Back at Menya Kokoro

We first ate at Menya Kokoro in August 19. In the approximately one and a half years between then at now, we've only visited a few times. The menu kept changing. So while I liked them in the past, the like existed in a spectrum. Spectrum's narrowing because they keep removing what I liked. 

There's a big pork mazesoba on the menu. Never had it before so we tried it. It's not bad. Savoury and also familiar in flavour in a Chinese kind of way. I can't put a finger to it right now. Don't know why they named it big pork though as it was essentially just thin pork slices. It was much tastier than the beef bowl they have which I did not enjoy because of the sweetness.

The spicy mazesoba I liked was also no longer on the menu. There's a mala version instead. I asked if they could do the spicy bowl without mala and they obliged. So I kinda got it off the menu. Good thing I asked.

Still as sweat inducing delicious as the last time. Couldn't waste the leftover sauce laden with minced meat.

So here's the after noodle rice treat.

The other item they took off the menu it seemed was their tori karaage. The one I had previously described as muscular. There's this kurozu rendition with presumably vinegar. It's not bad, one could imagine it as a sort of sweet and sour chicken. But it's also not the regular chunky one I had been looking forward to.

More TWG

This was a visit from Valentine's Day. TWG had a menu for that day which included things that weren't on the regular menu.

Like their Mon Amour tea which was black tea with yellow blossoms and quince. No idea what yellow blossoms are and I couldn't taste quince, but it was a pleasant ice tea.

These were their financiers - might have been raspberries in it. Which didn't do much to make them taste better. But as financiers, they were pleasant because they were heated up. Besides, one can always up the ante with their cream and tea jelly for that extra creamy richness or chilled fruity (or fruitea) tanginess. Or both together if one were inclined. 

We were actually drawn here today by their lamb. They only had one main for their Valentine's day menu. And it was lamb. Quite nicely done at that. It was to their normal form done with a jus infused with tea. Couldn't taste the tea but tasted good with the lamb and the olives. The brown crusty stuff on the top left were white truffle potato croquettes.

Mocktail of the day was made with breakfast tea, pomegranate and lime juice, strawberry purée and rose essence. This was delicious.

Getting (Park) Benched. This is the end...

...for the moment. They're gonna be closed for renovations and the last weekend was their last service. Word from them was that the menu is probably gonna be changed when they reopen. So it might be a last chance at what they have on menu. Until then, no more PBD.

I've been wanting to try their double cheeseburger. Not two stacked patties like one would normally think but across a French sub roll. There's American cheese, lettuce, tomato, bread & butter pickles and a burger special sauce which might not have been special but didn't get in the way of the other ingredients.

I liked it. Should have come for this sooner. Loved that the nicely charred beef patty stood out in the sandwich amid the other ingredients. 

Their roast chicken BLT was unexpectedly refreshing for a sandwich - roast chicken, seaweed tartar, bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado and lemon aioli in a sesame potato bun. Liked their seaweed tartar and that most of the salt came from the bacon.

Will be looking forward to them reopening again - whenever that might be.

Lombardo's, Duxton Road

Lombardo's (15 Duxton Road, tel : +65 6970 9470) from Amsterdam opened here in late 2019. Made a name for themselves offering Singapore's most expensive burger for $250 a pop for a limited time - wagyu, foie gras, lobster, freshly shaven Italian truffle and caviar between 24k gold buns. That sounded ostentatiously vulgar even as I typed it. 

That episode is now recent history. I came to try another limited time burger that they came up with. Something with durian.

These were their crab croquettes. I normally wouldn't have bothered but noticed the picture on the menu that featured the innards. Was packed with crab meat. We asked and they confirmed so we ordered. If you asked me, these were crab cakes rather than croquette. Not bad. Nicely fried and not overly greasy.

Picture on top was taken from their site for their durian burger. I wouldn't say that it's a burger that'll normally make me do a double take but the durian intrigued me.

This was how it looked without 美图. Pickles and tomatoes were underneath the patty - a patty which was decent. Fell short of outstanding. Black Tap is better but I do like thee buttered sesame buns here.

What I assumed to be the durian puree/sauce wasn't as plentiful as the product picture suggested. But it smelled right. Definitely durian taste in there and it did not taste weird at all with the beef patty. The flavour wasn't overpowering or even very strong but there was enough of it that you knew it was there.

I think most of their burgers look similar. This one was lamb with goat's cheese. Not bad. No sauce for me next time. Nothing special about their special sauces just like everyone else's.

Lime zest fries were okay-ish too. It had that flavoured crusty surface that tasted like twister fries - with the lime zest of course. 

Revisiting Jia Wang Cafe (佳旺)

As happenstance would have it, a consecutive sambal fried rice dinner. This time from Jia Wang Cafe. Since the last was just the day before, I had to compare. I thought the sambal flavour was pretty similar so it's a tie with that. Lao You Ji's rendition has little shrimps that this one doesn't but this one has ikan bilis. The char siew bits also seemed a lot finer here so one won't be getting much of texture from those here. On the whole, pretty good. Loved the molten yolked 荷包蛋. That's an add on.

The mui fan (烩饭) was a bore though. There's decently quality ingredients but those couldn't save it from the bland gravy. I guess this would be a measure of how their hor fun would taste like and we won't be getting those for sure. Hillman Restaurant still takes the cake for this dish for now.

Tried their black pepper sliced fish. Not a bad rendition if I might say. Pretty generous with the fish slices in spite of appearance and they did a savoury pepper sauce that I found agreeable and wasn't gloopy.

Revisiting Lao You Ji (老友記)

Tried Lao You Ji's sambal fried rice this time round. Not too bad methinks. There were bits of real char siew and little shrimps in it. Sambal had a bit of heat. 

We ordered their deep fried prawns (炸虾球) thinking it might be good. Was disappointed when they served the dish after seeing the horrifyingly thick batter. We ate the prawns after scraping those off. Some of the meat were tender while others were a little dried out. This put into perspective the type/quality of fried prawns which I've never given much thought to before and made me appreciate the rendition at Sin Hoi Sai so much more. This was a bad call.

That's steamed egg with chunks of century eggs and bits of salted egg yolk. A triple egg steamed egg dish if you would. For some reasons, I was thinking that this might be like the one at Uncle Sim but I guess it just wasn't. Didn't taste bad but we also couldn't find anything outstanding about it.