Provence, Gaysorn Village, Bangkok

We stumbled upon Provence at the basement of Gaysorn Village (999 Phloen Chit Rd, Bangkok 10330, tel : +66 2 656 1438). I suppose it was simply a stroke of good fortune since we did intend to visit them at The Peninsular. Having found this location simply saved us some walking under the sweltering heat.

Sipped on cha yen while waiting for the food to arrive. 

We liked their chive dumplings previously so we had an order of them. These tasted exactly like how they did at The Peninsular. I wonder if they're made from a central kitchen. 

What we were really looking forward to was their special boat noodles. The one that was regular sized and not in the tiny portions that are commonly found around Bangkok.

I don't know if we had imagined it but we though the broth at The Peninsular was thicker - richer. Today's broth had some lime in it. But this was still good that we asked for refills which the restaurant obliged. It was then we realized that the person that did our refills was the lady that offered us refills back at the The Peninsular a couple of years back.

We had kor moo yang- grilled pork neck with glutinous rice. The chilli dip on the side was pretty good.

What was outstanding was a northern Thai khao soi with duck confit. The coconut-y curry was elevated after a squeeze of lime and a handful of chopped onions. In case you didn't know, this dish was served with noodles two ways - boiled egg noodles at the bottom while the ones on top were fried.

The gracious host of the restaurant pushed their dessert cart over and we couldn't say no.

So we ended up with some sweet mango and lavender ice cream. A very satisfying sweet ending.

An akauo kasuzuke set from Nakajima Suisan

I had heard good things about Nakajima Suisan's grilled akauo kasuzuke. One of their fish options marinated in sake lees. Since they were out all parts of their tuna, it was a good time to give this other fish a try. I tried searching briefly and could only discover that akauo is known by a couple of names - Pacific ocean perch or Matsubara's red rockfish. I'm not sure which.

I liked this. There was a sweetness and an aroma I'm presuming from that kasuzuke. A bit more bones from this fish than I normally enjoy dealing with but that won't be a deal breaker.

Ristorante Luka, Tanjong Pagar Road

In our shores, there are only a few Japanese chefs here that do Italian food. Presumably at some point, names get recycled. Luka (18 Tanjong Pagar Road, tel : +65 6221 3988) is by Takashi Okuno - formerly from L'Operetta and Truffle Gourmet.

There're a few claims to Luka and one of them is their house made wagyu bresaola. A bresaola that didn't look like anything that's air dried, salted or aged to my untrained eyes. In fact, there's quite a bit of moisture on the sliced beef and if I hadn't ordered it, I would have thought it was carpaccio. 

Not so much fat in the meat so not much flavour as well - not to mention that there was mound of ricotta secretly hiding under the beef waiting to mess up your palate when you're trying to taste the "wagyu" in that "bresaola". Didn't work for us at all. 

This was smoked egg, wagyu and uni. A dish that should win by virtue of ingredients, assuming that the said ingredients are of good quality. It was tasty. The smoked flavour in the egg was dominant followed by some floral creaminess from the sea urchin. Not sure where that torched wagyu came in though.

We liked the fresh tasting sesame crusted pretzel that came with their whipped bottarga cream. A bottarga cream that hit more like smoked hummus rather than bottarga with cream.

That's fried wakasagi. A small fish like smelt. Those white stuff they drizzled over tasted like some sort of lime aioli. Very lime-y and well done - also something that was bordering on overwhelming the flavours from those little fried fish

There's trippa. Probably alla Luka. Spiced tomato base, cannellini beans and perhaps mirepoix together with honeycomb tripe. The texture of the tender tripe was good but it didn't have much flavour. Couldn't really taste the cheese but we were getting bits of fried garlic. While this was definitely still a hearty rendition, the one at Pietrasanta kicked more ass.

I had to compare their risotto Parmigiano. With the one that was leagues ahead at Enoteca L'Operetta done a la minute with aged Parmigiano Reggiano that blew this out of the water easily.  This flavour of this plate was flat and a little sad. The drizzles of the sweet balsamic vinegar could have saved it but there was too little to go around. I should have known better. 

Luka has an aglio e olio with uni cooked using bavette. There was sea urchin that were cooked with the noodles and a few small slivers laid over the finished plate. In an attempt to describe this - there're definitely flavour from the sea urchin but it's not the oceanic briny kind from the raw uni. It's earthier if that made sense. We were getting aroma from garlic as well as some umami from the shaven bottarga. Unexpectedly addictive.

Breakfast at Ghim Moh Market

This be one of the rare breakfasts at Ghim Moh Market (20 Ghim Moh Road).

I was initially bemoaning about how stingy Ghim Moh Chwee Kueh (锦茂李老三)(#01-54) was with their chai por. It was only after a first bite of those steamed rice cakes that I realized that their chai por was very salty. Any more would have been too much. The chwee kueh was not bad though.

Grabbed a royal thosai from Heavens (#01-26). Yes, it's called royal thosai. Royal because it's their masala thosai with onions, egg, cheese and butter. What one could reasonably consider this, the works. I haven't had these local variety of the Indian pancakes for a while and found. This had a more crisp texture because it was thinner and didn't seem to have any of the sour.

Heavens also has a princess appam. It's their appam with the works. One that comes with egg and cheese and butter. Yum.

Sanma shioyaki from Kuro Maguro

Here's more grilled sanma, this time from Kuro Maguro. It was one of the seasonal items off the regular menu that had been described as pike. Little had I known that it was Pacific saury - also known as mackerel pike. With the fish in season, I guess that made sense. I seem to be developing a taste for these and fate it seems is steering things my way.

How was that? Presentation aside, the main difference between this and the recent one from Nakajima Suisan was that the fish here seemed to have been gutted and cleaned of innards. So while it was equally tasty, this lacked that bittersweet portions which are a characteristic of such fishes. The skin was also heavily salted to the point that it had to be eaten with rice. Fish was done in the broiler rather than a grill. Not forgetting that it was also more than twice the price of the fish at Nakajima Suisan. In comparison, it's kinda pricey.

A sanma shioyaki set from Nakajima Suisan

I believe sanma is in season at this time of the year so I took the opportunity to get one of the sanma shioyaki teishoku from Nakajima Suisan. I was a little surprised at how delicious it was even though pretty much everything I've had from them had been good. The fish was hot, tender and juicy even. Juices that were were oozing out of the meat as I picked up the first strips off the fish with my chopstick. And wow, those sweet bitter innards they had in there were so good. I'm wondering if these are equally as good when they're out of season.