Smash Burgers from Employees Only

A few things before we get started. I've been wanting to try Employees Only for a while but had somehow never gotten to so I guess this was a start. And then, I saw that they had these Smash Burgers promotion going for two at $24 when one was already $22. How could I not? 

We've been getting deliveries from GrabFood and Oddle. This was our first try at Foodbooking which didn't have the minimal order requirement that Oddle had.

So the Smash Burger. It looked a little squashed but that's okay.

Moist and greasy and a little pink in the middle - just like what many good burgers are. What I appreciated about these burgers were that there were only three things that I was getting. Minimal distractions. The coarse ground beef, those sweet and tender caramelized onions and the creamy melted Cheddar. The onions tasted like those in onion soup.

They also threw in a complimentary chicken soup.

Cinnamon-y with some spikes of mild heat. Nice.

Five Guys @ home

The burgers from Five Guys survived delivery pretty well. Extra cheese, lettuce, tomato, sautéed onions and mushroom. Yummy! The portions for the fries was smaller for some reasons. Got them via GrabFood and why it made sense for us to do this was because their delivery charge for the order was similar if not lesser than what it cost for a couple of persons to make a public transport round trip. All we had to do was wait. 

Home delivery from Hajah Maimunah

Been a while since we've had food from Hajah Maimunah so we decided to get them on delivery. There was a minimum order so we kinda topped up with items on the side just to qualify for delivery. We ended up with more food than we could eat at a go so these actually gave us two good meals.

By the way, this was also from Oddle and there was a dispatch notification for the delivery.

They do boxed sets like many of the delivery options these days. This was the fried chicken set that came with crispy batter bits from the chicken, a sambal telur and sambal goreng on the side. Chicken was okay.

One of the items we topped up our delivery with was their sambal goreng. Creamy and delicious with rice,

The sayur lodeh was a little disappointing. Was hoping for the vegetables to be more thoroughly stewed like how they normally are. These WERE still a little crunchy.

We got an order of their lemak babat - tripe in a mildly spicy and rich coconut gravy. Tender and chewy these were.

The gem for me in this order was their fried fish roe. I never knew they had these. The roe were pretty large and chunky. Also crisp on the outside. Will definitely get these again.

I wanted serunding, checked them in the order and they came in a tub full. Enough for me to save them in the fridge for multiple meals. 

Home made porridge

So we had an extra packet of chicken rice from Pow Sing from our last meal. Made porridge and added some seaweed, tobiko and a raw egg. Not bad at all.

Home delivery from Pow Sing

We hadn't had a chicken rice fix from Pow Sing for a while so we got ourselves one from Grab Food. The delivery was $17 and that was more than the cost of the half chicken; but I figured that it'll probably cost as much if not more for a round trip to Serangoon Gardens. I am at peace with that. Yes I am.

Looking back, we had ended up ordering the same stuff as we did when we previously visited.

Chicken rice was what we were gunning for. It was still delicious with their tender slurp off the bone boiled chicken and rice that's flavourful from the chicken stock and pandan.

I have a thing for their Nonya cabbage rolls. The cabbage from the rolls today didn't look as green as usual. They might have been stewed for longer than what they do normally. The gravy was deliciously lemak.

Yup, bakwan kepeting.

Home delivery from Penang Culture

We've been experimenting with Oddle, an online food order platform. So far we've tried Brotzeit Go and Valentino's. Still trying to figure out if the food/delivery experience is merchant dependent or does Oddle determine the most of it. Valentino's had notification when the food was dispatched so that you had an idea when it would arrive. Penang Culture had no such dispatch notification and even delivered late.

Delivery charges can cost quite a bit for the merchants on Oddle. I don't know nor care who makes money from that but since they've slot you into a window for delivery and actually charged for it, I assumed that it's a manageable schedule and tardiness hints at the attitude of the management.

We pulled the trigger on the pretty expensive "premium" crab meat and salted egg kuey teow. Look at the menu picture above. Shelled prawns, chunks of real salted egg and the crab meat looked misleadingly chunky.

This was what we got. The crab meat came in the form of sad little bits. No sweetness like the menu described, no texture either once you've tossed it up with the rice noodles. Prawns weren't shelled to the tail like their menu misled. Not much salted egg flavour going on. Not to mention that the fried kuey teow wasn't even on par with the ones from Tangs Market.

But wait there's more.

Pineapple fried rice was disappointingly bland. Rice was a little mushy with no wok hei. The crunchy honey cashew they boasted on the menu was turning rancid and wasn't crunchy at all. Unlike what the menu described, the infused sweetness in the rice didn't come from the fresh pineapples because there wasn't much of them. Sweetness came from the sultanas in the rice. This was simply mediocre.

Not worth even half of what they were charging for the food. Will not patronize again.