Revisiting Tang Kay Kee

Zi char dinner at Tang Kay Kee.

Sliced fish stir fried with kailan. A dish that I once thought was favoured by old uncles and aunties. Firm slices of fish were nice but the kailan was a little fibrous. As a whole, it was delicious.

Stir fried fish belly with bitter gourd and black bean sauce. Also was a good eat from that sharp salty flavour spiked with heat from a little bit of chilli padi.

I haven't had this particular style of sweet and sour pork before. It's different from the others for various reasons. I liked that it was not excessively coated in their sauce. The sauce that they concocted was not overly sweet and I could taste tomatoes in them. 

On top of that, it appeared that the pork was only covered in a dusting of flour. No crunch on the exterior of the meat which was softer than most other renditions out there. But there was a smoky wok hei. Nice. Important to understand that while the exterior was soft, it was not soggy. There was a balance of lean meat and fat in the pork which along with the rest of the elements of the dish made it tasty.

I wonder why they don't do pineapples.

London Fat Duck, Great World

We ate at London Fat Duck in Scotts Square a few years ago when they just started business. Back then, they were a venture by Akashi and Fei Xiong groups. I recall it wasn't a particularly good experience. Now it's run by just Akashi. Menu has had changes since.

We didn't have any duck this time.

I remember them doing a pretty decent char siew. This wasn't the barbequed pork I had expected.  Pretty sure it's not the same thing we had previously but it didn't matter because this one wasn't bad too. Struck a good balance between meat and fat. Liked the sweet sauce. Just not the char siew I was expecting.

Tried the fish noodles with fish curd. Menu stated superior sauce but I would prefer to just call it prawn soup. Yeah, the very same kind one gets in hae mee. Spiked with lard. Not bad at all. The texture of the noodles was like soft fish cake. Fish curd was also like fish cake with more bite. 

We ended up with har gow. Better than I remember them.

Debated over this and their duck bak kwa fried rice. In the end the black truffle won. Turned out to be very nice. Even if we were to discount the slices of black truffle and truffle puree, this was already a competent plate of properly fried rice which had the savouriness and texture it deserved to make it delicious. A different thing from the one by Tampopo so I couldn't make a proper comparison. I liked both.

Obligatory vegetable dish of brinjal in minced meat sauce. Gotta have this with plain rice the next time.

Japanese Curry Express, Fortune Centre

Japanese Curry Express (#03-04 Fortune Centre, 190 Middle Road, tel : +65 9689 6314) has sporadically popped up in my radar over the years. In spite of the name, these guys do not just serve Japanese curry. There're a bunch of other stuff like makis, donburis and miscellaneous small plates that can be ordered. The food is localized Japanese. I've never paid much attention to them before.

We tried a few items that they were known for. Like their mentai salmon don. Not bad. Would have liked it better if they aburi-ed the salmon to the point where the meat had a smoky char. 

Their ebi mango maki was nice. The salty tobiko popping over the tangy sweet mango draped across freshly fried prawn covered in rice was just fun textures and a tasty melange of flavours.

Their salmon sashimi came in thick slices. Reminded me of the old Wasabi Tei.

Chawanmushi was served in a huge bowl and steamed to order. This was easily more than double the portion of most chawanmushi servings. Hidden in the steamed egg were bits of scallops, a prawn, chicken and naruto. I liked that they added a drizzle of La-Yu for some heat. A nice bit of warm distraction from the  homogeneously savoury egg custard.

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.