Sakuranbo mochi taiyaki from Mr Obanyaki

So you've made it this far, you deserve to know what I think about this limited edition mochi taiyaki from Mr Obanyaki that's stuffed with cherries and chocolate.

The fillings were fine. Creamy hot chocolate and sour cherries which weren't bad pairing at all. What didn't work for me was the mochi skin. It's a little too chewy. I prefer the regular taiyaki skin which I thought would have worked out better. But that's me.

Dim sum at Crystal Jade Golden Palace 12 years later...

What a coincidence! Crystal Jade Golden Palace was the second place in this month at Paragon where the last time we had visited was 12 years ago. The other was Akashi.

It occured to me as I was typing that this picture above will mark an era in the history of a time to come when we were graced plagued by Nurgle a pandemic and restaurants had to use markers to denote social spacing.

I was told that previously, we were served the kung fu tea (工夫茶) after we had placed our order. Today, we didn't get them until we asked.

Century egg porridge was served first. This was well done and creamy like how good congee is. 

Char siew sou was competently done. The pastry was light and flaky. I would have liked for it to be more buttery though.

Didn't like their scallop dumplings (帶子饺). We asked about coriander in the items we ordered and were told that there was none. I inquired specifically about these when they were served after seeing suspicious green bits and they apologised for forgetting that these dumplings had a little bit of them. They certainly didn't forget to not charge me for their forgetfulness though. There was more than a little bit of the coriander.

Even though these were scallop dumplings, there were only some small pieces of scallops on the top of the dumpling. The stuffings were prawn. And coriander.

Was recommended by a friend to try their Teochew styled pomfret porridge. Nice. The broth was savoury, flavoured with dried sole. 

Char siew was competently done. Have had better and worse ones so this kind fell in the between spectrum.

Har gow's pretty nice here. Liked that it wasn't small, the skin sufficiently thin and the prawns were chunky inside.

Not Imperial Treasure good but still pretty nice.

My fault for ordering this - deep fried salted egg prawn fritters in rice rolls. I deconstructed it after the first piece because it felt too greasy. Not much prawns inside considering the size of those fritters in rice rolls. *cues memory of rice rolls from Xin Cuisine*

This was double boiled morel soup in coconut. Nicely salted with a hint of sweetness, light flavour from the morels and coconut. Clear and not intense. Enjoyed it but won't order again kind of thing.

Fu pei quin (腐皮卷) was okay. Not memorable though.

Enjoyed their char siew bao. Skin was soft and fluffy enveloping that scalding meaty sweetness inside. Nicely done if I might say.

Braised chicken feet with black beans were pretty decent. Like a number of their other dishes, I get this feel that they're just okay and not exceptional.

Egg tarts are probably not a forte here. These were egg tarts with bird's nest. The crust was unsatisfying-ly bland with no aroma from a good bake nor butter. Kinda underwhelming.

I tend to compare Crystal Jade to Imperial Treasure because of their history. To be fair, a comparison for Golden Palace should be made with the Imperial Treasure Fine Teochew Cuisine just to be a little more equal. You know what I think? I think that there's more finesse in the food and service standards at Imperial Treasure. 

Sushiro-ling rollin' rollin' rollin'

Back in Sushiro and experimenting with camera filters on the iPhone while wondering why all the pictures here have a blue tinge I cannot seem to quite remove.

Torched spear squid (yari ika). Tasted like regular squid. Light aburi flavour.

Today's ankimo gunka tasted not bad.

The broth in their hae mee has lost some intensity compared to the previous time we had it. Still a nice eat though.

Uni ramen still on the menu. Sweet and creamy just like the last time. Still surprised by how they captured the uni flavour in this.

Not too bad negitoro gunkan.

These large scallop nigiris are still nice.

There's a more voluminous ikura gunkan on menu now. While it wasn't quite as piled up as the pictures implied, it was a lot more than the regular one.

Torched mentaiko and cream cheese gunkan. Salty. I liked it.

Their big prawn nigiri is still good. It's a little smaller than the last time though. Luck of the draw I guess. After the order arrived, I saw another one sail by the conveyer belt that was larger.

Smallest anago on a sushi I've ever had. Looked sad.

Ah Tan Wings, Timbre+

Stall name just says Ah Tan (#01-30 Timbre+, 73A Ayer Rajah Crescent). If you didn't already know, these guys sell deep fried prawn paste chicken. And rice. The options for the chicken are wings or cutlet. That's their Almighty Cutlet with rice.

The million dollar question would of course be, how's the prawn paste flavour? It's there. Sufficient if I might say so from the aroma and flavour but there are definitely punchier ones from various zi char stalls around the island. I suppose what differentiated their prawn paste chicken from others would be their crusty looking batter. It's not too thick and had a crunch. Chicken was pretty tender. Rice tasted like chicken rice but again, there're better chicken rice around. Their tangy chilli.....salsa was not bad though.

Ru Ji Kitchen (如記小厨), Holland Drive Food Centre

This was the queue shortly after 9am at Ru Ji Kitchen (#02-28 Holland Drive Market & Food Centre, 44 Holland Drive). If you're wondering where the stall was, it cannot yet be seen from this point. One would have to bear in mind that said queue would look longer than it should because of social distancing. I heard that their fishball noodles were worth it.

I like how they did their mee pok. Texture was nicely done with sufficient bite. Liked the chilli that they used and how it paired up with the lard that coated the noodles. I'm starting to understand the crowd here.

Fishballs were nice as well. Tender with a light bounciness and the flavour from the fish it was made with. Yellowtail I heard. Those irregular shapes meant that they were shaped by hands and not machine. Added 2 meatballs for a dollar more. Meatballs were not bad too. Think I should visit Li Xin again to compare the quality of fishballs. 

Akashi at Paragon 12 years later...

It's been a long time since we've last eaten at Akashi at Paragon. The Japanese restaurant scene has evolved much in that time. We came here because we saw some new items they have on Oddle. Those items aren't on their dine in menu at this point but you could still order them at the higher online prices.

We ordered a bunch of stuff and didn't go omakase like the old days. The first item that was served was their fish skin truffle maki. It's okay and tasted exactly like how it looked. Would have been better if the fish skin had better crispiness. Semi interesting. I can't help but feel that it's a contemporary local thing. But outstanding it wasn't.

The next item that was served was their yakiniku wagyu maki. That's the picture from their site. Looks like it's crusted with furikake.

The real thing only had some sesame seeds. In the rice were thinly sliced gyu and onions. I couldn't tell that they were specifically wagyu. It's actually nice eaten with the onsen tamago dip. Those brown stuff with the tamago was beef jus. Rich and savoury once they were mixed up.

  

Pull the trigger to splurge on their monaka caviar. In between the wafers were minced toro, quail eggs and caviar. I don't know what kind for the latter. It's not bad but I didn't think that it was worth paying $35.80 a pop.

I've never had teriyaki lamb chops because that's not the way I thought I would like them. Akashi did pretty good teriyaki lamb chops. Was won over by the nice fatty lamb-y flavour from the meat and a respectable fragrance from sufficient char.

Didn't remember them having pork gyoza on the menu before. Their pork gyozas looked like it had an awesome crusty skin but there wasn't any crisp to the texture at all. They were a little soft. But didn't taste bad though. I kinda liked it.

Grilled sweet potato was disappointing. We were told it would take a while. We didn't wait for very long. At least not as long as how Kazu would normally make us wait. These weren't even hot when they were served. I wanted to say that they were lukewarm but they couldn't even melt butter. Didn't have the aroma from the potatoes I was expecting and wasn't very sweet to boot. #disappointment