Yi Jia Chun (一家村), The Arcade @ Collyer Quay

On the occasions that I've reason to find myself at The Arcade (11 Collyer Quay), I've noticed this cooked food stall (#01-24). Always, I've been captivated by the steaming pots of food and soup at the stall. Little did I realize that they've a few outlets about in the vicinity until recently. Anyways, we stopped by for lunch before the lunch crowd came by.

One of the things that attracted me to the stall was their pumpkin rice. They were not bad - as ambiguous as that might have sounded. The kind of not bad where I wouldn't mind having again if I'm in the vicinity but not specially visit for.

There's pickled Szechuan mustard which was tasty in their mildly spicy and salty kind of crunchy way. I liked these.

Thick sliced luncheon meat is always good. I always felt that most places slice them too thin.

Didn't like their chicken curry. The curry itself was thin and flat while the pieces of chicken in there were bland. They weren't exactly slurp off the bone tender either. We didn't finish the most of it.

For some reasons, I got reminded of the lotus root soup at Big Bird while sipping this one. Anyone remember those guys? If anyone was wondering, this bowl has got nothing on the one at Big Bird. Big Bird's soup was bold and flavoursome while this rendition was lightweight.

Fu Shun Shao La Mian Jia (福顺 (锦记) 烧腊面家), Maxwell Food Centre

Noticed the queue at this stall the past couple of times we were here at Maxwell (#01-71, 1 Kadayanallur Street). While I generally don't subscribe to the wisdom of crowds in the context of our local food centres, our curiosities occasionally gets piqued. And sometimes, that doesn't end with the death of a cat.

These guys do a very competent roast duck. As all well done and properly roasted birds of such nature went, the meat was tender (even for the breast), moist and there were a little bit of tasty fat under the flavourful roasted skin.

The roasted pork belly was unfortunately a bore. Some of the crackling weren't crispy and the meat wasn't anything to write home about. But their char siew was very nicely done. Tender, fat laced and savoury sweet while texturized by a bit of delicious char on the surface and the grains of the meat. This and the duck I'm coming back for.

More eats at Tampopo

Been a little while since we were last at Tampopo.

Sweet corn from Hokkaido was in season so we got ourselves some of them in tempura. These ones here were a lot tastier than the ones we had at Keria Japanese Restaurant not a couple of months back.

Tampopo's wafu steak has always been a welcomed sight. While we don't order it every single time we're here, we've had it enough times that it's possibly the most ordered beef item that we do.

Their beef and potato croquette was lacklustre. Not quite getting that beef.

While it can be argued that we have enjoyed their negitoro don, I think I've figured out what has changed. The negi is still there but there's not much toro anymore. The portions of the minced tuna have increased, but it's no longer so fatty. Once upon a time, it used to be good.

White peach is in season and there's a chilled and refreshing salad on the menu currently which was delicious. Most of it because of the sweetness and aroma coming from the peach.

Remember their hon maguro don at a good deal? It's still available.  

Some Oktoberfest food from Huber's bistro

It's that time of the year when the kitchen at Huber's whips up a little something different for their Oktoberfest menu again. Breaking from tradition, I got myself a bottle of Paulaner's weissbier instead of the usual Grevensteiner. The last two sentences did not have any relations by the way. 

This year there was potato soup with smoked eel on menu. Amazing depth of extra smoky flavours those bits of eel lent to the soup. Nice.

Unfortunately, this year's leberknedelsuppn - for the lack of a better word, sucked. The broth simply wasn't beefy. Compared to that cheesy liver dumpling ball last year, this was sad and barely mention worthy.

 

The kitchen did some braised beef oyster blade a red wine sauce this time round too. The meat was fork tender while the sauce rich and flavourful. Delicious creamed cabbage on the side too.

While meatloaf on rye didn't seem to be particularly special, their honey sauerkraut with Schmand rocked. Especially tasty paired with sweet mustard on the rye. 

Dessert was a Morello cherry filled eclair with whipped cream. Both the pastry and the cream were very light.

Bacon double cheese XL at BK in Suvarnabhumi Airport

I figured that it's been a long time since we last ate at Burger King and since we were already trapped in departure, why not? Certainly didn't mind some Double XL sized sandwiches with the bonus of not having turkey bacon. 

So how did it go? I couldn't complain. This tasted like how I remember BK ages ago with the gooey cheese and char grill aroma with the bacon - which was a far cry from what it is today. Kinda expensive at 380฿ though.

Kub Kao' Kub Pla, Gaysorn Village

We stumbled upon Kub Kao' Kub Pla while roaming about the new wing at Gaysorn (3rd Floor Gaysorn Tower, 999 Ploenchit Road, tel : +66 2 075 2661). I read that the restaurant started out as a cafe/dessert place in Thonglor. The food that they serve here are a mix of common and/or contemporary Thai dishes and Thai influenced western food.

One more local-ish lunch before we head back.

Even more cowslip creepers again. I did mention us liking them. This time, they're stir fried with glass noodles, egg, dried shrimp and cuttlefish. This was good with rice.

Kub Kao Kub Pla has a rendition of shrimp cakes of their own. They are deep fried with sliced almonds.

The innards of the shrimp cake were tender and pretty flavourful.

We had ox tongue stew which certainly wasn't a typical Thai thing. The tongue was tender and the stew was rich with the essence of red wine. Another dish for great pairing with rice.

The menu called this crab balloon omelette.

Of course it's just a regular old crab omelette. I thought this nicely done but they very light handed with the salt. I suppose this allowed it to be paired better with their garlic chilli/fish sauce chilli/coriander lime dip.