Lime House, Jiak Chuan Road

Lime House (2 Jiak Chuan Road, tel : +65 6222 3130) is possibly the only Caribbean establishment of any sort on our shores. They were set up a few years ago as a bar/restaurant by a native from the Caribbeans who has gotten himself rooted in this part of the world while churning out the flavours of food from this hometown. To that, they have survived for half a decade. Not something to be scoffed at here. We were here to try their food.    

I've been eyeing that goat curry of theirs since I've read about it. Not curry as we South East Asian know it from part of the word. It would probably come across here as a sort of stew flavoured with plenty of spices. Yes, it was good. More on that later.

We topped up with an order of lemon lime slaw and plantains. The former wasn't as refreshing as the name might have suggested. While the lime was definitely going on in the slaw, it wasn't impactful as a flavour component. Plantains were unexpectedly sweet. I remembered those things to be dry and textured like sweet potatoes but these weren't that sort. They were rather tasty if a little greasy.

There was a hot sauce made with Scotch bonnet chilli. I thought it completed that goat curry. The sauce packed respectable heat but was not very spectacular by itself. When mixed with the curry, it added a noticeable kick that elevated the complexity of the said curry bringing the flavour up by a couple of notches.

Dessert was a spiced banana cake. We were imagining something moist but this was dry and crumbly. They also ran out of the honey and fig ice cream that was mentioned and gave us chocolate instead. We didn't dislike it, but it's nothing we'd come back for.

Of chickens and eggs at Maxwell Food Centre

The first and also last time I've had Tian Tian's chicken rice was a decade ago. There are still as many tourists these days. Prices have gone up. There're two separate queues processing orders for the stall now. One to for order and the other for collection like how it was done at the old Mei Ling location of Sin Kee. They got my order wrong today but I didn't feel like arguing the difference. That was almost 10 bucks worth if anyone's wondering.

Chicken was slurp off the bone tender and their lime spiked chilli still kicks ass. But I can definitively settle with the knowledge that they don't do very good rice. But all these tourists probably will never know.

I do not recall ever having had Zhen Zhen Porridge (#01-54) before. The queue was never "encouraging" and I still am generally not big on porridges. I tried a chicken and century egg bowl today and I liked it. There was definitely an appeal to the gut sticking gruel-ly consistency with the raw egg stirred in and I enjoyed how it tasted with the generosity of the ingredients. I'll be back.

So I finally got to try something at Lad & Dad (#01-79) as well. The greasy and salty bacon and chip butty that's been bolstered with a fried egg and melted mozzarella cheese. Nothing like a conventional English chip butty but I could appreciate how it would be less of a mess with hash browns rather than actual chips. I felt my artery clog a little but it sure was good.

Re-visiting Mustard

I discovered Mustard and first ate in the restaurant back in 07. It was another of those places that I've been meaning to go back to and it's never happened. Until now. About 11 years later. I'm glad they're still around.

Started with a Kalibadi chop which was described as a potato chop that was stuffed with green peas. This was delicious. Came with a dip that they mentioned was made with mustard. I thought that dip tasted like tamarind chutney.

I wanted to have another go at their Kolkata Special Mutton Biryani. It was quite obvious that the recipe has changed from the last time I had it. The briyani was lot more savoury (colourful as well) and appropriately salted. We were getting a lot of fragrance from what appeared to be fried shallots and the delicious raita that they served with it were nicely spiked with cumin. It was good. But the irony was that it now tasted like a regular briyani which I'm not likely to miss in the future.

Gandhi Restaurant, Chander Road

I'm surprised that I had never noticed Gandhi Restaurant (31 Chander Road, tel : +65 6299 5343) until recently when we were heading towards Jaggi's. Anyways, the place was a unpretentious and frills free South Indian meal eatery. 

We got ourselves a set meal which included a couple of vegetables on the side with pickles, papadam and a choice of curry that would be ladled over the rice. It was between chicken and fish today. We had the chicken which was pretty good. 

One could also order add ons either by indicating from the troughs of food or from a menu which was stuck on the door. Rice and curry were bottomless but I never verified if that were true because I only had room for one refill. :p

The question was never if we added on but what we added. That's curried mutton tripe and fish cutlet - the latter a fried ball of minced fish and potato. That chewy tripe was a little more offal-y in flavour rather than mutton-y. More of the mutton flavour were in the curry than the tripe. Fish cutlets were pretty good. 

Of offals and turtle shells at Toa Payoh

I was looking forward to giving the noodles at Master Shifu (#02-30 HDB Hub, 500 Toa Payoh Lorong 6) a go because I liked what they did with the lamb broth at their parent restaurant Chuan Yang Ji Mutton Steamboat. So I got myself a bowl of lamb offal sliced noodles (刀削面) only to be disappointed by how bland the broth was. To be more precise - it was floury, a little herbal and had just a tiny bit of the mutton flavour. Couldn't even save itself after I had dumped in the salted vegetables and roasted chilli. Even Curry Times made a better lamb broth.

It's too bad because they did a bloody good job out of the sliced lamb meat (they didn't give me offal) which was in the bowl. Tender, appropriately salted and readily falling apart in the mouth with fats.

So we moved on because I never finished the bowl of lamb noodles. Was brought to this Lau Pa Sat Pig's Organ Soup Bak Kut Teh Kway Chap at Super 28 Coffee Shop (184 Toa Payoh Central). Yeah, that stall name was a mouthful. I don't know if these folks were originally from Lau Pa Sat though.

This single serving portion featured added on braised intestines. The braised stuff were flavoursome. Loved that braised-in taste of their hard boiled egg. Also liked that their kuey had a rice-y flavour which is often missing from others.

Moving on to desserts. I've had guilin gao since I was a kid. Was told that it was made with turtle shells. From what I've heard, not everyone makes these bitter jellies with them. I don't know if the guilin gao here (Koong Woh Tong, 190 Toa Payoh Lorong 6) contained powdered turtle shell but the herbal flavour for theirs wasn't too intense. Ducking into this shop for a bowl was definitely a reprieve from the warm humidity.

A chilli crab 'O from Old Chang Kee

Here's a chilli crab 'O from Old Chang Kee. I'm not exactly one of the bigger fans of chilli crab out there so I'm definitely not an expert on their flavours. I don't recall the last time I've had those things. But I do remember how they tasted like so I guess I could venture an opinion that these puffs do taste like chilli crab. I guess it's just the gravy and a little of the minced crab meat mixed into the potatoes. Good enough as a curiosity I suppose.