Havelock Turtle Soup, Havelock Road Food Centre

I have vague recollections of having turtle soup when I was a kid. I never gave much thought to them then. Fast forward many years till today, they're not so common anymore. I happened to be around when Havelock Turtle Soup (#01-04 Havelock Road Cooked Food Centre, 22A/B Havelock Road) was open and decided to try them. Sans ginger and coriander. The broth was slightly sweet from the herbs used. The meat was tender but there wasn't much flavour to them. Those gelatinous parts (shell?) had a smooth texture much like sea cucumber which I liked. It seems that they have frog leg soup too. Maybe I'll come back for those another time.

Flying Monkey, Bussorah Street

I was drawn to Flying Monkey (67 Bussorah Street, tel : +65 62910695) because these guys featured contemporary Indian food and also that they were the only other place that I knew of that did gucchi pulao.

In retrospect, I thought this was a good place for Indian tapas.

We came for an early lunch in the weekend and nursed a Goa Mamma Lassi while waiting for their kitchen to fire up. The drink was made with Indian mango, passionfruit, vodka, dark rum, milk and yoghurt. For some reasons, the result of the alchemy tasted like lychee and rum. It wasn't bad but it didn't taste anything like a lassi drink which was what made me want to order it in the first place.

Only the small plates were available initially because the kitchen needed more time to fire up. We munched away at their truffle naan. Naan spread with truffle paste that was accompanied by paneer mousse and some pear chutney. The bread was delicious alone or with the paneer mousse which was sweetened and spiced. I could taste cardamom. It was more of a curdled form of milk than real mousse. The chutney was sweet, lacked citrus and did nothing to make the naan taste better.

The second small plate lined up was their lamb barra. Lamb ribs that used papaya as part of the marinade along with spices. The effect was a flavour that was smoky and a little mustard-y like what one would expect of spice marinated meat out of tandoor. This was delicious.

Following that were some kickass tulsi cod. The fish was marinated with a basil spice paste before they were charred in the tandoor. The outcome was tender, very moist and very tasty from both the flavour of the cod and the spices.

We tried their mustard gobhi which were gobi (cauliflower) marinated with mustard and then into the tandoor treatment. They were tangy and surprisingly "juicy".

This was the gucchi pulao which we came for. There was little to draw references from beside the delicious one we had from Punjab Grill. The flavour from this did not match in intensity with that one. There wasn't so much of the morel flavour that were infused into the rice and these mushrooms had a less "meaty" texture because they were also smaller. Considering that this was a single serving portion and that it cost about half of the other one, Punjab Grill suddenly didn't feel so expensive.

We were recommended their jalebi. We were apprehensive but we tried anyway. These were freshly made and served hot. Now I can with certainty tell that I don't enjoy them because they're too sweet.

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.