More food and seasonal items from Sushiro

Here's some stuff we had from Sushiro recently. Tried the snow crab leg nigiri. Not recommended. Couldn't taste the crab, not to mention the sweetness that we had expected from the meat.

I think this was the roast pork with mayo and negi. Tasted like how it looked. 

The ankimo gunkan looked a lot better on the menu. Wasn't as tasty as I was hoping for.

Like the anikmo and the snow crab, I kept my expectations low for their shirako ponzu jelly gunkan. The low expectations were met and nothing more.

What impressed me was their ebi miso ramen. I know, no one goes to Sushiro for ramen right? This one had a pretty impressive prawn broth which beat the one from Le Shrimp Ramen. I kid you not. Couldn't taste any miso but the prawn flavour was good enough on its own.

Shirasu gunkan was...edible. I'm not very impressed with their seasonal sushis at this point. 

As if to punctuate the fatigue from trying what's in season and finding those falling short despite lowered expectations, I felt like tuna mayo. I enjoyed the tuna mayo.

As I did the very unexpected chilled sweet tamago yaki nigiri.

They had pretty looking otoro tonight.

Yuzu drink to wash it all down.

Ippudo's 10th Anniversary pig skull tonkotsu ramen

Well, to be more precise, they said the bones of pig's heads. No actual pig's head are featured in the bowl. Just charshu. It looked pretty much like their shiromaru bowl. The noodles and the charshu are also the usual ones from them. The only difference was the broth which they said is made solely from pig's skulls. I don't eat at Ippudo (#02-19 Star Vista, 1 Vista Exchange Green) so much so I can't say that I could discern that much of a difference. It did look a little grey-er. I though that it also seemed saltier than their usual bowl and the finish of the broth isn't as smooth. Anyways......skulls for the skull throne!

Coco Ichibanya, Star Vista

It's been a number of years since we've last eaten at Coco Ichibanya (#02-06 Star Vista, 1 Vista Exchange Green). Since the weather has been uncharacteristically cooling these recent nights, the thought of some curry sounded like a good idea as we were in the vicinity. Because we hadn't had it for such a long while, I also forgot what was the spiciness level that I liked from them and got a level 2 instead of a 3 which I think I would have preferred.

Quick one here. The first picture featured their pork cutlet with cheese curry rice - to which I added extra cheese and clams. Not bad. As I've mentioned earlier, a bit more heat would have been more satisfying. Loved the flavour of the clams. The other one was scrambled eggs with added hot dogs. The eggs were poorly done. More omelette than scrambled eggs and not enough to go around. In this case, texture and butter is important and they were both lacking.

Tried their chicken gyoza which tasted pretty much like most gyozas. Skin looked a little pale.

Kai Duck, Ngee Ann City

We came across Kai Duck (#05-10/11 Ngee Ann City, 391 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6235 5419) by chance while looking for dinner. 

Started off with some refreshing chilled tomatoes in sesame sauce. I couldn't figure out what those jellied bits below the tomato were.

Their innocuous looking minced duck and tofu soup was quite nice.

Peking duck skin on crackers were pretty tasty too. I noticed that they scraped the flavourful fat off beneath those crisp skin. Why?!

We got stir fried lettuce with dace and fermented black bean for the obligatory greens. The flavour from the dace and black beans made this pretty good eating.

Liked their braised tofu with preserved mustard green.

The steamed patin with preserved olives was not bad too.

Noticed that the dishes that came after the soup and small bites were all robustly flavoured and generally great with steamed rice. This was not by accident. 

The Penny Black, Boat Quay

Penny Black (26-27 Boat Quay) has been around for years. I've always had the idea that if an establishment has survived as long as they did, they must be doing something right.  We noticed that they had some English pub grub going on in their menu and we decided to try.

Like these bacon faggots. I gathered that they were made from left over cuts and offal. The bacon that was wrapped around those had the hallmark flavour of stale oil. Unforgiveable. It also wasn't smokey or salty. I was expecting more texture based on the constituent ingredients of the faggot but it was just mushy.

We were hoping the pork pie would fare better.

The fillings were soft and mushy. Like 狮子头 but much more loosely packed. Not much flavour going on except for seasoning. Could have been largely bread crumbs. I'm not an expert in English pork pies but I expected better. Expected something like a pork pie I once had.

I've read some recommendations from TripAdvisor for Penny Black. Positive ones that is. Now I see how appalling the standards of those recommendations. Wouldn't recommend it.

Oso Ristorante, Oasia Hotel Downtown

This was our first visit to Oso after they had shifted to the current location (27th Floor Oasia Hotel Downtown, 100 Peck Seah Street, tel : +65 6327 8378). The last time we ate at the restaurant was a long time back.

Bread has changed from what they served previously. The onion focaccia tasted fresh and the flatbread cracker thingy were good with salumi.

Cioppino was not bad. It's a prawn bisque flavoured with some orange zest.

We had some beef tenderloin carpaccio with black truffle puree and crushed hazelnuts. I found this to be somewhat addictive with those flatbread that I mentioned earlier.

Oso has venison tenderloin cured in house. The product was tender and smokey and paired pretty nicely with those sour berry things on the side.

Curious about how limpets would taste like, we ordered their Atlantic limpets with pink pepper on angel hair. Like clams. Those pink pepper had a different aroma from the common black variety. While I didn't dislike it, I prefer the black.

It's truffle season so we got some tagliatelle with Parmigiano Reggiano and tartufo bianco. Creamy, cheesy and buttery.

In our opinion, we make better tiramisu than the ones Oso serves. This was dry and a little lacking in flavour, salvaged mostly by the mascarpone cream.

We'll remember to skip their regular coffee the next time as well.