Happy breakfast at Havelock Road Food Centre

Happy meal + big breakfast = happy breakfast? Today we have frog and turtle soup from Havelock Turtle Soup and bee hoon from Ivan's Porridge. Those frog legs in the soup were thick and meaty - slurp off the bone tender!

Gather, Raffles Hotel

A new shop (#01-12 Raffles Hotel Arcade, 328 North Bridge Road) doing galettes and crepes has opened up at the spot where Ah Teng's Bakery used to be at Raffles Hotel. From what I gathered (pun intended), the proprietors aren't new to these kind of business. It showed with how they handled the crowd.

Got a bottle of cider. Expensive but I did get drink at a shop in Raffles Hotel so there you have it. I'm not good at describing it but it's nice.

Their galettes included this one with potatoes and salami. Not bad. I liked that they bothered to pan fry those salami for a bit before they used them as a topping. But otherwise, it tasted like how it looked.

This was "Off The Bone". Ham, Gruyère, Cheddar and egg. How could I not like this? So simple yet it pushes almost all the tasty buttons on/in me. All on/in a light crisp galette.

Hot chocolate is..... okay. I've had better. *cough*starbucks*cough*

We tried a crepe. This one had Camembert, honey and some fig and Earl Grey preserve. The funky saltiness from the cheese obviously paired well with both the preserves and the honey so there - I liked this. 

All these galetting and crepe-ing has gotten me curious about Entre-Nous Creperie just around the corner. It's been quite a while since. I wonder how they fare in comparison with Gather these days.

ROMAN.TEI and Pittarino from &JOY Dining Hall at Great World

Great World City has been going through quite a bit of revamp in the past months into just Great World. One of the new add on is the &JOY Dining Hall (#B1-132 Great World, 1 Kim Seng Promenade) - a Japanese themed food court. I thought the self service kiosks for each of the stalls were pretty nifty.

The above was from one of the stalls ROMAN.TEI. That above was their double beef jyu which featured thinly sliced beef and sliced steak over rice. Not a bad eat but the portions did feel a little small. Didn't like their niku inari though because it was sweet.

Got a four cheese pizza from Pittarino which claims to serve Neapolitan pizza. Judging from the crust, I wouldn't be so sure though it was both chewy and light. Not bad for a quick fix but I didn't understand the creaminess. The toppings tasted like it had actual cream beside the cheeses that they used which did nothing but accelerated surfeit. I did enjoy it though.

A rack of lamb amidst other things at Atout

It's been a while since we were last here. It seems that their boudin noir is off the menu. Which I think is a pity because the rendition here was pretty tasty.

Things haven't changed much. Their lobster bisque is still comfortingly delicious but it now comes with very mild tasting scallop dumplings instead of the chicken ones which we preferred.

Cod liver pâté because these were simply delicious over the airy toasted bread.

Pretty impressed by their cheese and bacon quiche. These tasted freshly baked. Bacon was not smoky and pretty tender. 

After all the foreplay, this was what we really came for - their rack of lamb. Served with persillade. Which I thought was not necessary not because it wasn't good but because I liked the intrinsic flavour from the lamb unadulterated by much but salt and pepper. The persillade tasted fresh and garlicky and would have rocked with bread. If it wasn't visually obviously, those ribs from the lamb were tender, moist and faultlessly pink.

Not that this was bad but we'll try another dessert the next time.

Cheese kasane katsu from Tonkichi

I could have sworn that the cheese Tonkichi used on their katsu was a different type but I'm not going to go there because that had been a very long while back. This one was creamy/milky like goat's cheese or feta that had little salt. Unlike mozzarella or a sharper cheddar which I had been imagining. I was still happy with it though through that dry crisp breading. 

Borscht and more other stuff from Tsui Wah (翠華)

That's the borscht. The one that I reminded myself to stick to previously because it was much better than their cream soup of the day option. Came with the western food option with a slice of buttered thick toast. Tsui Wah's rendition of the borscht is of course nothing like the Ukrainian/Eastern European renditions. This was the...hmmmm - the Hainanese variety I think; of a tomato cabbage soup with beef. The beef added depth. Would have been great if they had sour cream.

Got their lamb chops. Not bad. Better than any of our local western food lamb chops which tend to be overcooked and overly thin. I would know. There was a nice strip of fat along the edges that together with the caramelization on the surface of those chops, brought flavour. But alas, it was still too little meat to be filling. The red wine sauce on the sauce wasn't too shabby but that unfortunately detracted from the flavour of the meat. 

I wanted to try their fried rice with pork chop because I enjoyed it from the last time and was also wondering how this stacked up versus the the one from DTF. I suppose DTF had a more tender pork chop while this one had a firmer bite. Not saying which one is better here but portions here were sure small compared to Hong Kong. 

Also tried their soy sauce chicken wings which is commonly referred to as Swiss wings in Hong Kong. The dark soy sauce was dense with flavour, sweet and had what I thought was the lightest hint of ginger. I was hoping that the meat would be slurp off the bone tender but it wasn't quite there.