Ah Mah Traditional Homemade Egg Sponge Cake

It hasn't escaped me how woefully thick the marketing of this particular branding was. The over borrowed 'grandma', the use of the word 'traditional', a needless reference to a 'home' that doesn't exist and one could wonder, how many sponge cakes aren't made with eggs? Stripped of all the meaningless words, it's simply just 'cake'.

I usually don't queue for these things and assuming that I'm interested, will wait for the maddening crowd to die down before bothering. But we stumbled upon a relatively short queue today and decided to try.

It's not bad fresh off the oven. I was expecting this cheese flavoured version to be a little cheesier but oh well. I wouldn't mind if I didn't have to queue for them.

Inle Myanmar Restaurant, Peninsular Plaza

This is a rare venture for me if you've noticed. I haven't had so much experience nor opportunity with Burmese food with the exception of those cooked by a friend and an experience with some fried rodent from a helper once. The latter is another story for another space and time. We've seen Inle (#B1-07A Peninsula Plaza, 111 North Bridge Rd, tel : +65 6333 5438) for ages and have never thought to try. Until today.

Guess what?  It's not too bad. I could pick on little things like preferring a stronger flavour and more ingredients for the lephet rice but I still liked it enough to finish it happily along with the pickled tea soup with coriander that had been boiled to death. True story. Maybe a bit more fish sauce for delicious saltiness would be nice.

Quite liked their ohn no khao swe (spelling varies and it's a Burmese curry chicken noodle for simplicity) too. The broth has a richness that bears some similarity with our local laksa or the Thai khao soi. Somewhat lemak, a little tangy and more sliced red onions would have made it better. This was different from the home made one I had before though so I guess there are variations to how they're cooked.

Trying more stuff from Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐)

Never had these green skinned steamed vegetable dumplings before. Those were pretty tasty. Chopped greens, diced mushrooms and little bits of tau kwa. Savoury. I'd happily order these again. After so many years, I'm still pretty impressed by how Din Tai Fung has managed to keep the standards of their food consistent throughout their numerous outlets. We had a plate of their shredded pork fried rice, which was pretty much the same as their shrimp or pork chop plates except that it has shredded pork. The rice tasted eggy, well fried and pretty much like all the times we've had them at any of their outlets.

Urban Bites, Telok Ayer Street

The general wisdom is that if a restaurant has been around for some time, it's probably good or at least decent. But that's not always true isn't it? This was Urban Bites (161 Telok Ayer Street). Lebanese they styled themselves. And style it was, over substance.

Their sambouski wasn't too bad. Minced lamb and onions in a puff. The stuffings were tasty, moist and piping hot. It was a promising start.

This stuff was called hummus with meat. Sliced lamb tenderloin at medium rare doneness. It looked pretty darned good. A nice looking char with pink in the centre. But - the meat had little flavour. I could tell that it's red meat but I would absolutely have had no idea that was lamb. That's a sin there. The hummus was too sour. Too much lemon, too little olive oil and garlic and it was mashed into puree without much texture. Not even grainy. Glad was I this wasn't my first hummus experience or I would have thought little of them. 

Halloumi cheese needed more time on the grill. It arrived barely lukewarm. So it's either under done or service is an uncontrolled mess in the restaurant.

Wasn't getting much squeakiness from them cheese. I can sense the shifting of priorities in the food because their online menu which hasn't been updated doesn't mention toast but the current printed menu does. I'm pretty sure the were thinking bruschetta when they decided to add "toast" in to the cheese. That toast was hard. Not freshly toasted at all.

These chicken livers were tender and properly cooked. But at this point, everything was pretty much tart or sour. The balsamic vinegar from the Halloumi cheese before, their hummus with too much lemon and now pomegranate molasses on the liver that was more tart than sweet. But look - there's even a slice of lemon that might you might want to squeeze onto those livers. Or perhaps they were just for decoration.

I'm sensing that a lot of what's being done is copying of ideas without any understanding of what's being done. The chicken livers doesn't need more lemon.

That's sea bass. Baked according to the menu. Looks pan fried to me. The fish was nice. But it was destroyed by the tahini and hummus which took out the crisp from the skin and drowned out all the natural flavours by being hummus-y and tahini-y. I didn't think these combined well. So it was sour and a little spicy and a little nutty. Waste of a nice piece of fish if you asked me.

This was what they called arabica affogato. Very obviously, these guys know little to nothing about making/serving affogato. It wasn't very difficult to deduce that they had just wanted to do one and impress people. 

Generally fucking stupid to be serving them in a martini glass which was already filled with an oversize scoop of ice cream. Not much room to pour the Turkish coffee which was suppose to have cardamom flavour but didn't. How the hell does one eat this shit? The Turkish coffee wasn't even as flavourful as espresso. That and we could only pour a little before the glass was about to overflow and we had to eat ice cream to free space before we could pour a little more of coffee. We left more than half of this untouched.

Muhalabiah was nice. But then again it's not something that's easy to screw up. We were too sugared up at this point to even bother with those namoura that came with them.

Casa Tartufo, Erskine Road

Seven years ago, we saw Casa Tartufo open up at Forum Galleria. We were skeptical because of the name but still curious. For a long time. What was it that they said about having being bitten once before? But the menu looked proper. We made a mental notes to return. For a long time.

Seven years later today, we visited for the first time. Man, it just all went by didn't it? All those years. They're now at The Scarlet Singapore - or the place formerly known as Scarlet Hotel (33 Erskine Road). 

Bread was well appreciated. Some nicely greased rosemary (and olive maybe) focaccia and some other sliced bread. We (read as I) had seconds. Save some for their scrambled eggs.

So the scallops. A la plancha styled. Nicely seared that it had a light char aroma and the insides were barely cooked. I thought that was nicely done sitting on a light Parmigiano and truffle fondue.

This be the dish known as uovo on the menu. Nicest truffled eggs we've ever had. Shaven winter black truffle on top and more in those scrambled eggs. This alone would be worth a return trip.

The restaurant's risotto casa is made with truffle and sea urchin. The uni flavour was subtle. Could detect them in occasional mouthfuls and for the other times, it was an after taste. Savoury rice dish that was also nicely done.

We had Iberico pork collar in masala sauce. Seared to a medium doneness. The server said there was cherry in the sauce but we couldn't taste it. But the pork was good.

Because the food had been good, we made it to their gelato. Pistachio and truffle (how could we not have?). Both seemed to be salted lightly, very creamy and well flavoured.

We left the dinner pretty pleased thinking about when's the next excuse to come back. 

Fishball Story, Yishun Park Hawker Centre

We were at Yishun Park Hawker Centre (51 Yishun Avenue 11) looking for food and I came across Fishball Story. I recalled reading good things about them before and apparently they had received the Bib Gourmand. Man it sure was disappointing. Their mee pok was run of the mill, totally unexceptional and came with chilli sauce that had neither much heat nor flavour. Didn't get very much flavour from their fishballs as well so I was definitely unimpressed. These guys are way behind Li Xin where I would rather spend my money on.