La Mensa, Guoco Tower

La Mensa (#B2-15 Guoco Tower, 7 Wallich Street) coalesced from the same forces behind Muchachos and The Daily Cut. They serve mainly pasta with more affordable plates compared to most other options in town.

We wanted to try their carbonara because it had no cream. There were a few things that I thought could have been improved. More cheese would have been nice. Guanciale which didn't have the texture of cold hard bak kua would have been nicer too. There was also liquid pooling at the bottom of the plate from what I'm assuming were from noodles that hadn't been drained properly.

That's a plate of their conchiglie with their house made pesto and walnuts. Very tasty pesto on al dente shell pasta. Liked that the pesto was fragrant and sufficiently salted. Walnuts were lightly toasted. Nice. 

Calamari was very tender. The batter wasn't very crisp and seemed to be made to absorb liquid. Like juices from the charred lemon that they provided. I liked these better than the ones from Cicheti.

There's broccolini stir fried with shallots and garlic for the dosage of daily greens too.

Mille feuille shoulder and cheese roll katsu from Gochi-So Shokudo

So I decided to give Gochi-So Shokudo's katsu a try instead of the grilled kurobuta dons. Not so good. This was their thinly sliced kurobuta mille feuille katsu which came with a cheese katsu.

The meat was dry and bland. A poor showcase of their food compared to their grilled items. The miso soup was super salty. Lesson has been learnt and I know what to stick to in the future.

Menya Kanae, Novena

Prawn broth ramen aren't common. Haven't had one since the old Keisuke days a decade ago. Le Shrimp Ramen doesn't count. So Menya Kanae (#01-08 Novena Regency, 275 Thomson Road, tel : +65 8123 3661) from Hokkaido was an out of the way trip for me to have a taste.

Shop's not exactly like the usual ramen-ya. It's a little chirpier. They do waffles and some izakaya-ish stuff as well.

This was their tokusei bowl. The special bowl with the works. I can relate the broth to hae mee soup but this has a little more going on. It's creamier and has a little more heat. 

Noodles felt like a slightly thicker version of the thin Hakata styled noodles but I prefer more bite than what this shop is doing. Charshu wasn't the kind that would disintegrate in your mouth. These had more bite. The only thing that was really worth mentioning was the broth.

Had to remove the prawns to eat separately. They were dry and not deveined. For something that looked charred, that char aroma wasn't pronounced.

I quite enjoyed the ebi sando though. That's prawn paste and chunks of prawn meat in the patty. My take was that it could have been better if they had reduced the mayonnaise in the slaw because I felt it was excessive and masked the flavour from the prawn patty.

Meng Kee Fried Kway Teow, Havelock Road Food Centre

I haven't tried the char kuey teow from Meng Kee (#01-07 Havelock Road Cooked Food Centre, 22A/B Havelock Road) before. This was a takeaway. And maybe because it was a takeaway, the noodles were a little wet. I like them dryer. Hum-less. No scorch on the noodles or kuey teow. Flavour was so so. No strips of fish cake as well. There's a bit of fragrance from the lard but that was about it. Not my kind of char kuey teow. Have yet to define what exactly is the type I like but I'm not impressed by this.

Pu3, TripleOne Somerset

We first noticed Pu3 (#02-20 TripleOne Somerset, 111 Somerset Rd, tel  +65 9272 0034) back when they were located at Bencoolen Street. Was curious about their food but never gotten the chance to visit until now. The name is presumably derived from the word putri - which could mean daughter/princess/woman in Indonesia/Malaysia. What they are known for is nasi ambeng - nasi padang on a platter with an assortment of dishes. Definitions may vary from person to person.

That's their nasi ambeng. This portion serves two. There's opor ayam (chicken with spiced coconut milk gravy), beef rendang, sambal goreng, brinjal with sambal merah (red sambal), paru goreng (fried cow lungs), serunding (spiced grated coconut), begedil (mashed potato patties) and urap (salad) with rice.

Not bad but not as well done as I had been hoping for. Some of the paru goreng were super chewy and the beef rendang was kinda tough. The rest was pretty good. Loved the mixture of heat from their sambal belachan, the savoury lemak gravy from the opor ayam and the sweet from the serunding on the rice. 

Topped up the order with ikan caru sumbat bakar. Hope I got the name right. Grilled fish stuffed with rempah. Moist and warm but I think it was reheated in the microwave. Everything was a symphony of Asian flavours, how could I have stopped myself with the rice?

Luncheon meat pineapple bun from Joy Luck Teahouse

Even though Joy Luck Teahouse (#B4-61 ION Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn) was from Hong Kong, I kept my expectations low on this one. It still wasn't impressive. Pretty underwhelming with the undefined crust which surprisingly lacked crunch. Kinda stingy with the luncheon meat methinks. This bo lo yau has got nothing at all on the one from Kam Wah.