Arare soba from Healthy Soba IKI

This arare soba is the current special at Healthy Soba IKI. It's a hot bowl with little scallops perched on a sheet of seaweed on top of the soba. Doesn't come with the abura age, those were added on. Scallops which were still partially rare were nice with their own scallop-y sweetness but you'd have to eat them fast or they'll continue to cook in the hot broth.

Tracy Juice Culture, International Plaza

Tracy Juice Culture has set up a new shop at International Plaza (#01-54 International Plaza, 10 Anson Rd, tel : +65 9046 3318) and they're open on Saturdays. I suppose it was about time since they've never lacked customers and the shop at Fortune Centre is kinda small. Pretty much everything that's available from there (including the mushroom udon) is available here from what I could tell. Except the lei cha fan which I hope will be around someday.

Tried the fruit juice curry because I've never had it before. It's a bowl of udon with fruits and tofu.  I liked the broth for the fruity spicy flavours which reminded me of the assam/tamarind in Penang laksa. Beside the visible slices of dragon fruit and grapes, there were also cherry tomatoes and chunks of pineapple in the bowl. The small patch of shrubbery was laksa leaves. 

That's the peach gum cheng tng. Now that the weather has started getting warmer again, this was refreshing. Just some dates, dried longan, white fungus and peach gum in clear sweet soup.

Preserved veg and braised pork (梅菜扣肉) rice from Li Li Kway Chap

Again, I did not manage to get the kuey chap from Li Li Kway Chap. Ended up with their rice with preserved veg and braised pork rice which was also described as 梅菜扣肉. That preserved vegetable tasted more like 咸菜 than than 梅菜 to me. 扣肉 wasn't as tender as how I imagined it but it wasn't bad. Just not what I had in mind. I suppose this was their rendition which is arguably a different thing from the traditional dish. I added pig's skin and boiled egg. Not a bad eat but I didn't like their gloopy sauce. Gotta remember to get this without that gloopy sauce the next time.

Jia Wang Cafe (佳旺), Bukit Ho Swee

We learnt about Jia Wang Cafe (4 Jalan Bukit Ho Swee, tel : +65 9362 6359) recently and wanted to see if we liked them enough to make them a go to for cze char. They're located at the ground floor of an old HDB block at Bukit Ho Swee. Has it's unique charm. The weather was cool and breezy when we were there twice, but what do you care about that.

The bunch of food below were the outcome of the two visits.

Very competent stir fried sambal kang kong they did. I liked that the vegetables were stir fried with lard. So the main flavours came from both the lard and the dried shrimps. Good for returns.

Assam fish head served on opeh leaf - apparently a signature dish from them. Again, very competently executed. There was a nice heat to the tamarind sauce - I thought I tasted ginger flower but I'm not sure. The lady's fingers were well cooked in spite of the colours and didn't have any of the slime. Fish was fresh, firm and tender. I don't know what fish this was but it's not the freshwater variety - meaning that it won't have any muddy taste that repels many people.

This garlic pork dish is also another signature of theirs. While the name simply mentions garlic and pork, there's more to it. The meat which we think is sliced pork belly has been marinated in nam yu (南乳) - fermented bean curd for those of you who don't know what they are. It's deep fried with garlic and then drizzled with the sweet sauce that is normally the dip for hae cho (虾枣). 

So if you've skipped the previous paragraph, the flavour was a mixture from the nam yu, garlic and the sweetness of the hae cho sauce along with the fat from the pork belly. Sound good? You betcha. 

Two days later...

This dish was called 'special beans'. I feel that the world special has many bad connotations but let's not go there. The Chinese name is 虾米小毛豆 which translates to French beans with dried shrimps - which is a much more accurate name as they mention the two main ingredients. This was nicely done. Liked the slighty sweet savouriness and umami from the dried shrimp bits/hae bee.

Sweet and sour pork was okay. The fried meat were shaped like balls and didn't have a crusty exterior. Found the sauce addictive.

Tried their kung bao prawns (宫保虾球). Pretty decent cze char standard for kung bao and the prawns had a nice fresh crunchiness. It's a little pricey at $20 for a few prawns.

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.