Not by the hair of my chinny Chin Chin

I haven't eaten at Chin Chin Eating House (19 Purvis Street) much. The first time was about 12 years ago and in between - probably only once. The last visit wasn't such a good experience. It was only on retrospect that I've realized that I had ordered their roasted chicken again like the first time I ate here. So here's change.

Boiled chicken this time round. It's not bad chicken. Pretty tender bird doused in the usual sesame oil/soy sauce combination. Not the top of my list or close to riveling the outstanding ones like Hua Kee or Sin Kee but very edible stuff. Chin Chin's rice is a little dry and a little clumpy with a light flavour. Not quite good enough to eat on its own for me but their chilli with a light burn helps.

On the side, we ordered omelette stir fried with bitter gourd. This was quite nice.

We had another go at their Hainanese pork chop. Eating this was kinda pleasant this time round. It tasted freshly made unlike the previous occasion and they had the sauce served on the side rather than doused over everything. This pork chop was better than most "pork chop" served in most curry rice shops all over the island. To my surprise, I didn't dislike the tangy tomato sauce. In fact, I was dangerously close to liking it. *gasp*

Si Wei Mao Cai (思味冒菜), Mosque Street

Came across the mention of 思味冒菜 (33 Mosque Street, tel : +65 6223 1170) online and thought that some of the food looked pretty good. 

As we weren't looking for anything particularly spicy in the recent sweltering weather, we ordered things that looked like they were light on the heat. Like these rehydrated and stir fried dry pot willow/tea tree mushrooms (干锅茶树菇). The texture was chewy and almost fibrous. The flavour was somewhat woodsy mushroomy spiced with Szechuan peppercorn. They were tasty at the start but that tastiness suffered from diminishing returns.

The Chinese name for the dish above was 霸道蛙 which is translated by Google as "overbearing frog". Lol. I'm not sure if 'overbearing' is an accurate translation for 霸道. The English description on the menu was 'stir fried frog with shredded romaine lettuce'. Those were definitely not romaine lettuce as we knew them. The Chinese name of the vegetable 笋丝 in the menu translates to bamboo shoots. These aren't bamboo shoots as we know neither.

Anyways, this was pretty good. The sauce was savoury and spiked with a bit of heat paired with slurp off the bone tender frogs and crunchy....vegetables.

The other dish we had was thinly sliced fatty beef in some spicy sour soup. There were more of those crunchy 笋丝 at the bottom of the pot. I thought this was outstandingly moreish with a nice bunch of textures.

We had to have rice with all those delicious sauces.

Bangers and mash from Lad & Dad

Bangers & mash aren't something I would normally order but I thought the ones from Lad & Dad (#01-79 Maxwell Food Centre, 1 Kadayanallur Street) looked good. Turned out to be a good call. The sausages were dense, flavourful from the bits of fat inside and salty which paired up nicely with the buttery mash potatoes and a splash of their savoury beef stew. 

Uni hitsumabushi from Man Man Unagi

I came across this item from Man Man's social media. For some reasons, I was unable to find that particular post after visiting anymore. *cues random conspiratorial tune* Yup, suckered down to try their uni hitsumabushi thingy. The staff were unable/unwilling to tell me how much uni there was until after the order had been made. Then suddenly information which they claimed not to know became forthcoming. 20g.

Not worth it for what they were charging. This order had half the amount of unagi compared to the regular hitsumabushi. Though edible, the uni wasn't of good quality or quantity. I'm disappointed because if they wanted to do it, they should have done a good job out of the option. But today, I've confirmed my assessment again that this Keong Saik branch grills better eels than the one in Duo Galleria.

Their caramelized and charred bittersweet kimoyaki were still delicious.

Suntory's kuro on the tap these days too, available in half pints. That's an improvement in the establishment there.

Ka-Soh, College Road

After having seen the Ka-Soh signage along Outram countless times, we finally paid the restaurant (Alumni Medical Centre, 2 College Road, tel : +65 6473 6686) a visit. 

Har cheong gai was in order because this was one the things to get when you eat here. The deep fried chicken parts were nicely done with sufficient prawn paste flavouring like their other restaurant at Amoy Street.

Menu described this dish as 'egg tofu fried with pickled vegetables & minced chicken'. It looked like mapo tofu. Gravy was a little sweet, a little savoury and spicy. The mentioned pickled vegetables were cai por (pickled turnip). Certainly didn't looked like what we imagined it to be when we ordered it but it didn't taste too bad.

Their sum lou hor fun has always been a favourite. I don't know if they're the better ones around these days but their rendition is still pretty tasty.

The dish we've never seen/heard of before from Ka-Soh was their beef and crab meat hor fun in black bean sauce and egg. Beef was tasteless and almost textureless and hence, we knew that their cooking had never improved with the times. There wasn't much crab meat in the black bean sauce which was of amateur quality flavour. I'm sure there're better black bean sauce dishes around that are much better than this one. 

Three Buns, Robertson Quay

I've had an impression formed of the Potato Head Folk and their Three Buns. Not my style. Proven once and again. So why did I end up here in this shop (60 Robertson Quay)? I got suckered by their Impossible™burger. But I think this third time will be the charm that finally takes hold.  

We tried a couple of burgers. The Rambo on top which featured Dorper lamb patties with feta, pickled aubergine and some nice cumin flavouring. In the pickled aubergine laid the essence of Three Buns. The thing/things that kill the burger. For me that is. The domineeringly sour pickle that detracted from the flavours of the lamb. This could have been pretty good if not for that.

Their Impossible™Chedda was similarly profiled by their pickle. My opinion was that the cheese, ketchup and pureed onion would probably have sufficed but these guys obviously saw the value in going their extra mile in overloading their burgers with more sourness. It seemed as though they were ashamed of the ingredients that they were using. This was the lousiest out of the three Impossible burgers I've had so far.   

And here they serve fries with truffle cheese sauce, shaved truffles and truffle aioli. Can anyone see any shaven truffles anywhere? I sure didn't. Those fries did not taste very truffle-y at all if you asked me.

Monkey Shoulder infused Madagascan vanilla milkshake? Didn't like this. Not so much the whiskey. It was the shake that I didn't like.