Frogs, lamb, mushrooms and mirabelle plums at Le Bistrot du Sommelier

As we traipse into the end of summer, fall approaches. And winter is coming. For the menu at Le Bistrot du Sommelier that is.

Cosying up in the cast iron casserole with some salad are their meaty frog legs - sautéed with garlic, onions and parsley. These aren't seasonal. I remember seeing them all the time on the menu. They're pretty good.

Spring and by extension, summer, brings lambs to the slaughter. Here's their oven roasted Welsh lamb leg. Not so much fat, so not so much of the lamb-y flavours to savour as well. Still quite delicious with its jus and sweet root vegetables.

The summertime specials include sautéed wild girolle mushrooms. Or also commonly known in these parts as chanterelle. Meaty and mushroomy, these were priced dearly. But good they were.

Summer is also a chance for their mirabelle plum soufflé. This soufflé was nicely done. Light and airy they were with the hot cooked fruit settled at the bottom. The stuff that the ice cream was sitting on was pain perdu; tasted like some sort of dense bread pudding.

Gyu Nami, Amoy Street Food Centre

Woah, this seems to be a relatively new stall (#02-126 Amoy Street Food Centre, 7 Maxwell Road) just a couple of units away from Taste Affair, run by a bunch of young gentlemen. The only item on the menu was their wagyu roast beef donburi which goes for $10. 

While the bowl isn't cheap by hawker centre standards, I could see how this represents a good value by the ingredients they provide and the care they took to prepare each bowl. One of the guys was carefully folding and stacking the thin slices of beef onto each bowl of rice that came out. The donburi then gets topped by a molten yolked egg and doled with some of their home made yoghurt sauce.

I enjoyed it. Don't think wagyu. Think moist and tender slices of medium done beef. Not a fatty section but I'm tasting some kind of soy marinate to make up for the flavour. Can't figure out what's in the yoghurt sauce though. Egg yolk made an awesome dip for the slices of beef. There's some kind of tare that they ladle over the rice. I thought that sweetness wasn't necessary but I'm not complaining.

Lentil soup, blue cheese sauce steak and more from Huber's

Here's another trip down to the butcher. Which meant another stopover at their bistro.

Lentil soup's pretty good. Flavoured with bits of sausages.

That's an Australian Angus fillet served with what they describe as German blue cheese sauce. I never asked what was that German blue cheese but I thought this tasted a little different from what had in mind because it was slightly sweet rather than just salty. In retrospect, I didn't mind it at all. I was happy with the steak. In fact, I mean to return and have another go someday and also perhaps ask them what cheese it was that they used for the sauce.

We ordered a pastrami sandwich off the menu. Apparently what they have isn't quite like the American deli styled version. There's a lot less pastrami with meat that was not as spiced up served in a dense grainy ciabatta with some truffle mayo and caramelized onions. There's a fried egg and what appeared to be obligatory pieces of lettuce. It didn't taste bad, it was not what I was looking for.

More hon maguro-ing at Kuro Maguro

Back in Kuro Maguro for a quiet weekend lunch. It seems that the menu has expanded from the last time we were here.

There's a zuke meshi which features their hon maguro akami marinated in shoyu and sesame oil over vinegared rice. That aroma and flavour from the sesame oil on those tuna slices were delicious. I could definitely come back for this.

We had a chutoro aburi meshi that came with a truffle shoyu sauce. Also on vinegared rice. That aburi could have been better done for a more robust char aroma. Still the quality of the fatty bluefin belly was apparent. While truffled stuff has been overdone in recent years, this truffled shoyu worked. 

Stir fried pork with cumin from Tian Fu Ren Jia (天府人家)

孜然猪肉

The menu has this item for chicken and beef but they were willing to do a pork version of the stir fry which was pretty good. There's a nice cumin flavour on the meat while the green chillis added a bit of heat and aroma. Liked those softened onions too. It's such a pity that there's no lamb on the menu.

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.