Chico Loco, Amoy Street

Chico Loco's (102 Amoy Street, tel  : +65 9738 7828) a Mexican styled rotisserie run by The Loco Group - the amigos who gave us Lucha Loco and Super Loco. From what I've read, one gets hormone-, antibiotic-, cage-free 42 day old chickens sourced from our neighbour Johor Bahru.

I just realized that we had been ordering elote every visit to the Loco restaurants. To their credit, they were nicely done. Corn was sweet and juicy pairing with saltiness from the cotija cheese. On top of that, a bit of heat from the spices along with citrus from the squeeze of lime. Very likeable combinations.

Chicken's not bad. The bird's been marinated and it showed in the meat. Spice rub/crust was not bad. All in all, it was good enough that the dips that they were selling was almost (I'll explain why it's almost) unnecessary. But we still enjoyed their chimichurri yoghurt (say raita-ish!) and the habenero mango.

Nicely done leg of lamb as well. Couldn't tell what was the gravy they used but it worked. Like the chicken, it did well enough on its own without any of the dips.

Got their Chico slaw because we needed some vegetables in our diet. Texturally loaded with different types of crunches from both the nuts, fruits and vegetables. Something in it oddly reminded me of chicken rice. Now was that sesame or chicken oil? The menu mentioned spiced macadamia granola - I detected what might have been candied macadamia and walnuts. Loved those nuts in the slaw. And the mint too.

This was where the dip came in handy. The rotisserie fat rice which possibly had the drippings from the roasts but were lacking in salt. Not so nice to eat until I doused some of the habanero mango dip into them. Speaking of which I liked that habanero mango sauce.  

King of Fried Rice, Golden Mile Tower

We've been coming across mentions of this DTF-esque fried rice from King of Fried Rice (#B1-56 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road) for a while. Amusingly audacious name. Finally got to try them out. They don't really do anything except for fried rice and to address the unasked question, theirs do look and taste like the stuff you get from Din Tai Fung without costing as much. 

Service was slow though. Even though we were fourth on the queue, we still had to wait about half an hour after ordering. We heard that the guy in the kitchen only fries small batches at a time to maintain quality.

The one with pork chop was the egg fried rice. Pork chop tasted like it had more five spice powder (not my thing) and was juicer than than the ones from DTF. With a little finesse, the plastic spoons they provided could actually cut through those pork chops. Tobiko was an add on.

The other plate is XO fried rice with shrimps. Nice flavour coming from the XO sauce. Shrimps were firm and pretty good quality.

Izakaya Niningashi round 2

Unless one is here for drinks and food is merely just something to keep the mouth busy and accompany said drinks, it can get pretty costly to fill up from the small plates. The food is tasty for sure. The portions are also small and prices aren't low. It does add up.

I think their oysters are smoked in house. Not as smoky as I had expected but they were pretty tasty. The texture was a lot smoother than the canned variety.

Buri is in season. These were buri toro. The flavour doesn't have the same impact as tuna but it was also delicious.

Grilled enoki with butter. Add a splash of shoyu and you'd think this was one of the best tasting things you've had in a while.

Potato salad's decent. Decent potato salad isn't difficult. Portions were small. I think it needs much more kani miso.

Flavour from the Hokkaido king crab was pretty good. It would have been better if most of the meat were not stuck to the shell.

These was smoked tuna. Made in house as well which also meant that it wasn't as smoky. Nice though. Tasted like some sort of ham.

Not so pretty looking bafun uni gunkans but the flavour was there. While the sushi was relatively inexpensive by local sushi-ya standards, one also got less uni in those gunkans.

Did I already mention buri is in season? This was buri shirako. Basically yellowtail milt. Grilled. So it was a light smoky exterior with creamy innards.

The kawaebi was much tastier than it looked. The batter wasn't heavy and the shrimps were crispy. Soaked up the ponzu from the buri shirako well.

Buri is in season. We thought it made sense to go with buri kama shioyaki. The meat from the collar underneath the charred skin was dripping juices. 

So is it Fresh Taste or Noo Cheng?

At this point, I'm still not sure if the stall is called Fresh Taste or Noo Cheng but I'm leaning towards the latter. We decided not to go for the big assed prawns this time round. So this bowl of prawn noodles costed half of what we paid the previous time and on hindsight, this was good enough. Those pork ribs were tender like those from good ba kut teh and I noticed that the pig skin had the flavour of soy sauce. Possibly because it was marinated? A very satisfying bowl. 

Ginza Anzu, Great World

Ginza Anzu has shifted from their old premise at Japan Food Town to Great World (#01-113/114, 1 Kim Seng Promenade, tel  : +65 6262 3408). The current space looks more "open" compared to the previous one which I kinda liked better because it provided an illusion of privacy.

Scallops were nice. Still rare inside the panko crust and still sweet. But to taste that sweetness, one would have to avoid their tartar sauce.

I mentioned previously that their ebi katsu was nice. That hasn't changed. Look at all those chunks of prawn. They have these ebi katsu in sandwiches for take away so I think I'm gonna get those some day.

We wanted to see what was the Ginjo pork about. I'm not familiar with the name. According to what they said, it's a mixture of selection from selected farms and ageing that they perform that produces this quality of meat. We got the rosu. Meat was pink at the centre, tender and a little chewy. Very moist.

The meat also had a more porcine quality to the flavour as compared to most regular tonkatsu. 

Brown rice to go with the fried meat.

Redeemed a free white coffee pudding from JPassport. This was actually pretty good. There was a lot more coffee flavour in spite of its tofu like appearances.

Hillman Restaurant, Kitchener Road

I found out about this place (135 Kitchener Road, tel : +65 6221 5073) years ago after having visited Manhill Restaurant a long while back. Yes, it's Manhill and Hillman. Same difference. 

I recalled liking the paper wrapped chicken (纸包鸡) from Manhill. I think Hillman here does it the same. Sweet, savoury and a hint of ginger that I didn't mind. The pieces of thigh meat were dripping with grease and juices. Leagues ahead of those from Union Farm Eating House.

Haven't had mui fan in years. This one was nice. Reminded me of those that I used to have as a kid. No excessively starchy gravy. Gravy had a simple but nice savoury flavour.

This was their claypot roasted pork belly and sea cucumber. The same dish that I had then at Manhill. Rather liked this too.

Because the mui fan was single serving and small portioned, we had to get some rice. So that I could mop up the grease from the 纸包鸡 on my plate and that the gravy from the claypot wouldn't be wasted as well.

Got the apple soup again. It's exactly like what I described at Manhill. Not one of the better Chinese fruit soups I've had.