Venison, beef tartare and more berried double Gruyere cream meringue at Coucou

This was our second visit to Coucou. Bar counter seats tonight - it was very much more crowded compared to the first time we ate there.

Got their curly salad again because we liked them from the last time. It's the dressing.

There was a nicely done butternut pumpkin soup with Gruyère and walnuts. Creamy, sweet and piping hot.

Coucou has a beef tartare with Sbrinz cheese. From what I gather, Sbrinz is similar tasting to Parmigiano Reggiano. Couldn't taste it in the tartare so I didn't get the point at all. The flavours in the tartare were also much milder compared to the French renditions we've had. There were also some silver skin in the meat. Not something we would order again.

The most enjoyable thing from this order were the skin on fries. Those were good.

Venison was on menu for this month's special. Though the menu mentioned striploin, it tasted like a tenderloin/filet. Was accompanied by some sweet carrots, Brussels sprouts and chestnuts on the side. Pretty expensive for the portions. 

While the venison could have improved from better crusting, they did manage to get enough browning on the outside for the caramelized flavour of the meat flavour to get through. Was delicious with the cranberry sauce. Market Grill's rendition was better but I enjoyed this also.

Fell back on their meringue with double Gruyère cream and berries for dessert. This was so good.

Ali Corner, Tiong Bahru Food Centre

We noticed this stall (#02-17 Tiong Bahru Food Centre, 30 Seng Poh Road) and their ayam penyet from our previous visits and decided give them a try because it looked good. 

It looked much better than it tasted. Rice was plain, not chicken rice. Meat from the chicken was a little dry. No refrying was done so the batter didn't have a good crunch. They also didn't look like they had applied enough force smashing the chicken. Sambal's okay. Project Penyek was a better quality plate of nasi ayam penyet if you asked me. 

Cheese soba minus tomato sauce from Healthy Soba IKI

So I mentioned previously about wanting to have the cheese soba again sans the tomato sauce. Turns out that it was also the tomato sauce that gave the noodles the truffle flavour. But I knew what I was getting into and I still enjoyed this. Freshly grated cheese, ground black pepper and olive oil. I also swapped out my usual shirasu avocado don with the kaisen one for a change.

Original Tiong Bahru Golden Pig & Roasted, Tiong Bahru Food Centre

Skipped the preferred 烧腊 stall to give Original Tiong Bahru Golden Pig & Roasted (#02-67 Tiong Bahru Food Centre, 30 Seng Poh Road) a try. This one looked like has been around. They're two stall units worth of space. They could be good. Or I could be wrong.

Ordered fatty char siew and roasted pork rice. No gravy. Just dark soya sauce. Not impressed. While I admit that specialists like Roast Paradise might have ruined most of the other fatty char siew for me, this was just uninspiring with insufficient caramelization and the cold-ish meat. Roasted pork had crispy crackling but meat was dry. Tangy chilli was interesting though but it's not going to be enough to get me coming back. 

d.o.c, Tanjong Pagar Road

d.o.c (#01-01, 21 Tanjong Pagar Road, tel : +65 6226 1631) looked promising.

The wait staff recommended us their tuna tartare caviar. Menu mentioned sashimi grade fatty tuna. I thought it would be fattier. Caviar was from Uruguay. The tartare was not bad as a whole, but not $36 nice.

We had their canederli - bread dumplings which the wait staff had described as something like meatloaf. Maybe he thought we didn't know what dumplings were and in the end, we thought maybe he didn't know what dumplings were. These did not taste bad actually. The bread was mixed with salumi and sat in melted butter.

Ordered a tagliatelle vongole with bottarga. As much as I anticipated it, I was disappointed with the quantity of the bottarga. Was hoping against hope that there would be more of the them. What we had gotten were a scattering of some measly crumbs that registered little in flavour beyond saltiness. While we found a few cloves of garlic in the pasta, the dish had little to no garlic flavour. 

Ordered a pizza called mare monti - sea and mountain if translations are accurate. The menu described it as a semi calzone and pizza. A chimera pie. Mentioned porcini mushrooms, ham, prawns and bottarga. I thought all the ingredients would be together but the prawns and bottarga formed the mare component on the pizza section while the porcini and ham made the monti half in the calzone. Portion was huge.

Not enough bottarga again for this one. The texture of the pizza was akin to a soggy prata laden with generous amounts of Mozzarella cheese. One had no choice but to eat with fork and knife. Also, diminishing returns from enjoying the flavour came in real quick.

Sigh......

Revisiting Hamburg Steak Keisuke

Surprised myself by getting their tomato sukiyaki hamburg claypot. The broth was a sweet tomato dashi base. It was very drinkable at the start but seemed to become progressively sweeter that the appeal of the flavour faded. Glad to have tried it but I won't be getting it again.

I mentioned their shiokoji chicken previously. This fermented rice/salt marinated chicken has become my favourite item from the restaurant. Definitely not the hamburgs. Liked how the additional depth of flavour which I don't know how to describe worked its way into the meat long with some aroma from the charring. 

Sunny side up, shoyu and pepper. On rice.

Also said that I'd be back for their coffee jelly.