More food from Sin Hoi Sai

We've heard varied opinions about Sin Hoi Sai. Some good, some not so good. We've been here a few times. It hasn't been bad so far. Here's another recent late dinner.

That's the salted fish and minced meat tofu. Sauce was a little sweet, mostly savoury and it tasted like it might have had some kind of cooking wine in it. I could be wrong. We though it was a straightforward comfort dish with rice. Gotta have rice with this. I liked this better than their hot plate tofu. Which wasn't bad. I just liked this better.

More of their har cheong gai. Brings out the masochist in me with their sambal belachan.

Their stir fried sambal kang kong was competent. While their sambal recipe wasn't my favourite rendition for this particular dish, it's not bad. Gotta do this with rice too.

This was sotong rojak. Fried squid with rojak. A rojak that consisted of just sliced turnips, cucumbers and pineapple with a sauce that didn't taste much like the regular rojak sauce. To be fair, the menu spelled it as 'roja sauce'. Hahaha. So maybe this mildly tangy and mostly sweet sauce was what roja tasted like. But if one were to disassociate the dish with regular rojak sauces and not compare, this was not bad. The vegetables/fruits were crisp and refreshing in the sauce and those squid were very competently fried. 

The crushed peanuts they used in the sauce had just started getting rancid. We fed back to to the wait staff and they were willing to whip up another serving sans crush peanuts for replacement. 

Cabbage parcels, boiled beef and steckerlfisch from Brotzeit

Been a while since we were last here at this branch of Brotzeit. The menu appears to have changed. Some of the old stuff we liked are no longer on the menu.

I don't know if their stuffed cabbage was available previously. We've just noticed it. Minced pork and beef wrapped in cabbage in tomato sauce. Braised they say. The flavour was pretty clean. Just the meaty flavour from the mince, the slightly sweet cabbage and the tangy tomato gravy. Especially when the sour cream that it was served with was just a tiny dollop.

We ordered the boiled beef to see if it was any good since the last time we've had anything similar was the tafelspitz at the defunct Kaiserhaus. This one was not as enjoyable. Supposed rib and oyster blade which were nowhere as tender as ones from Kaiserhaus. Not feeling this horseradish bread sauce which wasn't as tasty as the one Kaiserhaus. Yes, I've been repeating Kaiserhaus. They were so much better. I missed it. 

Steckerlfisch is fish grilled on a stick. Which was what this was. This one was on a.....hmmm, metal stick I guess. Just grilled mackerel like any other grilled mackerel. Nothing particularly special about it.

McMuffin Stack from McD

Because sometimes I just have got to get some McD. The savoury salt and fat filled sandwiches that my body never begrudges in the morning. This was nothing like the Mighty McMuffin but I take what I can get. Didn't I just have something similar minus the "chicken bacon" a couple of years back in Bangkok? 

Steak tartare from Les Bouchons

Les Bouchons has a menu that hasn't changed much for years. I found out recently that their restaurant Robertson Quay (#01-02 The Quayside, 60 Robertson Quay, tel : +65 6733 4414) has steak tartare. One that we had to mix for ourselves. 

In retrospect, I preferred to have someone professional doing this because I couldn't get the ratio of the condiments right. I also blame it on the measlier portions of aromatics. While it wasn't bad per se, I had a more enjoyable eat even with the gherkin-y rendition at The Ranch or the spicy heady one at  the defunct Hippopotamus. Remember them?

It's worth nothing that their parent (or is that sister?) restaurant L'Angelus prepares this dish tableside for a just dollar more. 

Bismillah Biryani, Dunlop Street

I've heard about Bismillah (48 & 50 Dunlop Street, tel : +65 6935 1326) and their dum biryani for years. The owner, a Pakistani who's been here for a few decades never thought the local renditions to measure up and decided to whip up his own rendition. The rest is history and in recent years they've listed in the Bib Gourmand. Never got around to giving them a try until today.

We ordered their kid goat biryani.

And the lamb chop biryani. Bismillah's biryani easily costs twice or more than the regular prices we're used to paying. 

The preparation is different from most of the local variety. The closest other rendition I've encountered was Azizah at Geylang Serai which is incidentally also Pakistani styled. There's less oil for starters for the both of them which resulted in a dryer and lighter plate of rice. This is where the similarity ends.

Bismillah had more spice going on and is served without dalcha. Instead, one gets something which I thought tasted like buttermilk. Not raita.

Some of the chunks of the kid goat was dry. Wouldn't come back for that again. The lamb chops were fatty, nicely marinated with spices and hence, flavourful. Nice and also 33.3% more expensive than the goat biryani.

The other thing I liked from them was their haleem - a stodgy stew of lentils, mutton and spices. And some other stuff which I probably don't know about. What impressed me about the haleem was how it had been thoroughly infused with the flavour of mutton. I'm venturing a guess that a lot of fat went into the dish. Delicious though. 

Note to self : don't get their mango lassi again. Tasted like melted mango kulfi. No yoghurt flavour.

Tess Bar & Kitchen, Seah Street

Been wanting to come to Tess Bar & Kitchen (38 Seah Street, tel : +65 6337 7355) for a few years now so it's finally happened. We ordered a number of small plates which was what this place was essentially about. Plates that goes with drinks. 

Delicious lamb short rib they do here. The menu described a pomegranate crust which I was unable to relate with those ribs. There was a glaze though. Tangy and sweet and spiced up. The lamb was flavourfully fatty and slide off the bone tender.

Camembert with truffle salsa and garlic toasts. Yum! Where were the thyme flowers?

Roasted cauliflower with cheese was also pretty good. It was supposed to be aged cheddar according to the menu. Not getting any sharpness or much salt from the cheddar. Menu mentioned scorched cashew nuts as well. Quantities of those cashews must have been so little that I don't recall having had them.

Their bone marrow's a signature item. Those beef cubes that was served with the marrow were incredibly tender, layered by a warm sweet glaze made with some jus and some wine. I think. I thought that the point of to dish was lost because I ordered this for bone marrow. Which the dish had very little of.

I liked the chicken liver toasts. There might have been a bit too much of the grape and port chutney left things a bit too sweet but I thought it was a forgivable off balance. Still delicious.

Fried pork belly passed muster. That black sauce on the side was described as Asian dip. Liked the sweet and spicy from it which worked with both those guava and pork belly. More of the guava would be nice though.

This was a dessert called Tess 1.0. Interesting because it had salty elements in it like the truffle salsa and pretty generous sprinkle of diced Gorgonzola piccante. Sweetness came from dried fruits and honeycomb. So this ended up being quite intensely salty and sweet. But no truffle honey or compressed grapes like the menu described.