Ryan's Kitchen, Great World

Ryan's Kitchen (#B1-146 Great World, 1 Kim Seng Promenade, tel : +65 6767 0118) is an attachment to Ryan's Grocer next door. The former, an Aussie styled restaurant which gets their ingredients from the latter. From what I gathered, the food they sell are allergen free and organic. And in my opinion, frills free in a down to earth manner. 

Tried their 100 day grain fed ribeye. Straightforward piece of steak that was grilled a proper medium rare with salt and pepper. Their mushroom cream sauce was pretty good. This was a much more enjoyable steak than a certain dry aged one at a neighbouring restaurant.

Pork chop was also nice. Hearty, boned in and had a nice aroma from the grill. Delicious black pepper sauce on the side. Will come back another time.

Rong Ji Traditional Hainanese Chicken Rice (荣记傳统海南雞飯), Redhill Food Centre

Tried the chicken rice from Rong Ji (#01-42, Redhill Food Centre, 85 Redhill Lane).

This was an order of their chicken cutlet rice with additional boiled chicken drumstick and and egg.

Pretty decent. Chicken cutlet was drizzled with some lemony sauce. The drumstick was quite slurp off the bone tender.

The rice wasn't greasy. It also meant that less chicken oil was used which resulted in lesser flavour. The bright spot to this was that it meant I didn't have to hold back on their chilli sauce - a chilli sauce that was appetizing in a garlic-ky and limey manner which also packed some heat. Creamy and no sediments like the kind that Boon Tong Kee has.

More food from Sari Ratu

Haven't had Sari Ratu in a while so we dropped by at an opportune day for lunch.

Ordered some of the stuff we liked like their sambal goreng.

Had to get an order of the sambal merah as well for the rice.

Some gnarly looking begedil that looked like they were dug out from the bowels of the earth.

This was our first encounter with this dish of gulai tunjang - tendons simmered in a gravy that appeared to be made with their sambal hijau. Delicious stuff.

Some telur dadar.

And tapioca leaves stewed in a savoury coconut gravy.

The portions of rice they serve are kinda tiny. There's never enough of it for the gravies and sambal in one serving.

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.