The Forty Hands before Ip Man

We tried Forty Hands about eight years ago. It was about that time these Australian-sy styled cafe places that did all day breakfast/brunch started trending locally and eight years later, the Instagram kids still think their Eggs Benedict still look cool through the filters. Didn't leave much impression then and if my memory serves, I didn't think much of their coffee. But it's been eight years, we were in the vicinity before catching Ip Man 4 and didn't mind seeing if things have changed.

That's the tau sar pau which I see many photos of online. I'm sure it's because kids today don't have the privilege of eating them when they were young and it's a novelty for old food in a place they like to be seen at.

And that's how post of the pictures are taken on social media. Split right down the middle exposing the red bean paste. To be honest, it's not bad. Somewhat expensive but I enjoyed it.

I have a thing for matcha with espresso. McD has had it for a short while a few years back and I usually get mine from Starbucks. Between the them, I found a very nice balance from this dirty matcha from Forty Hands. Very nice balance between the green tea and the coffee.

Tried their cheeseburger because what the menu described sounded fairly sensible. Ordered it with less sauce.

I supposed eating this allowed me the epiphany why places like Omakase Burger and Burger+ can get away with charging they amount the charge for their burgers. Because they taste good and anything that tasted as good or better is more expensive.

But I digressed a little. The beef patty for this one was dense - not sure where or what was the bone marrow that was described in the menu. Meat was peppery too. Didn't taste bad but I don't think it was a good patty for a burger. The lopsided melted Provolone meant I got cheese on half the burger only. With forty hands I would assume that they would have had hbandwidth for the attention to such details. Pun intended.

I wouldn't order it again.

This might be the first avocado toast I've ever gotten. Not bad. Would have been improved with more feta cheese but I'm not complaining. Pesto on the side was nice and I appreciated that the salad was actually tossed.

Shun X Sakemaru (旬 X 酒丸), Cuppage Plaza

Heard about Shun X Sakemaru (#04-04 Cuppage Plaza, 5 Koek Road, tel : +65 6732 0195) - a collaboration between the izakaya Shun from Kappo Shunsui and Sakemaru. I've never patronized any of them before but I heard interesting things so I thought to give this one a go. These guys are located right next to Kazu.

The drink menu has a Clamato red eye so I got one while waiting for the food. It was a lot more Clamato than beer and the Tabasco flavour was non-existent.

Otoshi was a simmered fish in dashi/mirin. Possibly yellowtail. Tender, fatty and falling apart in the mouth infused by its sweet broth.

We ordered the simmered monkfish liver that they had on their seasonal menu.

When it was served, we realized that it wasn't simmered. The liver was a mousse. Very creamy, possibly with real cream and a light hint of ginger. Very nice. The crunchy pickled radish on the side tasted like they were made in house. The flavour was almost caramel. Very nice too. 

This was chopped up yellowtail with sour plum and sweet miso. The dressing was perky and was unexpectedly livened up further with the shiso flowers. Loved this.

The menu described this as sweet prawn and seaweed under the fried food section. Anything that required deep frying made that section so I thought it might have been isobe tempura. But these were just deep fried amaebi. Good munching because of the flavour from the shrimps and I kinda liked the pepper mayo. 

Smoked bacon which was as good as it looked and sounded.

The menu described this as yuzu pepper chicken soup. Didn't taste any yuzu pepper but it was a pretty nice light to medium intensity soup. The chunks of chicken were smooth and tender.

We topped up with some dashi tamagoyaki before carbs. Freshly made, light and savoury.

Carbs was their uni risotto. Which was a little disappointing because the flavour didn't come through. As a dish, it didn't taste bad. I liked the use of shiso flowers. But the rice tasted mostly like light soy sauce and I suppose if one tried the darndest, there was something subtle in the background. For what they charged, we had expected to be impressed. The uni was good though.

Fatty char siew and duck liver rice from Hong Kong Jin Tian (香港錦田)

At least that's what I ordered. The char siew wasn't that fatty but it was well caramelized with sweet bits of burnt ends. While the name of the stall is Hong Kong Jin Tian, this plate tasted little like char siew rice in Hong Kong. The barbequed pork is definitely a local style which has more sweet to savoury ratio. Duck liver's dry. I got a couple of duck hearts with that. All in all a pretty decent plate of 烧腊 rice if one were to discount the fibrous vegetables. Heh!

Christmas tenderloin and fried rice from Tsui Wah Tsui Wah (翠華)

Tsui Wah has a Christmas set meal going on. We took the option without desserts so it's $20.80 for this teriyaki tenderloin with fried rice and a soup. It's pretty good. The beef was pan fried to a medium doneness and wasn't over sauced. That fried rice was one of the better ones I've had in recent times. While there are differences, it's comparable in quality to Din Tai Fung in my opinion. Liked that it was sufficiently salted and pretty eggy.

Note to self - stick to their borscht. S-t-i-c-k  t-o  t-h-e-i-r  b-o-r-s-c-h-t.

The reason we took the meal without soup was because the dessert that came with it looked like a boring brownie. We ordered their condensed milk buns instead. The crisp light buns was simple and yet so good. Worthy of the praises people have been heaping on them.

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.