Morganfield's, Star Vista

Morganfield's from Malaysia has opened up here for some years now. I've never had anything from their restaurant apart from a ham that I bought for Christmas. Managed to try their (#02-23 Star Vista, 1 Vista Exchange Green) ribs recently. Hickory on spare ribs and honey rum on their babybacks. Not bad - those ribs were reasonably tender and easily slid off the bone. These guys just outdid my ribs experience at Meatsmith Little India. 

Poh, Empress Road Food Centre

I read about Poh (#01-89 Empress Road Food Centre, 7 Empress Road) online a couple of years ago. About how the proprietor had previously been working in various hotels before setting up this stall. What made me come by was because the stall also does chye por kuey teow which isn't easily available outside of Teochew restaurants. Teochew restaurants that will charge easily three times more for a plate.

It's good. Loved the sweet and saltiness from the chye por that paired with an eggy wok hei flavour infused into the kuey teow dish. Nicely done even though I found the amount of grease a little disconcerting. Do not mind coming back at all. 

KFC's Curry Twister

KFC has a new breakfast roll - the Curry Twister. It's not much little bigger than the mini burritos from Taco Bells so at $4.20 it was pretty expensive. At about the same price, it's also not as stuffed as the breakfast wrap from McD.  But the attempt at localization was what intrigued me. 

It's obvious KFC is ripping off imitating the idea from McD's breakfast wrap and re-wrapping it with a local flavour - which isn't as well done as I would have liked. Shame on them because it's Singapore and they fucked up the curry. Wasn't spicy or flavourful. To be fair, the wrap didn't taste bad. I'd consider it fair if it was just half the price of what they were charging.

Kushikatsu Tanaka, Clarke Quay

In a broad stroke, kushikatsu isn't big here. Not like how sushi, yakitori or even teppanyaki are. Hence, Kushikatsu Tanaka (#01-01B Clarke Quay, 3A River Valley Road, tel : +65 6258 3789) intrigued me since we don't have so many specialist of fried stuff on sticks around.

Right off the bat, one should not be expecting standards equivalent to the defunct Han or even Panko. I enjoyed their morokyu though. Cucumbers were nicely chilled and it even came with ume.

The spring section of their menu had mango beer so I got one to start. Nice - it was refreshing and sweet. It even had tiny bits of the fruit in the beer.

DIY potato salad is okay. Aren't these the smart thing to do to offload the elbow grease needed to the customer? Still prefer the one from Hokkaido Izakaya because of the smoked egg.

Loved munching on those mame aji karaage. I thought these crispy/meaty baby horse mackerels were appropriately salted without being too excessive and still enough to keep you reaching out for more.

Our kushikatsu came in two batches. This one had asparagus, shiso pork and shitake stuffed with meat. For the former item, I thought Panko did better. As a whole, I personally preferred a lighter breading. 

We had a bunch of other stuff like oysters (small-ish but tasty), scallops, quail eggs, cheese with bacon, cherry tomato with bacon and lotus root. Nothing particularly special about what they offered or were they outstanding. After a while, all the fried breading got to us. I can't do this as much as I can kushiyaki.

I needed another drink and ended up with their double matcha highball. Double because it came with a scoop of matcha ice cream which you were supposed to mix in before drinking. This was a lot more potent that the one from Hakata Yakitori Batten Yokatoh.

Menya Kokoro, Plaza Singapura

Hmph. I was pretty sure that I had passed by this branch of Menya Kokoro (#B2-53 Plaza Singapura, 68 Orchard Road) not too long back and noticed that they have curry mazesoba on the menu. That's what we wanted to come for but it's apparently not available. So I ended up with their nikuyama beef mazesoba. The sliced beef was marginally better than those in the local Yoshinoya.  Disappointing. They were also a little sweet so I didn't enjoy it. While the mazesoba wasn't bad in any sense, I thought it lacked depth compared with their spicy bowl.  

Pork knuckles from Marché

Can't say that I know where I could find the better fried pork knuckles around but I thought that Marché has generally done a pretty good job of being dependable with them. I wouldn't say that it's good all the time, but I think they're very decent most of the time. Nice meaty trotters and crispy skin. Is it just me or am I tasting more beer in the sauce these days?