Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger : Year Thirteen

It's been thirteen years!

Mrs Pho, Vivocity

I hadn't realised that Mrs Pho had an outlet at Vivocity (#01-171, 1 Harbourfront Walk) until recently so we were here to give the food a try since we kinda liked what we had from the original shop at Beach Road.

I liked their beef and starfruit salad which was tangy and refreshing with saltiness from the fish sauce. That was on top of the combination of textures and other flavours which included those prawn crackers you could eat them with. I did enjoy their rendition of bún mọc which featured a clear light tasting broth, sliced pork and something they called 'Mamma's chicken ham' that tasted exactly like the meatballs the noodles came with. Hmmm. That and the broth for the phở bò tái nạm wasn't as well done as the one at Beach Road. This bowl had flavour was muted with less beefiness and cinnamon.

Note to self: ask them to omit the Chinese parsley the next time.

Revisiting Hong Kong Jin Tian (香港錦田)

It's been a while so I thought I'd give Hong Kong Jin Tian another go. The experience was considerably improved because I had wisely asked for fatty char siew (肥叉烧) rather than the burnt ends. On top of that, a roasted duck drumstick and a stewed egg. I enjoyed it though I did wish the duck was more tender and had more meat. But otherwise it had a nice old school savoury seasoning which wasn't excessively herbal.

Menya Kokoro, 100AM

I've been wanting to try this mazesoba place since they set up shop last year but had for reasons never made it to Suntec. Largest and most popular mazesoba from Japan was what I read. Our F&B imports tends to be full of superlatives just like this sunny island itself. This new outlet at 100AM (#02-10, 100 Tras Street) was a lot more convenient so here we were.

Tried the cold pork yuzu hiyashi. I enjoyed it. Nice, firm and refreshing noodles with textures from vegetables and tenkasu. I thought it was better after adding the extra yuzu sauce which they obliged.

We ended up with a bowl their curry beef maze don by mistake thinking that it was noodles that we had ordered. Turned out to be a fortunate mistake. I liked this because the curry wasn't excessive so the flavour from the garlic, negi and meat came through resulting in a more complex curry rice than most other curry rice. Not that those other curry rice weren't good but they would not have had the additional flavour and textures this did. Also, the curry was savoury and not sweet. Sweet! 

Not impressed by their mentai tamagoyaki. Sauce was more mayo than mentaiko. I would have preferred a much lighter batter on the fried tamago.

Ting Heng Seafood Restaurant, Tiong Poh Road

Not unlike numerous (hooray for double negatives!) other eateries, we've seen Ting Heng Seafood Restaurant (82 Tiong Poh Road, tel : +65 6323 6830) countless times when we're in the vicinity. We wanted to find out if they were any good so that we can count them into the cluster of cze char we can depend on in this area. That included places like Sin Hoi Sai, Tian Tian Seafood, Lao You Ji, Kampong Chicken Eating House and No. 3 Crab Delicacy.

We ordered claypot mutton because we like mutton/lamb. The meat for some reasons is not so commonly available in cze char and hence we were keen in finding out if this particular one was good. It wasn't. The lamb flavour was washed out by the stewing sauce and whatever processing they might have done on the meat. It wasn't a bad braised meat in claypot dish per se, but I eat lamb/mutton for their flavour and this one like many renditions, had failed me. This one, was definitely not a match for the rendition at Spring Court.

These prawns were a signature dish they had. The cooking involved some deep frying and stock glazing of those prawns. Flavour's not bad but it tasted like a generic stock which didn't have any identifiable flavour. Meat of those prawns were a little dry from the frying. Didn't taste bad though. There was some head fat that added flavour and a lot of those flavour were accumulated at the area near the head and the trimmed off legs.

That's claypot tofu and chicken cooked with salted fish - another signature dish from Ting Heng. This was delicious in that fishy salty manner. Great with rice. This was a small portion at $14 and the portions were really pretty small.

Ting Heng has a dish of small pig intestines (粉肠) stir fried with black pepper. I had initially thought it to be in a black pepper sauce but it wasn't so. It was just wok scorched intestines stir fried in black pepper and oil with bell peppers and onions. This rendition without sauce was pretty good. Nice chew.

Seizan Uni Ramen, Picnic @ Wisma Atria

So word is that Seizan Uni Ramen (Stall 7, #03-15 Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Road) is from the two Michelin starred Seizan in Tokyo. That their dashi which required 10 hours of preparation was the basis of all their broths including this uni ramen which includes also bafun uni and cream. I was warily intrigued. 

I tried to understand the broth. In some mouthfuls, I was pretty sure there was that subtle sweetness from uni poking through the cream. In some, I failed to see how there was uni. While in others my mind kept pondering to itself "is this cream of pumpkin or is it cream of corn?". 

What I observed was that as the broth cooled towards the end of the bowl, it edged toward the definitively uni side of the spectrum of flavours that were floating around in my head.

It's not bad. Noodles were firm and chewy. Ajitama had very soft yolk though not exactly molten. Charshu was tender and disintegrating in the mouth. But I don't know if I'll eat it again.