Revisiting Rumah Makan Minang

We've been wanting to come back to Rumah Makan Minang for a long time. It seemed that the wanting had being going on for the past nine years.

Rumah Makan Minang does serve brown rice. But whom are we kidding? We didn't come here for brown rice when the traditional nasi putih isn't broken. This stuff is tender and absorbs gravies well. Everything we ordered was good with the nasi putih.

Stir fried kang kong was okay. It's a dish that was what it was - mouthfuls of vegetable crunch flavoured by a little garlic and ikan bilis with just a bit of heat from the chillis. Not bad with rice.

Begedils here were awesomely peppery.

The gulai nanka, or curried jackfruit is much more tender than the ones from Minang House at Lucky Plaza. I'd pick this over the latter if I had to choose.

Very competent sambal goreng here. There was a particular sweetness perhaps which I couldn't put my finger to. But still addictively delicious especially with white rice.

Pretty decent ayam belado hijau. Wished the chicken were meatier though. The belado hijau itself was pretty salty so that's another solid reason for their nasi putih. I liked the flavour from the green chilli which oddly reminded me of a particular taste that can be found in green beans as well.

Spiced omelette. I never found out what was the proper name for these things. Not bad too. 

Their teh halia doesn't have much of that halia flavour so I'm sticking to the regular tarik drink the next time.

Another meal at Sin Hoi Sai

This was another late-ish dinner. While Sin Hoi Sai wouldn't exactly be what most people would categorize as "value for money", they were pretty consistent with the quality of their cze char and there're dishes here we like enough that we could revisit.

Had these fried prawns a couple of times. So far they've had the light batter crisp and dry which is how I like deep fried battering. Simple and pretty good eating which is also nice with their sambal belachan. A little pricey. 

Tried their boiled beef (肥牛) with fried garlic bits. The beef was fat laced and tender but for some reasons not beefy tasting at all. Not much flavouring from the fried garlic bits too so I'm not sure what to make of this. Will probably not order them again.

Their sambal petai for now and the foreseeable future is my favourite vegetable dish from them. Though I'm calling it a vegetable dish, it actually has minced pork.

Today's salted fish and minced meat tofu lacked that salted fish flavour that was more prominent the last time we had it. Hmmm....just as I was saying that they were consistent.

With art I choke

Artichoke just had their 9th anniversary some days back and had come up with a bunch of dishes to commemorate. Those items are - or should I say, were available for a short time on their menu. At least that's what they said. So we came over to try.

That's grilled halloumi, jackfruit, Thai basil and peanuts which felt like it was put together without much thought on if the flavours would synergise. It didn't taste bad. I just thought that the sum of its parts didn't exist and I was eating each item on its own.

We were particularly intrigued by something they called octopus donuts. 

It's a ball donut, sugar crusted and stuffed with octopus and chermoula. Interestingly tasty even though I couldn't detect any octopus. The stuffings tasted like spicy tomato sauce sardines from a can. And oddly enough, it worked at least for me, as a donut.

The other thing we had was their wagyu carpetbag kebab. Oysters wrapped in thin slices of wagyu in a pretty kickass oyster chowder. Tasty. I know Artichoke has always been about honest "dude food" and I'm clearly not in much of a position or experience to criticize their choice of ingredients as being poorly conceived, this was to me a poor use of the cow because it could have been any other decent quality beef and I wouldn't have been wiser.

Tonkatsu teishoku from Suju

I saw a neighbouring table order this previously and told myself I'd come back to try it. It was good. Dry crispy breading over a fat laced and moist rosu katsu. Even came dangerously close to enjoying their tonkatsu sauce. These guys could give Tonkatsu by Ma Maison a run for their money. 

While I have not had every teishoku in this country, I'm pretty sure that Suju has one of the best better ones. I'm glad that the oshinko is still their daikon. I hope this doesn't get swapped out.

Where Suju beats Tonkatsu by Ma Maison is the nama tamago. Tonkatsu doesn't have that.

Itadakimasu!

More food from Nirai Kanai

Another dinner at Nirai Kanai. We ended up here today because we had originally wanted to check out the dry aged steaks at The Ranch and they were out of dry aged beef.

We've had gyozas here before. Meaty juicy things.

Hamburg was peppery like I remembered it.

I got the cubic steak teishoku this time. Cubic steak = cubed steak. Meat's a little chewy and needs more flavour. I can only imagine that it was so lightly salted because they had wanted the accompanying dip to be used. I'd take salt over the dip. 

More roasts from Hong Kong Jin Tian (香港錦田)

Came by for a quick lunch. Got myself roasted duck breast and roasted pork with boiled egg and rice. The duck breast meat was unexpectedly tender. Roasted pork was good that we ordered seconds. Hong Kong Jin Tian's rendition of that roasted pork was old school like their other roasts - which meant a particular balance of meat to fat to crackling that is of a different ratio from what some of the contemporary roasts are trying to achieve. Fat was tender, none of the "melt in your mouth" shit that wannabe influencers love writing about.

Personally, the downside to Hong Kong Jin Tian's food was the rice. A little dry and beady which isn't much on its own. There's the gravy for that but I'm generally not a fan of their gravy.