More Nirai Kanai-ing

Believe it or not, the motivation for this dinner at Nirai Kanai was their chahan with preserved mustard greens. Good stuff. A little pricey but always a treat.

We came across the aosa seaweed tempura on the menu. One of those things that we've overlooked in the past visits and we've been missing out. This was pretty good stuff. It tasted like a fried vegetable cake with anchovies and onions. Light on both the salt and grease.

This trip also was an opportunity to get re-acquainted with their rafute again in the form of their teishoku. Tender, sweet and with fat that readily fell apart in the mouth. I still maintain that it's not as good as the ones from the defunct Mimigar.

We've never left without a serving of their chanpuru ever since we re-discovered this place.

Some peachy drinks and an orange tea from Iroha Mart

Some drinks from Iroha Mart at Chinatown Point, picked up I have.

Let's start with that orange tea. It had the expected orange flavour which made them not very different from lemon tea. Flavour's okay, not something that I'll be excited about getting again. That peach flavoured Coke was....unusual. I'm not sure about how I feel about it. It's just peach flavour (artificial probably) in Coke and it's a little more sour than the regular drink. Now that peach flavoured Calpis. I guess there was just enough peachiness in the drink that it could've been another peach soda since I couldn't tell that it was a Calpis drink.

I guess I enjoyed them all. Just won't be getting them again.

Kinmedai saikyo yaki and a grilled hamachi head from Nakajima Suisan

So it's our favourite grilled fish teishoku spot again. I was intent on trying their kinmedai saikyo yaki since I've had the fish in shioyaki previously. Surprisingly I couldn't really detect much of a difference even though it was a miso based marinade. I still loved that fish and wished that it were a bigger portion.

These time round, there was also a half head of their hamachi on the grill. Only two portions served a day as they claimed so we snagged one of them. This was really good and I daresay that it was one of the better grilled fish heads I've had. The flesh which slid off the bones with ease was deliciously moist and appropriately salted for flavour.

So France, Duo Galleria

I'll be straight to the point on this. I didn't think very much of the place (#01-51/56 Duo Galleria, 7 Fraser Street). The people were nice but that niceness felt like a veneer. 

The shop and bistro brought nothing new to the table that others haven't already done and done better. We had a fish soup which was not bad but the same could also be said of those bottled stuff that used to be available at Carrefour which could also be spruced up to taste similarly. 

I didn't like how they charged for additional bread especially when they didn't give much in the first place for their Camembert and charcuterie. Speaking of which, those charcuterie tasted very...... pedestrian. They were also sliced too thinly and we can find better at the same price point. Maybe these guys oughta take a page from Le Bistrot du Sommelier.

Wan Xing Nasi Lemak (万兴椰浆饭，炒米粉), Albert Centre Market FC

We chanced upon this stall (#01-62 Albert Centre Market Food Centre, 270 Queen Street) while looking for food and decided to give them a go. Sadly, this was another case of a contemporary nasi lemak where there wasn't much fragrance in the rice. It seemed that a lot of people liked them though since the queue appeared relentless.

On the brighter side, their sambal was kinda nice. Spicy and savoury that seemed to be without much sweetness. This meant that I didn't have to worry about having them overwhelm any of those coconut flavours in the rice since there wasn't much of those coconut flavours in the first place. The fish we got today wasn't dried out. In fact, it was surprisingly moist and even had some roe in the belly.

Deli's Kitchen, Sunshine Plaza

From what we could gather from the shop, Deli's Kitchen (#01-54 Sunshine Plaza, 91 Bencoolen Street, tel : +65 6926 6176) is a front that represents 11 other shops from Japan. Hence the huge menu. Assuming that all the other shops are atypical of good restaurant owners who are specialists in their own rights for the food that they cook, what would that say about the cook in this particular kitchen?

I suppose I could say this is Singapore. One man can do the jobs of eleven. #lmfao

One of the eleven was Shibaura Genghis Khan from Hokkaido that features grilled lamb donburi. That lamb looked like it was pan fried than grilled. Even with the sauce on the side, the marinade alone detracted from the limited natural flavours of the meat. It wasn't bad per se; just not good enough that'll make me look forward to returning for. That onsen tamago styled egg was also probably the egg with the least amount of whites I've ever seen.

That's the Trump-Kim summit item on a limited run created from their Fukuyoshi menu from the Kanagawa prefecture in Kantō, Japan (remember that the eleven menus?). A wagyu hambagu patty topped with kimchi and nacho cheese. On hindsight, it might have been more appropriate as a Abe-Kim summit item I reckon by the style of the hamburg. 

The patty had grill marks, was nicely browned but was also mushy on the inside. Didn't taste bad but it was definitely not American styled hamburger beef. The kimchi was sour (read nice). What could the nacho cheese be symbolic of? Those are American aren't they? Wait, wouldn't that make this be for the Abe-Trump-Kim summit then? Portentous! 

We needed a little more food which gave us a little more excuse to order another item to try. So it was the black curry topped with a skirt steak from Ryu's Bistro. Something from Hakata. There seemed to be a mild garlic flavour in the curry which left an aftertaste like MSG. The handling of that skirt steak clearly showed how little the cook knew. The steak was sliced along instead of against the grain which left the chunks of meat chewy. Each of those slices were also too big. Not to mention that the skirt would have benefitted from a bit more char to bring the flavours out.