Re-revisiting Putien at Great World

Dinner at Putien. Wanted to try another of their oyster dishes from the Oyster Festival before it was over.

So we ordered an seaweed oyster omelette made with their first harvest of seaweed. Pretty good.

This was their braised bean curd with Chinese cabbage. Looked a lot soupier than the menu picture suggested. Also pretty good. Beside their spongy bean curd and big leaves of tender cabbage, there were also strips of pork belly, bits of garlic and clams in the soup. Flavour was more complex because it wasn't just bean curd and cabbage.

I remember having had their lychee sweet and sour pork before. Did not remember them to be so tender though. Love those warm lychees.

Chang Ji Gourmet (昌记美食), Chinatown Food Centre

We happened by Chang Ji Gourmet (#02-110 Chinatown Food Centre, 335 Smith Street) one weekend and noticed the queue for their porridge and bee hoon.  Not that we haven't seen them around but in the previous times, I never taken a closer look to what people were queueing for.

Just porridge and bee hoon. That was pretty much all the stall was selling. So I queued up for a bowl and a plate. A dollar twenty for each. Porridge was peanut and fish. Bee hoon had a nice old school flavour that reminded me of days gone by. And I've been missing out on this all these years I've been to this food centre.

More food from O Banh Mi

S'been a while since the last time we were here. Came across some items on the menu which we haven't tried before. Like their Vietnamese ham bánh mì which I have actually been trying to order since the beginning and it's always been not available. Managed to get it today. Sans coriander. The picture on their menu is a lie. But it didn't taste bad. Liked the thick slices of ham. I thought it would also have pate or chilli but it didn't. There were only pickles and fried egg.

The beef porridge is new. At least to me it was. Porridge was prepared on order and we needed to wait 20 minutes for it. Noticed that it was made with broken rice. Broth might have been the one from their pho bo. This was a flavour bomb made with their beef broth and fried shallots. Deliciously savoury but a little too heavy handed with the salt.

Never noticed that they had dry chicken pho before. The bowl also didn't look like the picture in the menu but I kinda liked it so it didn't matter. While it might not have looked so, the noodles were served warm. Flavour was light, savoury and with some citrus. I liked it and liked it more after adding more squeezes of lime and crushed peanuts. 

Revisiting Zazz Pizza

I've been wanting to come back to Zazz Pizza to get more pizza.

Tried their smoked salmon carpaccio. Looked a little nicer on the menu picture -  the blood orange pieces were bigger. I did like that they had both blood oranges and figs but I wished there were more of them. Otherwise, this wasn't bad. 

Zazz Pizza did a good job of getting those saffron flavour into their arancini. You'd be surprised how many Italian restaurants are incapable of properly getting saffron into their food.

We thought they did a decent job from their spaghetti vongole as well. Love the garlic flavour and those clams. Doneness of the noodles were impeccable.

Hawaiian pizza with Gorgonzola. I'm trying to figure this out. Not the Gorgonzola part because that's me -I asked for the blue cheese. It's the pineapples which look different from the other pineapples that I've seen/tasted on pizza. These reminded me of honey pineapples. Sweet and seemed to have less acidity even when compared to the canned variety. Ham was nice. This might be one of the best Hawaiian pizza I've ever had.

This was where we pretended that the yuzu lychee sorbet actually helped quench thirst. Jokes aside, it tasted refreshing.

Affogato's not bad. Espresso was sufficiently bitter which paired quite well with the ice cream. I could compare and mention how the one at the defunct Senso was nicer because the coffee had a better aroma but I won't.

Lao Gu Ban (老古板), Cantonment Road

This stall at 243 Cantonment Road had taken over the same unit that belonged to Hosay Mee Pok. They seem related because the design of the stall signages are similar and they also sell the same prawn cakes in soup. While it looked like they were doing regular minced meat or fishball noodles, Lau Gu Ban wasn't. This was their bowl which featured their own type of noodles with their prawn cakes, something that might have been sliced abalone, minced pork and fried sole with mushrooms. I got the bowl with chilli and I liked how savoury and tangy the noodles were with good quality ingredients.

We ordered another bowl of prawn cake soup on the side. I don't know what these were actually called but I'm calling them prawn cakes for now. These were pretty good - were tender and had the sweetness of prawns in them. Similar tasting to the ones that can be found at Hosay Mee Pok, Bai Nian and even Guan's Mee Pok. Soup likewise had a natural sweetness that tasted like it came from the cabbages, prawns and pork. Nice.

Dry megamen with extra bean sprouts from Brothers Ramen

I like both the dry and regular megamen from Brothers Ramen but if I had to choose between the two, I'm likely to pick the dry bowl. I've been wanting to come back for this again. Since they no longer have tsukemen on the menu, there's nothing new to try and I can actually fall back onto the dry spicy megamen. Topped up bean sprouts today and so the bowl looked a lot taller. All the noodles were below the rim so the protruding pile were mostly bean sprouts if anyone was wondering.