Monan, Chinatown Food Centre

I came across the mention of this stall (#02-137 Chinatown Food Centre, 335 Smith Street) online and was intrigued. We visited. What they were essentially doing was daikon base pork soup with various ingredients of choice. Apparently this dish was the result of scraps of recollection from the proprietor and skills from his wife, a Vietnamese. A quintessential representative if one thought of it, of migrant food that found it's place into the heart of local flavour just like everything else we've been used to treating as Singaporean food. 

But I've digressed.

We got a bowl of pork organs bowl which was the offal option. Liver, stomach, heart, skin, small intestines (小肠) and we topped that up with some tongue and their unique looking egg sausage which tasted like how it sounded. I liked the combination of flavour from the porcine quality in the broth, which wasn't too heavy, that was also rounded up with the sweetness of the radish. It's a different enough flavour profile from the regular pig's organ soup and yet not so far apart to be unrecognizable. Portions were pretty generous. Will come back. 

Salt Shoreditch with runny egg in cheddar bagel from Two Men Bagel House

Yet another breakfast from the bagel shop that definitely has more than two men. That's the one with brisket, sauerkraut, mustard and pickles. Lots of tang to cut through whatever it was there to cut through. I added runny eggs because it was breakfast and I thought it was nice to have eggs for breakfast. Brisket was very tender - thought I tasted cinnamon in it.

Revisiting Wicked Garlic and maybe this is it

Here's a second go at The Wicked Garlic. The aglio olio has very little garlic flavour. The bacon they used didn't taste so much like bacon as it did crumpled strips of pork belly. Where's all the salt and smoke? I recall (albeit from a long while ago) that even Pasta Mania made much better aglio olio. At this price point, pasta from Saizeriya blows this out of the water. 

Their penne al granchio tasted better than it looked. The tomato cream sauce isn't Valentino's or Da Paolo and neither are the portions of crab but I suppose there's a good reason why this place costs less.

That's a quattro formaggi and it would be understandable if no one recognized it for what it was. It looked uniform. Taleggio the menu said. Gorgonzola the menu said. Mozzarella the menu said. Goat cheese the menu said. I tasted none of those. The flavour was just generic cheese and I couldn't tell what type it was from taste. For a four cheese, this was just sad.

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?