Hai Kee Brothers, Chinatown Point

Hai Kee Brothers (#02-39 Chinatown Point, 133 New Bridge Road) have been around since the 50s but I was not aware of them until recently when they've opened this new shop. From what I've gathered, one of the things they're known for were their soy sauce chicken. Just like Chew Kee and Chiew Kee just across the road along Upper Cross Street.

I liked their meats. Soy sauce chicken was tender with a properly marinated flavourful skin while char siew was sweet and tasty. I had been imagining that those char siew would be more thickly sliced though. Liked the crisp from their roasted pork belly as well. This meat platter tasted much better than it looked.

The menu described this as chicken liver rice rolls. I thought it was chicken livers stuffed in rice rolls but they appeared to be just tossed together. They were okay.

The only seafood that was in their laksa seafood fried rice were three shrimps. It's not bad. I would have preferred a stronger laksa flavour and perhaps also with laksa leaves but it wasn't a bad fried rice.

China Classic (唐筳), Chinatown Point

I remember that this location used to be a Luk Yu Teahouse - not to be confused with Luk Yu Teahouse at Stanley Street in Hong Kong. It's become China Classic (#01-41/42 Chinatown Point, 133 New Bridge Road, tel : +65 6262 1717), another similar looking Chinese restaurant that also like its predecessor did what appeared to be Cantonese food and dim sum.

We ordered a serving of their roasted duck and char siew. Duck was passable. It had pretty flavourful sauce that was redolent of rendered fat and spices that they had used. But it wasn't good enough as a roast that would get me looking forward to coming back though. The char siew was layered with fat and was served with a sweet sauce/glaze which I liked.

The menu described their har gow to have the black moss - or also commonly known as fa cai (髮菜). Quite obvious that there wasn't much of those in the shrimp dumpling. I had been expecting a lot more since the quantities they used imparted nothing at all.

Siew mai was quite tasty. These came with a piece of abalone on top.

Quite surprised that their XO carrot cake wasn't overly greasy. In fact, it was quite dry. Which was a good thing because it didn't feel oily.

Char siew bao was competent. The fillings were sweet and moist. Maybe it's a similar sauce from their char siew.

There were oyster stuffed fried spring rolls. They looked unremarkable. But we could taste the bits of oysters in them. The skins of these rolls were crispy and unexpectedly tasty.

Finished up with spinach fried rice with egg white and scallops. Again, pretty competent fried rice. Needed a bit more salt or fish sauce or soy sauce that would make it more savoury. We got by using pickled green chilli with soy sauce.

Konjiki Hototogisu, Great World City

We didn't understand the hype with Konjiki Hototogisu. Their bowls were passable, not memorable. The emphasis of the word 'Michelin' in any form of advertising hasn't exactly made us view them in any better light. Anyway, they've a new shop at Great World City (#01-143, 1 Kim Seng Promenade) that did ramen with oyster paste and oil. 

There's oyster chawanmushi which had that oyster paste added. It was actually kinda nice.

The shop was suppose to be good for two of their oyster bowls. The one above was the paitan bowl. An unusual blend of flavours from the oyster paste, oyster oils and a slice of aburi lemon. Creamy and tangy with sweetness from roasted corn. In an unexpected manner, I kinda liked it. But I wouldn't have known it was an oyster ramen if I hadn't been told.

Not getting so much oyster flavour from this shio oyster bowl than a brininess from the broth. It wasn't a bad bowl of noodles per se, but calling this oyster ramen had my expectations raised and the bowl was a let down. The paitan was better.

Revisiting Tsui Wah (翠華) at Clark Quay

We're back in Tsui Wah. So this officially made our visits here more frequent than the ones in Hong Kong. Haha. Even if it was just one more.

We noticed their Kagoshima styled pork cartilage instant noodles the last time and didn't have room to try them. This was pretty good. Everything including the cartilage was tender. The sauce was savoury and delicious coupled with the dry tossed instant noodles that they didn't overcook.

Their luncheon meat with egg rice was not bad but I attribute that to the soy sauce and maybe the luncheon meat. Not exactly the better Hong Kong styled fried luncheon meat if I might add.

We had a regular round fried egg which could have been achieved by myriads of food stalls. The bar for fried eggs on rice had been set at Ma Sa and this isn't anywhere in that league.

This wasn't so much obligatory greens than it was because I generally like kang kong and love preserved bean curd. The vegetables were nicely blanched here flavoured with the latter.

 

This lightly battered sweet and sour prawns were a much better rendition than the disappointing plate at Mei Garden. The batter was there to lend texture without being excessive. There's even bits of hawthorn fruit stir fried in this dish.

ABC Food Corner, Havelock Road

A relatively new Indian Muslim food place (743 Havelock Road) has opened up just beside Pullman Bakery.

That's curried egg. It was okay.

Curried mutton was also okay.

We grabbed a Maggi prata, the lighter counterpart to the Maggi murtabak. Little reason not to pick a comfort carbo bomb of MSG ladened fried instant noodles wrapped with prata. It was textually pleasing but the flavours that were in the noodles were pretty much lost after the curry.

This Milo prata wasn't bad, just not as memorable as the Milo butter one at The Roti Prata House. For some reasons, the flavouring of food here felt a little muted. I wonder about the curry that they included for this.

A nasi padang from Changi Airport T4's Food Emporium

We were looking food late in the evening at Changi Airport's Food Emporium at Terminal 4. A number of stalls looked like they were either closed or vacant and we ended up with a plate of nasi padang from the stall that sold those. Comfort food.

This was actually much tastier than I had imagined. The sayur lodeh gravy was creamy and rich. Very decent sambal goreng and sambal kang kong which was a little fibrous. I thought the sambal on the side would have been nicer if it packed more heat but while it wasn't kickass, it wasn't a deal breaker either. It was already quite a steal at $4.

This must have been my first meatless nasi padang.