Chi Le Ma (吃了吗), Golden Mile Food Centre

Came across the mention of 吃了吗 (#01-87 Golden Mile Food Centre, 505 Beach Road) and their affordable fresh steam fish meals. The owner apparently does the picking of the fishes personally everyday and they're pretty much steamed on order. There're three fishes on the menu - pomfret, sea bass and grouper.  

That's the pomfret set ($6). Came with a bowl of steamed egg as tender and smooth as tau huay. If I might say so, the fish was fresh tasting and delicious in the simple soy sauce. I knew from the onset that I would get hungry very soon after the meal. Hahaha!

There're a couple of chilli sauces they offer which deserve mention. The brighter orange one was garlic-ky with the citrus of lime and some heat. Tasted not very different but yet not the same with chicken rice chilli. The darker red one wasn't half as spicy as it looked but had a nice aroma from cumin. Mix both into the rice for a pleasant surprise. I didn't use them on the fishes because I wanted to keep the delicate flavour.

The grouper came in different sizes so despite a menu with prices printed. The stall charges according to the size. Mine was the $8 fish. Equally good as the pomfret with a quality to cost ratio that's honestly hard to beat. 

Epok epok from IAAI Malay Food

I've bought these epok epok (or also commonly referred to as curry puffs) a number of times from IAAI Malay Food and thought they deserve mention. Morning's the best time to get them because they'd be freshly fried and warm.

Stuffing's curried potatoes and hard boiled eggs. There're no other options. But it's savoury and crisp with just a tiny bit of heat from the curried potatoes. Makes good breakfast. Definitely worth checking out if one's in the vicinity.

Gochi-So Shokudo, One Raffles Place

Tried their (#B1-30 One Raffles Place, 1 Raffles Place) secreto belly don. I know Secreto Ibérico but I've never associated the cut to the belly even though it's supposed to be in contact with the belly. Perhaps there's another vaunted secret belly of those Campovilla Ibérico pigs that almost no one knows about. The meat was delicious. Tender and tasted of the grill. Didn't need the sauce.

Their smoky thin sliced Ibérico pork belly was also good. More of the pork belly were hidden under the curry.

The pictures of the menu never showed that their Ibérico pork jowl would be slathered in that garlic-y/sweet/salty sauce. Meat was delicious. Couldn't decide if this or the secreto belly was better so there's no winner here. But they sure didn't need the sauce. Gotta remember that the next time.

Mmmunch, Timbre+

Learnt of Mmmunch (#01-37 Timbre+, 73A Ayer Rajah Crescent) from a local media publication which penned a lengthy piece about how the previous head chef from the defunct Senso who got inspired from a Netflix show with a recipe and eventually ended up running a "food truck" selling sandwiches. Jon Favreau's Chef started it all it seemed.

Anyways, here it was. Didn't taste bad. Didn't dislike it. Two double negatives in sequence. My over active imagination pictured something with more fillings so that's my fault for having unrealistic expectations. It's also not the kind you would get at Park Bench Deli. So that ex-head chef dude wasn't around as well. Was served by a couple of kids.

A few more items I haven't tried before at Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐)

For some reasons, there's a pineapple drink that's come up on Din Tai Fung's menu. It's one of the less impressive drinks they have. A little too sweet and lacked citrus methinks. I expected better from them.

We'd seen this vegetarian fried rice during one of our visits in the past but hadn't a clue what it actually was and how we could order it because it's not on the menu. Chanced upon it on the online order form recently so we wanted to try. It's not as satisfying as their regular ones. No eggs. No garlic. A little bland. But otherwise, it's not bad with splashes of light soya sauce.

This rice dumpling stuffed with pork has been on their menu for as long as I can recall. Never tried it until now. Flavour's not bad. Read of that what you will. Meat was a little dry-ish but the rice was moist and tender. 

Sanma katsu from Tonkatsu by Ma Maison

I've never had sanma katsu before. What's neat about these from Tonkatsu by Ma Maison was that they were also deboned. I'm guessing gutted and cleansed of the innards as well because I didn't get any of that tasty bitterness in there, but hey, so nice not to have to deal with their bones. To address the unasked question if anyone was wondering, yes - nice crisp breading and moist tender meat from the fish. Liked it as much as I did the aji. I wished they offered the option of only sanma sans the tonkatsu for their teishoku.