Noo Cheng Adam Road Prawn Noodle, Zion Road Riverside Food Centre

For quite a while, I could never figure out if this stall (Stall 4, 70 Zion Road) was Noo Cheng Adam Road Prawn Noodle or if they were simply call Fresh Taste Prawn Noodles.

There's a batch of big assed prawns on ice at the front of the stall. That's a preview of the kind of prawns one can possibly get with their bowl of prawn noodles. Needless to say, the cost of the bowl is commensurated by the size of those bugs.

This was a $16 bowl. It came with two of those large prawns - each half of those makes two mouthfuls of springy prawn meat. There're braised pork ribs and pig skin and the bowl is topped with fried lard & shallots. The broth was delicious. Flavourful, spicy and heart warming.

Amò, Hong Kong Street

I remember reading somewhere about Amò (33 Hong Kong Street, tel : +65 6723 7733) - about them being by Beppe De Vito and the Il Lido Group. The first thought that came across my mind was that they're probably expensive. But we ended up visiting anyway.

No bread, but we got olives. Stuffed with garlic I think. Pretty salty and it succeeded in getting us to order some of their Moscato d'Asti which did little to quench our thirst. But we enjoyed the floral sparkling white anyway.

We had a starter of zucchini flowers. The menu described mortadella, pistachio and lemon honey. Some of those pistachios were sugar crusted. I'm assuming that they meat mousse in the flower to be the mortadella. It's nice. Luncheon meat and salted egg in a mousse texture kind of nice. Kinda pricey too.

Pizza was passable. This one had wild garlic pesto and anchovy salsa verde. And bone marrow which we couldn't quite taste. And sliced baby beets and some pink stemmed leaves that lent neither texture nor flavour to the pizza. I'm pretty sure plain old arugula would have worked better.

The outstanding item we had was their grilled sea bass. A fresh fish without much to distract from the flavours. Very competently done and very enjoyable fish. The greens on the side were tossed with olive oil and salt so that scored some points because it wasn't just token or decoration on the plate.

The fish came with what was described as a mint casserole. Which didn't taste like it had mint except for a tiny sprig on top. This tasted cheesy/buttery; had artichokes, fava beans and tiny strips of guanciale I think. Not bad, but the mint casserole name seemed out of place.

Chow Kee (秋记), Tiong Bahru Food Centre

I have never noticed this stall (#02-37) before, but then again, I don't come to Tiong Bahru FC often enough to have remembered every one of them. Anyways, they do hor fun, sang meen and mui fan with either sliced beef or seafood. Here's a look at their sliced fish hor fun. The gravy that they ladled over had cabbage flavour; which wasn't something I had expected. The entire plate was light on salt. While it wasn't anything to write home about, I thought it was pretty edible. Went down easily with those pickled green chilli.

Bakalaki Greek Taverna, Seng Poh Road

Nice Greek restaurant (3 Seng Poh Road, tel : +65 6836 3688). The decor looked like quite a bit of work had gone into making the place look the part but we've had mixed feelings over the food.

Their patates tiganites were described on the menu as handmade fried potatoes with Graviera cheese. Those potatoes definitely look like regular shoestring fries to me and who would've known they're handmade. Pretty sure I can get frozen ones that look and taste the same. So much for that Graviera cheese. Here's where the flavour from the fried potatoes have drowned out whatever there might have been from the cheese. I recognize this as a bad call and a waste of money on our part.

Moving on to the keftedes which were suppose to come with mint. Not seeing nor tasting any of that mint. We had imagined them to be grilled or in sauce but these were just fried beef meatballs that were lacking in fat and texture and flavour. The thing that might have saved it a little would be salt and that was also lacking. Boring would be the right word. 

Thankfully, their pan fried feta cheese was tasty. The cheese was done with a light and slightly crisp skin with honey.

Their paidakia was nicely grilled with respectable char marks to a medium doneness. Meat was tender that only the butter knife was needed. While we enjoyed it, we found the lamb-y flavour lacking. Potatoes were nice.

For some reasons, we were given a complementary dessert of Greek yoghurt with honey and walnuts. Not bad.

The nameless Teochew ba chor mee at Seng Poh Road

Stumbled upon this minced meat noodle stall in a time capsule of a coffeeshop (71 Seng Poh Road) just across the road from Tiong Bahru Market. It’s coincidentally located in that same coffeeshop where Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice can be found currently.

Why was this bak chor mee stall mention worthy? A few things that had gotten my attention. It looked really old like they’ve been around for ages. Their bowl of accompanying soup was light yet peppery and sweet. Couldn’t identify what was the base flavour but I’m presuming that it has something to do with the ingredients which they used that required boiling. I had almost finished that soup before I started on the noodles.  

How was the bowl of noodles you might wonder? It was not too bad. The kind of "not too bad" that I wouldn’t mind eating if I was in the vicinity and they didn’t have a queue. There were only about four people ahead and it was a half hour wait. While they weren’t soft or soggy, their noodles didn’t have that firm consistency that I typically prefer. The taste was a little different from the usual flavour profile of bak chor mee even though the only thing I saw them adding was the chilli paste, vinegar and lard. Sure beats Hua Bee though. 

But there's more! Those prawns were unexpectedly tasty. Imagine flavours of prawns and their sweetness coming through all the sauces. Not forgetting their minced meat dumplings which had dried sole in them, packing extra flavours from the desiccated fish.

Fried chicken sandwich from Park Bench Deli

I haven't had much fried chicken sandwich for comparison but I thought this one from Park Bench Deli was not bad. To their usual form, there's no skimping on the fillings. That buttermilk fried chicken was the size of the onion bread they used - end to end. While I appreciated the little bit of extras from the cabbage slaw and cucumber, they were subdued in both flavour and textures by the chicken. Imagine that. Sure went down easily with a bit of Sriracha.