Kamo ju from Ginza Kamo Soba Kyudaime Keisuke

Did anyone notice that Keisuke has quietly changed the name of the shop to simply Kamo Soba instead of the older longer name? Anyways, this was the kamo ju - the last item and also the most expensive one that I wanted to try from Ginza Kamo Soba Kyudaime Keisuke (there's the older longer name!). Understandably, this could be perceived as a sort of Japanese duck rice which was not so much different from the local variety except for the ingredients and preparation method. Sliced duck, soup and rice.

Those sliced ducks were okay. Tender, chewy and I suppose passable in flavour. I'm pretty sure that was where most of the cost of this set came from. Underneath those duck was a layer of rice with minced meat packing some wasabi. That wasabi was a nice touch. What I found myself liking was the soup that was packed with loads of gamey duck flavour. If not for anything else, Kamo Soba did a ducking good job out of their broth.

Buffet at Kintamani Indonesian Restaurant

The last time I was here was probably a little more than a decade back. Kintamani Indonesian Restaurant (3F Furama Riverfront Hotel, 405 Havelock Road, tel : +65 6739 6463) isn't a high profile location and not so many people talk about them. But these guys are known for their Indonesian food buffet which is pretty expensive if one doesn't take advantage of those one for one credit card deals. There's an a la carte menu which isn't cheap that features some of the stuff that doesn't get put into the buffet variety. Likewise, there are regular buffet items like their sayur lodeh that for some strange reasons is not available on the menu.

I don't think these guys were the standards of Sari Ratu. But the food was decent enough. Some of the more memorable include their curried beef tendon, sayur lodeh, telur balado and a surprisingly savoury laksa which one could assemble from a station. There's satay to be had, gado gado which one could customize, kueh lopis where one could shovel as much shredded coconut and drizzle as much palm sugar as you wanted and unexpectedly tasty goreng pisang at the dessert station. All the food was made with delicious gravies and sauces that one cannot help but help themselves to more servings of the nasi puteh and kuning. It wouldn't be just a pun to say that the food was explosive. Haha!

Re-visiting Blue Ginger

We came back after the encouraging first visit to try more of their dishes. That included the ngoh heong which I had initially felt doubtful about but had turned out to be pretty delicious, packed densely with stuffings of minced pork and shrimp. Not heavy with the five spice powder. I preferred this to the rendition from Violet Onn Satay Bar. 

There was a pretty decent rendition of chap chye which I thought wasn't too bad. What was outstanding on this visit was their udang kuah pedas nanas - a dish of tiger prawns cooked in a pineapple gravy. I'm going by taste here and thinking that this seemed to have a lot more flavour coming from what I thought was assam (tamarind) rather than pineapples. In any case, the gravy was very appetizing and I liked both the meaty prawns and pineapples.

Truffle fried pizza from Da Paolo's Pizza Bar

I didn't realize that it's been four years since I was last here.

We saw that there was pizze fritte on their menu. Well, it was actually a fried calzone that was stuffed with mozzarella, mushrooms and truffled ricotta.

We didn't think it was impressive. The ingredients weren't outstanding. Considering that there weren't so much going on - the quality, or the lack of it showed. Mushrooms weren't particularly flavoursome and the mozzarella tasted flat like those that you could get from Phoon Huat next door. For what they charged, using buffalo mozzarella would have been nice.

Todamgol (토담골), Tanjong Pagar Road

We came across Todamgol (31 Tanjong Pagar Road, tel : +65 6224 7077) only a year or so ago and later found out that they have been in business for a number of years. With the number of Korean restaurants along Tanjong Pagar, each have almost become almost as faceless as snow. What drew our attention to Todamgol was the decor. These guys just looked a little different.

Banchan was the first to be served. They can be refilled on request. I don't think the restaurant's intention was to load anyone up on these so you do need to ask if you want more.

We ordered rice. These bowls were at least 3 times the cost of the local variety but hell yeah they were so good. The rice was cooked to the point where they were almost fluffy yet still sticky and soft. So good that we started on them with the banchan before the other food arrived.

The first of the dishes to arrive was one of their pancakes the menu called kken ib jun. The receipt brought the name together as kkenibjun and if one were to be inclined to inquire the powers that be, they could be commonly referred to kkaennip jeon. Jeon is pancake and kkaennip refers to perilla. Even though the menu has translated it to sesame as perilla is also sometimes called 'wild sesame', they're not related to sesame.

Those perilla leaves had a slice of pork in between their folded leaves before they were egg coated and pan fried. Pretty good stuff there.

Hadn't had bossam in a while so we thought why not. Turned out to be a good call. The slices of boiled pork belly were very tender with flavoursome fat. Those kimchi that were on the side tasted quite strongly of fermented bean. Here was where I thought the bossam ChoWon Garden did better with the kimchi. Still, we enjoyed this.

For good measure, a deon jang jigae. Nice, had a little bit of heat but was a little flat so we added some ssamjang and the bean-y kimchi from the bossam which upped the flavour game.  

Braised pig skin from Soon Heng

There's pig skin at Soon Heng. I thought those were pretty good as the flavour from the braising sauce had permeated their gelatinous skins.