Kanda Soba, Clark Quay Central

Kanda Soba is another relatively new mazesoba shop that opened at the food court beside Don Don Donki at Clark Quay Central (#B1-31 Clark Quay Central, 6 Eu Tong Sen Street). Just in case anyone is mistaken, these guys are from Korea, not Japan.

That's their original mazesoba up there where they threw in a couple of meat sushi and a bowl of soup during lunch. After mixing, the noodles looked a little wet and I had mistakenly assumed that it might fall short of expectations against the dryer variety like Menya Kokoro or Enishi but I was reined back from those misgivings after the first chopstick-ful. It was full of umami and deliciously peppery amidst all the other flavour and textures from the toppings. 

They also had a cream mazesoba which featured warm noodles topped with cream made with potato and coconut. We were told not to mix them like one would normally do mazesoba and eat as it was served. Cream was pretty light and the noodles below tasted like their original mazesoba. Got surfeited towards the end of the bowl.

Their meat sushis were small. One could choose between beef and pork. One had mentaiko and neg and other had cream cheese and a dried cranberry. Not bad. Felt like a puny version of actual sushi like what sliders are to burgers. 

We meet again, natto-kun!!

I had my first experience with natto years back. It wasn't a good one. I didn't like it. I don't remember how it tasted like. So throughout these years, I've gotten curious about them again but never gotten myself to order them because I was worried that it'll be another pretty strong negative reaction towards them.

I tried them again recently at Monster Curry (#B4-52 ION Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn). Curry rice with natto. It's not bad. Before anyone starts speculating about how the curry or that level 4 spiciness might have muted the flavour, I ate them by their own. And with rice. There was some cheesiness that I detected which is presumably one of the fermentation. And also what I thought to be something that tasted like a hint of coffee or chocolate.

I don't know the difference between the first try at Shunjuu and this one. The quality might have been quite different and hence my reaction to their flavours. But I suppose this was encouragement for me to try more in the future.

Anglo Indian Cafe & Bar, Chijmes

Have passed by this place a number of times before and each of those times, I've wondered if they were good. So here now. Lassi from Anglo Indian Cafe & Bar (#01-13 Chijmes, 30 Victoria Street, tel : +65 6873 2750) was okay. Not as thick as I would have liked but drinkable stuff.

The description of the tandoori broccoli sounded pretty good on the menu. Something about cheese, yoghurt and cardamom. The flavour was not as intense as I had imagined. There was a bit of smokiness. Not a bad tasting broccoli dish though.

We ordered their Indian railway mutton curry. Never had it before and I'm pretty sure everyone has their rendition of it. This curry was savoury and tangy.  Tangy like a lot of tomatoes or tamarind kind of tangy. Liked it quite a bit. Paired very nicely with naan or rice. Mutton was very tender. Would not mind eating this again at all.

Pretty thick and savoury palak paneer they have. Judging from the spinach puree I think I might just like their saag gosht.

Cheese naan. While I have always reminded myself to go for those without any stuffings since we're already going with dips, I still usually get distracted by them stuffings. Not bad.

Jeera pulao needs a bit more salt to be good on its own. But since we were going with the savoury pureed palak and the Indian railway curry, it worked out in the end.

Sausage McMuffin with misshapen egg from McD

McD as a business in its delivery is consistent. That, is understandably a need to manage a global franchise of many thousands of outlets. What's also consistent is how withered their product looks compared to the pictures on their menu. What's not consistent was an egg that I got recently when I up-pattied a sausage muffin with egg. The egg looked....for a lack of a better word, mutated in the the context of McD and the usual disc shaped egg that they slip into their muffins.

Red Sparrow, Dempsey Road

Red Guardian, Crimson Dynamo, Omega Red, Black Widow; all these "reddish" names (except Reddington) remind me of those old Russian/commie code names for superhumans and assassins. Like the Red Army. Definitely Red Sparrow (#01-18,  11 Dempsey Road, tel : +65 6776 6118) as well. As if the connotations weren't already enough, there was even an old Soviet Union sickle and hammer emblazoned across at the back of their bar.

But enough of communists and imagined Russian super humans from the dusty pages of comics. We're doing Vietnamese today. We began with a glass of their chanh muối - a hot drink made with preserved/salted lime. 

I struggle with pronunciation of Vietnamese words even for the food. So today, we learnt that the bánh xèo has an enunciation that sounds something like 'bun shao'. Their pancake by the way, was huge. Largest we've ever had in our limited experience and stuffed with mushrooms, bean sprouts, pork belly and shrimp. The skin was nicely greased, light and very crisp at the edges like paper thosai.

Red Sparrow has possibly the largest selection of rice paper rolls on menu we've come across. We tried their bò bía which featured something like lup cheong with omelette and stewed turnip - very much like our local poh piah. Liked it. What we didn't see coming was that it had been the pan fried omelette tied brought the roll together with its flavour.

The other roll which they had which I thought was outstanding was their cá cuốn. The grilled snapper and fermented anchovies had already killed it. The tangy and mildly spicy pineapple dip on the side pedestal-ized it as something I'd come back for.

This dish as we learnt was stir fried Tonkin jasmine flower. Kinda like those cowslip creepers that we used to get in Bangkok. Stir fried with shrimps and bean sprouts in what might have been oyster sauce and lots of black pepper. One of those things that one just had to go with steamed rice.

We had a soup called canh cá thì la. The menu mentioned it had tomato but we saw slices of starfruit. The other items in it was a bouncy fish paste and lots of dill. Very nice.

Ordered some scallops which were sweet. Wished there was a bit more of the char to round it up a notch though.

I mentioned steamed rice earlier.

So here be my virgin experience with the cà phê trứng - Vietnamese egg coffee. Egg yolk was sweeten and beaten in to a froth, kinda like a sabayon which would be layered over what I thought was a Vietnamese espresso. Not bad. 

Mixed beef kuey teow from Gubak Kia

I might have gone a little overboard with the peanuts there but the stall was closing up soon for the long weekend so why waste them right? Anyways, I liked this dry kuey teow from Gubak Kia. Wished they were a bit more generous with the mixed beef parts though. If I had to pick what I thought to be the better bowl, I'm pretty sure I enjoyed the Empress Place bowl a bit more. What ultimately made a difference between this guys versus Empress Place and MooTeow were the peanuts.