You Yi (友誼), Havelock Road Food Centre

I've been asked if I've tried the fish soup at Havelock Food Centre. Most of the time, it isn't specified whether the fish soup in question is referring Yu Mei Mei Shi or this one (#01-30 Havelock Road Cooked Food Centre, 22A/B Havelock Road). Unless that someone mentions the fried fish specifically which will allow me to conclude that they were talking about this particular stall. I haven't but I decided to give it a go today since I was early and the usual queue that plagues the stall has not yet gotten unbearable.

I got the tom yum ee mee option. The broth was a little spicy, heavy with tomato and cloudy. Didn't taste exactly like Thai tom yum but that was probably not the point. The fish they used were of the fresh water variety for both the sliced ones and the fried. That much I could tell without being able pinpointing the specific fish. Sliced fish were pretty fresh but the fried ones were slightly mushy. The batter was light and it was well fried but I didn't think so much of the fish itself. Not as tasty as what I was led to believe from hearsay.

Sun King Ryoriya (三錦中華料理), Robertson Walk

Years ago, this place was known as Ryoriya Sangokushi. It was located in another unit then, serving what I had then surmised to be Taiwanese/Japanese food. And a Taiwanese beer I remember not liking. What's changed beside the location was that the menu seemed to have expanded with influences Korean food and even local dishes. Now, there's also Sapporo on tap.

Tried some dishes that sounded interesting. Their stir fried cabbage with sakura ebi was very nice. The aroma from the shrimps permeated the crunchy vegetable. This would have been good with steamed rice.

The menu can be overwhelming from the variety and a little confusing from the descriptions. The name of the dishes were written in English, Chinese and Japanese. The English description of this dish was something along the lines of stir fried long beans with century eggs and peanuts. It was until the waitress repeated the order for confirmation that I realized it was 宫保皮蛋.

This gong bao sauce was more savoury than sweet...something different from the rendition that I grew up eating. The other thing that I didn't expect was that the century eggs were totally devoid of the ammonia flavour. I liked that the peanuts were toasted though.

This was described on the menu as dried noodle with sesame sauce. I had imagine it to be just soupless noodles with sesame dressing. It came with sauce that contained minced pork that hadn't that much sesame flavour.

The noodles became boring after a couple of mouthfuls. Thankfully, there was white vinegar and pepper to help eat them. And no, Kikkoman does not make white vinegar in those bottles.

Max's Restaurant, Far East Plaza

I've never heard of Max's Restaurant (#01-07 Far East Plaza, 14 Scotts Road, tel : +65 6909 8504) until they opened up recently. From what I've read, they've been around since 1945 and are known for their fried chicken.

We ordered their pinakbet because it was the only real vegetable dish on the menu. There was a variety though which included bitter gourd, string beans, carrots, kang kong, eggplant and okra that's stir fried or sautéed in bagoong. Together with some bits of pork and shrimp. No idea which variety of bagoong they used but this was pretty tasty.

Since these guys are "the house that fried chicken built", we had to have their fried chicken. My verdict was that it was not bad at all. I liked that it wasn't battered. The bird has a nice chicken-y flavour which in my opinion, many local fried chicken doesn't and the meat was tender to boot. Those little planks on the side were fried sweet potato.

The restaurant recommended the banana ketchup and Worcestershire sauce to go with their fried chicken. I mixed them both and added a bit of hot sauce. That banana ketchup had a flavour not very different from preserved sour plum. No banana flavour though.

I'm generally not big on mayonnaise. Max's rendition of the chicken sisig is done with mayo. From what I could tell, the meat components were chopped bits of their fried chicken and chicken liver. I liked this dish more than I thought. Loved those seared liver bits. Together with the onions and chilli, the sisig came together nicely. This was one to go with steamed rice.

Speaking of which, I should avoid the garlic rice here the next time. Expensive, bland and the flavour is nowhere near Gerry's.

Monster Curry, Jem

My first experience with Monster Curry was a few years back. Recently, I happened to be looking for a place with no queue at Jem in the lunch hour and ended up here (#02-06 Jem, 50 Jurong Gateway Road) with their steak curry. The steak didn't look as good as the picture on the menu. I was imagining something like the wafu steak from Tampopo. It didn't taste too bad though.

I remembered liking their level 3 spiciness for their curry and got the same this time round. Creamy with a nice heat from that level 3 and a sweetness that wasn't annoying. Almost fruity if I hadn't been imagining things. 

Impossible™ from MOS Burger

Of the few Impossible burgers I've tried, this one from MOS Burger was the worst tasting one. Yes, I thought this was even lousier than the one from Three Buns. While I admit that the fried onions and the barbeque sauce had something to do with me not liking it as much, the patty also didn't taste like what I had from Omakase Burger or Oriole. Those two were pretty good. It was much more obvious that this wasn't meat from the texture. If this had been my first experience with Impossible, my opinion of them would have been very different from what it is today. 

Revisiting Tambuah Mas at Paragon

Haven't eaten at this outlet of Tambuah Mas in a while. The restaurant looked like they had updated their furnishings.

I don't recall having seen nasi goreng ayam on the menu before. We ordered it today. I guess it was unremarkable okay on it's own. With sambal belacan, it was great but that's largely attributed to their sambal. That last part is important. But I probably won't be getting this again. There're too much delicious gravies to be had here for a pedestrian fried rice.

Decided to try their kari ayam today instead of the usual ayam korma. The lemak from the coconut was equally savoury and intense and will likewise not do any favours to one's heart. That didn't change the fact that it was tasty and it was the reason why we also had a serving of nasi putih. 

I don't think I'll ever get past their fried cow lungs.

Liked those tempe goreng as well.

Since we wanted to fill our vegetable quota for the meal, their sayur lodeh sounded reasonable.