Slow roasted ribeye from Marché

A roast by any other name would taste......the picture in front of the grill station at Marché showed the regular ribeye which they've always been doing and that kept me wondering what was the difference between that and their regular steak. We eventually figured it's the prime rib that they had on their board. For $19.90, I couldn't complain. Reasonably tender and well seasoned. I know it's not fair to compare so I won't. Heh!

The green goddess beneath Parma

No need for me to advertise where this came from.

It's the green goddess inside.

Packaging is obvious.

Used half the packet on the pizza.

In retrospect, I should have used the entire pack of 150g for more flavour from the prosciutto. Now I know.

Revisiting the Red Sparrow

We enjoyed the food from Red Sparrow from the last visit. So we came back.

The restaurant whips up a deliciously flavourful seafood fried rice. The portions aren't big for what they charged but there's scallops, some crab meat and shrimps in it. A little greasy but big on flavour. Would eat it again.

Their bún chả featured pretty impressive grilled and charred meatballs and pork belly from Berkshire pig. Not something traditionally found in the streets of Vietnam I'm sure but the pig they used isn't the talking point here. The sweet glaze the used was kickass. It even made the broth taste like spicy bak kwa. Would have loved for this to have more vegetables and rice noodles though.

Xào bông kim châm - stir fried daylily flower. Tasted leek-y with a hint of bitterness along with a deliciously savouriness from the sauce they concocted for the stir fry. One of those things to be had with steamed white rice.

Guess what they have on tap here?

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.