Scaled (55 Haji Lane, tel : +65 98300117) is something new these guys are trying out with styles and flavours that are a little more borderless and progressive. The last part is relative though. 

If anyone's wondering why the picture up there looks like a bar, it is because they're sharing their premise with Bar Stories.

The menu is a literal handful of small plates and big plates. From what they're described, everything is still pretty experimental. The above is smoked sea bass pate. The texture reminded me more of rillette than pate. It's smoky as the name implied but the portions were a little tiny to go around those toasties. Those pickled cucumbers that came with them were more sweet than sour and I found them quite addictive.

There's prawn with seaweed butter. Too little butter in my opinion because I couldn't taste any of it. Their house pickled konbu's quite nice. Prawns were a little skinny and somewhat lacking in sweetness for such small prawns. 

The only big plate item we tried was their confit seabass with hummus, caramelized onions and lemon dill vinaigrette. The pairing of hummus and seabass was quite unusual but I couldn't say that I didn't enjoy it. Textures were mostly soft and creamy with crunchy bits from....I dunno, cookie crumbs? More dill would be nice. Onions tasted like raisins. I liked this.

There was a complementary bowl clams in sake going around. The broth was pretty tasty but nothing that's not already out there.

Bar Stories make their drinks based on the flavour profiles that one requests for. I'm sure they have some formulaic templates for common requests but there's nothing on the menu. They drinks are made according to how you think you want them, how well you can articulate that and how the bar guy interprets. I got some yuzu stuff with torched rosemary.

Mixing udon at Tamoya Udon

Tamoya Udon at Liang Court has something call Mixing Udon. It's much like a mazesoba - or a mazeudon if you would. A collection of dry ingredients to be mixed with the noodles. Spicy minced chicken, chopped onions, scallions, dried nori, a bit of bonito and an egg. Here I've topped mine with additional konbu and bits of tempura batter.

Toss, add crushed sesame seeds and eat. I thought those onions provided a welcomed sharpness to the flavours. If anyone got reminded of those Nagoya styled mazesoba from Kajiken, this was pretty similar in taste. 

Revisiting Gerry's Grill

I realized that my challenge with ordering at Gerry's is trying to get something that looks good that doesn't contain pork.

There was a measure of success with that from the green mangoes with bagoong. Bagoong as I've recently learnt is a condiment made with fermented fish or krill. It's sweet and salty and has a shrimp-y flavour akin to what one an taste in belachan or rojak sauce. The bagoong a complement to the sour from the green mangos. I'm thinking it's something that'll also be great with rice.

The porking began with sisig, the almost universally recognized Filipino dish of sizzling chopped pig's face on a hotplate. The menu understates by mentioning pork cheeks as the ingredients but we're pretty damn sure it was more than just cheeks in there. Perhaps snout and skin and ears. 

We had an order of their adobong puso rice which was steamed rice with strips of tender pork belly in adobo sauce wrapped in banana leaf. Sweet and savoury and just a tiny bit smokey with pepper. This was pretty good.

And a green mango shake for that make believe ending.

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.