Tonkotsu Pink from Tonkotsu Ikkyu from Ramen Champion

Ramen Champion has a new outlet at Clark Quay Central (#03-97/98, 6 Eu Tong Sen St) which operates a little differently from their other premises. There are actually wait staff around that take orders and deliver the food to you instead of having to wait on the buzzer to collect your own. However, this seemed to have inadvertently taken away the options that the ramen-ya ask of order preferences. At least I wasn't asked when I ordered. But then again, maybe they've decided that they're not letting you choose the strength of your broth, how much oil you want and the doneness of your noodles. Not that most of them get my preferred harigane right anyway.

So here's a refreshing dusky pink bowl of Tonkotsu Pink from Ikkyu's shop. I've had their green bowl a couple of years back. The most obvious difference apart from the colours was that the broth today had less viscosity. That tonkotsu broth - infused with blueberry and beetroot was light yet creamy. There's no berry or grassy beetroot flavour. It was just a tiny bit sweeter. I actually didn't mind that at all. And there's happiness to be found in the bowl if you finish your broth. Double happiness.

Joyden Canton, Shaw House

Joyden Canton (#04-00 Isetan Scotts, 350 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6908 3833) is part of the Joyden Concepts group, a local group which manages a few Chinese/Cantonese restaurants which bear the Joyden name. I've heard of them for a while but this would be my first visit to any of their restaurants.

These guys serve a lor mee with quail eggs. It's part of a bunch of local inspired dishes that they're doing for a limited time. The menu states that it serves 4 but if one were to order nothing else, it barely feeds two. Pretty decent rendition that got better once the vinegar and chilli paste are kicked in. My gripes include the portions and the misleading pictures on the menu which suckered us into ordering it.

This picture.

Along with the lor mee threading the local flavours is a Chinese carrot cake stir fried in rojak sauce. Not bad.

To fulfil the obligatory greens quota, we had some braised luffa with egg white and conpoy. Actually, I didn't order this just out of any obligation for having vegetables in the meal. I like these.

If I remember correctly the name of this dish was something along the lines of twiced baked egg gratin with you tiao. The fried crullers are embedded in baked eggs which was filled with vermicelli, jellyfish and some stuff which reminded me of Khong Guan lemon cream biscuits.  

What kicked ass was their "Hak Gam" (黑金) olive fried rice. I hear that those olives that they used are imported from China. The generous application of dark soya sauce and pork floss made the flavours while the minced pork and prawns that were in them barely registered. But this was very delicious. I would come back for this.

That's grilled slow-braised ribs with an aged mandarin peel sauce. There's a very good flavour from the mandarin peel in the sauce. The meat was unexpectedly lean but still fork tender. I'd eat this again.

Five Ten, South Bridge Road

I read that this place (237 South Bridge Road, tel : +65 6924 7352) was supposed to be serving Taiwanese inspired food. While it is apparent that quite a lot of us locals visit Taiwan (I'm one of the oddballs here who has never been there) and many of which mention about how good the food is over there; we don't exactly have so much in the way of Taiwanese eateries here. I suppose Taiwanese inspired would do then.

We had sautéed chicken hearts. Tender yet chewy, these little morsels were pretty good in that sweet soy glaze. Ordered this sans the fried ginger shreds which wouldn't have agreed with me. I wouldn't have agreed with them neither.

There was poached red snapper in a dashi broth. The fish was delicious and I liked the clean flavours of the broth with fried garlic bits.

Their grilled squids were passable. They needed more char. Tasted like they had the same glaze as those chicken hearts. While I supposed that each restaurant has their way, I thought they could take a page out of Gerry's Grill with the grilling. 

That's sirloin steak, seared to a medium doneness served with fried garlic bits and picked cabbage. Very edible.

For some reasons, their tripe was served on skewers. These were the only things on skewers. But they were good. Tender, nicely flavoured with that soy based braising. These tasted like they hit the grill for a little bit after they were braised. I could be wrong. Thought this was pretty good.

Rice was free of charge. I give brownie points for this.

And there's Asahi Kuronama on tap.

The king of kings this year

It's been quite a while since we've last bought durians and I believe we're currently in the midst of the season for this year. This was a whole wang zhong wang (皇中皇) that we've gotten and it turned out a lot better than the one we purchased from Balestier last year. One that lived up to its reputation of bittersweet creamy richness. The prices of these things are still hefty and from the look of things, will remain so.

More food from Keria Japanese Restaurant

Here's an unplanned dinner down at Keria Japanese Restaurant.

Today's otoshi was stewed konbu with pork and beans.

We skipped the customary mentai cabbage and swapped it for the mentai okura. This turned out to be a chilled dish. For some reasons, I had the idea that those okra were stir fried when we were ordering it.

Gyutan was still on the menu. But today's tongue was stewed instead of pan fried like the last time. It was a little sweet and I thought they would be better flavoured grilled or pan fried. But the gobo and carrots in the stew were really good.

Pork steak was delicious. Today's pork was much more nicely browned compared to the first time we had it. The composition of the wasabi butter or what was supposed to be the wasabi butter has changed though. I don't think I tasted any wasabi and they were no longer green.

We ordered chanpuru, something which we had never ordered here before. This was really good, especially when had with rice. There was chunky little strips bacon in the stir fry which flavoured the sprouts and gourd.

Corn tempura was on the menu. It must have been some effort slicing wedges of kernels off those corns to batter and fry.

Stuffed as we were, we made room for uni pasta. Apart from those slivers of creamy sweet sea urchin on top of the noodles, more uni had already been folded into the the spaghetti infusing the strands with their creamy sweetness. 

Sumo Bar Happy, Waterloo Street

Sumo Bar Happy is by the people behind Tanuki Raw and a bunch of other places that I've never visited. What intrigued me about this outpost was its setup as a casual ramen and sake bar - doing beef based ramen and no less.

Beef based ramen are quite the rarity here if you didn't already know. Apart from the one off beef bone broth bowl from Tampopo ages ago and the gyutan negishio bowl from Sandaime Bunji, they're about as oftenly seen as the nine tailed fox.

There's beef gyoza on the menu. Crispy skin and a shade of beet root red which they have described as capsicum wrappers stuffed with US Prime short rib mince. I could tell that it wasn't pork but I'm not getting a definite beefiness. Pretty looking gyozas though.

We ordered sashimi. These guys aren't exactly the specialist for that and from the nature of this particular shop, I wouldn't expect any real focus be put into sashimi as part of their menu. It's not bad if one were to overlook the small slices and poor knife work though. 

What I liked was their Kinsanji Miso with barley that was served on the sticks of cucumbers. Those were really nice and sweet.

That's a pretty mini loco moco don which featured their house made Nagano pork luncheon meat with a small slab of pan fried foie gras and a fried quail's egg. Pretty small, pretty cholesterol laden, pretty heart clogging and pretty good. That luncheon meat was a lot meatier in texture than the regular canned variety. Probably more akin to a meat loaf. It's actually kinda nice. I liked those sweet marinated mushrooms they put in the donburi too.

Impressive looking was the bone in short rib ramen. The rib that came with the bowl was pretty huge. The meat was chopstick tender. So tender that it fell off the bone on the way to the table.

No real need for the fork and knife which the staff thought might come in handy since one could simply pick the meat off the rib with a chopstick. I thought it was quite good.

The noodles were those thin variety that I liked. But they were not exactly harigane after we were done with the rib to work on them. I'm pretty sure this has got to be one of the heaviest bowl of noodles I've had.