Another annual ritual at Lawry's

This year's prime rib Lawry's came a little late. But - as how it is often heard, better late than never, yes? It's been a while since I didn't get one without the bone though. Honestly, I cannot discern enough of a difference in my meat to care. It's all good.

CB & J from Sarnies

It's been some time since we were at Sarnies during breakfast hours. Quite a very long while actually. Meanwhile, they seem to have come up with some menu exchange thingy with their sister branch in Bangkok which introduced this CB & J on their menu. Abbreviated cashew butter & jelly if one were to surmise from the ingredients. A nod to at peanut butter & jelly which is just a variant. 

Done their way of course. Brioche topped with their house made cashew butter and roasted grapes. There's some pyramid sea salt and honey that lent sporadic crunch with sweet and salty into the creamy nuttiness and grape citrus. Quite impressed that with all the ingredients in a mouthful, it did taste like pb & j. With thyme. I enjoyed this.

Revisiting Ah Chiang's Porridge

Unknowingly, I ended up ordering the same porridge as I did the last round. The one with century eggs and mixed pork with offal. It was only after I had gotten my bowl that I realized that. That time, I had thought that the ingredients were measly but it didn't seem to be so today. Note to self : get the meatball one the next time.

Obligatory greens of stir fried watercress with garlic. The flavour of their garlic stir fry was pretty good. But I prefer the texture of the kailan to these which were more fibrous.

Dirty Buns, Sprout Hub

Read about these guys (Sprout Hub, 102 Henderson Road) online. They're located at the canteen area of Sprout Hub in the stall with the same signage as o-kome.

Pretty well lit and spacious canteen.

Dirty Buns has a tie guan ying kombucha on the menu (the drink by the way is from Pyroast next door). I have been convinced that it doesn't matter what tea is used for kombucha. You'll never be able to tell. It tasted like.....kombucha.

Here's a double burger from them. The cheese looked weak.

Patties are kinda small as you can see. Meat's okay tasting, not exceptional. Nothing that would get me coming back. Don't understand why they need to do so much sauce if not to hide the fact that there isn't much flavour coming from the beef. But at least it wasn't over marinated.

There's a spicy fried chicken burger. Not very spicy. That fried chicken has got nothing on McSpicy. Don't know what's that white goo in there. Didn't taste like yoghurt or mayo but there's way too much of it in that burger. An obvious sign of amateurs at work.

Bar Milano, Keong Saik Road

New bar/restaurant/place (#01-02, 55 Keong Saik Road) that does pizza fritta - a Neopolitan styled fried pizza. The look of the place almost reminded me of those Venetian bars that served cicheti. Almost.

Their Bloody Mary is served with a toothpick of cherry tomato and a small fold of prosciutto. It's okay. The standards of regular bar drinks here generally aren't much to write home about. Drinkable stuff.

Their bites were pretty good. These were fried olives stuffed with meat. Not sure what meat they were because between the crisp of the solid breading and the texture of the olives, I couldn't even tell there was meat. Couldn't taste that meat either. That being said, these breaded olives did make good munching.

Bar Milano has an awesome steak tartare. Awesome because they added anchovy cream which basically flavour bombed the entire tartare with an umami saltiness. I would come back just for these.

Peaches and burrata. Menu mentioned 25 yr old balsamic vinegar if I remembered correctly. I think they should have drizzled that vinegar instead of pan frying the peaches with them because I couldn't tell them from something that's been cheap and reduced over the pan with sugar. Speaking of peaches, I've always imagined them to be sweet and juicy. Like the Yamanashi kind. Usually I get disappointed. This was the same.

Some fizzy grapefruit and rosemary drink. Not very fizzy and it felt like the grape fruit flavour all came from that one slice in the drink. Had to squeeze that slice to get those flavours. Have had better.

They've a few toppings for their pizza fritta. This was their Pugliese - broccolini, anchovy, garlic cream, preserved lemon and chilli. Another flavour bomb which was kickass tasty though most of the flavour came from the centre of the pizza where the toppings were.

If I had to critique, the crust of the pizza fritta was a little greasy and bland. The texture was a soft crisp and no chewiness at all. I imagined that it might have been a little more like a bhatura or poori.

As unexciting as this looked, their fritto misto was nicely done. Bits of octopus, calamari, small shrimp and sticks of zucchini. Had a light and nicely flavoured batter which wasn't excessive. Good enough even without that saffron aioli on the side.

Breakfast at Ananda Bhavan

Came by for breakfast because we needed to be in the vicinity. Ananda Bhavan has breakfast sets which comprises of a few items that they put together on a platter. Wasn't successful in getting them the last time but we managed to order them today.

The one above is Set 1 ☝🏽. Below is Set 2 👇🏽. The items that were the same are the vadai, idly and the kesari along with the chutneys and sambar. The difference between the sets was that 1 has uppuma while 2 has pongal. The former a savoury semolina porridge/pudding. 

The pongal was a porridge of lentils, rice flavoured with ghee, cumin and peppercorns. At least these were what I could taste. Dangerously addictive if I might say so. Both of these sets were satisfying and filling and possibly not so good for the heart.