鱼鳔猪肚鸡, Chinatown Food Centre

Was attracted to the pot of bubbling soup at the front of the stall (#02-006 Chinatown Food Centre, 335 Smith Street). I don't know if I got the name of the stall right, but that's what it says on the sign. 鱼鳔猪肚鸡, also refers to that bubbling pot of soup by the way. 

Flavour's not bad at all but falls short of being outstanding. Pig's stomach was very tender, fish maw was..... not special and there was also piece of chicken thigh that had all the flavour and tenderness boiled out of it so I guess it all went into the soup. My opinion is that places like Ah Er Soup can do something similar with seemingly lesser ingredients. While it may not be fair or an apple to apple comparison, 藝 also had a much better tasting pig's stomach soup.

Getting Oktoberfest-y with pigs ears, livers and shoulder at Brotzeit

 

It's that time of the year again. Brotzeit has got a bunch of items on the menu for that time of the year. Read that they will be around till the end of the month.

There's deep fried pigs years. Those ears had a bite and crunch (cartilage!) along with a light crisp from the breading. Accompanied by a porcine flavour with what might have been some fat. It's the one on the right if you're still trying to figure out which those are.

Liked their roasted pig's liver with apple dish. Those livers were tender. They wouldn't oblige when we asked for more of those poached apples claiming that the portions are fixed. Such inflexibility. What happened to the festive spirit?

The other Oktoberfest menu item we tried was their pork shoulder. A change from the usual schweinshaxe. Meat was much dryer so it needed the jus on the side. Speaking of which, the flavour from the jus was much milder than I had imagined. Much preferred the more flavourful one that Marché has. I liked those potato dumplings though. Dense, spongey and very potato-y tasting.

EPIKebabs, Wilkie Edge

EPIKebabs has been around for years. Read about them (#01-17 Wilkie Edge, 8 Wilkie Road, tel : +65 85756393) and their tenuous linkage to Sultan Kebab - the defunct shop which used to be the kebab shop to go to in the area years ago. Decided to try their food.

What they had wasn't very different from most of the other kebab shops from what we could tell. Kebabs needed more salt. Rice was spiced but otherwise bland-ish because of the lack of salt as well. I remember the rice from Sultan Kebab well enough to tell that they were better tasting that these. The one with noodles above was their Indomeeat - an obviously play on the name of the instant noodles. The meats were okay-ish, couldn't say that they were outstanding.

Tried an order of their falafel. Oddly, no chickpea flavour.

Something that bothered us about them was the lack of aroma from their food. When one walks past a kebab joint like say Stuff'd, the aroma swipes you across the nose. This shop didn't smell of what they were serving at all.

Having the Mascarpone posh toast to go from Starter Lab

Thought we would give the honeyed Mascarpone posh toast from Starter Lab another go. Did a takeaway. It came in nice boxes. No carrier or bags were provided. They had none they claimed. Wondered how it was for others who had to buy more boxes of stuff from them. And having to worry about walking through the rain. With umbrella. With just two hands just like any other normal human being. Possibly they didn't give a rat's ass.

The bee pollen was no longer mentioned as part of the ingredients. Toasts appeared to be larger than previously. Black sea salt even lesser than the previous minuscule quantities. The amount of honey was pathetic. We had to add a lot of our own. While it was still tasty, it was also $28 for the gripes. Sigh......

Freshly fried donuts from Jia Mei Homemade Bakery Products (家美自制面包)

We've bought buns a number of times from Jia Mei Bakery (#01-43 Old Airport Road Food Centre, 51 Old Airport Road) previously. Soft buns filled with things like kaya, luncheon meat and whathaveyous. We saw that they have a fresh batch of fried donuts today so we tried them.

It's not bad. Something was a little different from the nostalgic taste that I remember but I think it was close enough with the fried greasy flavour. Look out for their banana bread. Whole pisang raja baked into their soft buns.

Roti banjir special from ABC Food Corner

If you Google 'roti banjir', the top search results would lead you to a particular spot in Kuala Lumpur where they're known for them. It's a ruffled up prata/canai drenched in curry/dal topped with a couple of soft boiled egg. Triple A street food porn. I haven't had that. But I came across roti banjir being offered at ABC Food Corner and decided to see if it was similar. It's not as good looking and they messed up the egg.  Didn't look like the picture on the menu. But it didn't taste bad soaked in the dalcha. Also, it's a clever way to charge people more for what essentially made two egg pratas by simply serving it in another form.