Truffled dumpings and steamed rice from Victor's Kitchen

Victor's Kitchen has some truffled dim sum so we came over to try. By 'truffled', it was black truffle puree over their steamed dumplings, not sliced summer black truffles.

As mundane as the dumplings looked, I enjoyed the black truffle siew mai. According to them, the puree was made with Grade A Italian black truffles. While I personally couldn't tell, I liked that the truffle flavour complemented rather than overwhelmed the stuffings of the siew mai.

These were black truffle cordyceps har gow - different looking from their regular variety har gow. Pretty good tasting too with the cordyceps.

I liked their steamed chicken rice. Have been wanting to come back to get a bowl of this since that CNY rendition with lup cheong some years ago. We also had the pork rib steamed rice with fermented black beans. The meat here was a little tougher so I like the chicken one better. Rice was delicious with the sliced chilli padi.

Re-visiting So Good Char Chan Tang

We've noticed a number of people ordering their tomato baked pork chop rice so we decided to get one to understand for ourselves. While I'm usually not so big on tomato based sauces, I think I kinda liked this because I was shovelling spoonful after another in my face. That sauce wasn't overly tangy and had a creaminess that wasn't overwhelming. Unexpectedly moreish.

The rice beneath was a lightweight egg fried rice. Pork chop underneath the tomato was okay-ish. This is normally not my kind of dish but I don't think I would mind eating it again.

Pork trotter noodles weren't that impressive. Noodles had a nice texture but also a more obvious alkali flavour this time round. While those pork trotters were tender, they were also pretty bony. They were also served cold. 

Not a bad corned beef and egg sandwich. Would be nicer if the corned beef were more well distributed though.

There's steamed milk under desserts. Wasn't very milky. Portion was tiny and the standards weren't anywhere close to even chains in Hong Kong like Yee Shun Milk Company. Now that we're comparing, Honeymoon Dessert makes much better steamed milk as well. So did Ji De Chi.

Steamed kaya butter bread from Tong Ah Eating House (東亞餐室)

What I found odd about this steamed bread from Tong Ah was that it wasn't particularly hot or even very warm. Unlike those piping hot ones from Yat Kun where the butter had mostly melted through and soaked in to the bread. What their steaming managed successfully was to get the plate hot. Maybe the bread was just slightly warm. It was still nice being fluffy and all with the kaya and butter though.

Ann Chin Popiah (安珍), Chinatown Food Centre

Not bad tasting poh piah from Ann Chin (#02-112 Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre, 335 Smith Street). Stuffings were strewn with fried crispy bits and this was one of those rolls that wasn't heavy on the garlic.

Brunch at Bar Milano

Brunch at Bar Milano.

The sea bass was nice - light crisp on the skin with tender flaky meat. Served on a creamy orange butter sauce with thin slices of cooked peel-on oranges hidden under the fish with fennel. That orange butter sauce inherited a hint of bitterness from the orange peel. Liked the sauce enough that I mopped the plate clean with the ricotta pancakes. Speaking of ricotta pancakes......

......we liked that we could taste the cheese in them. These were served piping hot with steam wafting as the knife went through them. That's macerated strawberries and strawberry mascarpone on them.

To round up the brunch with some weight, some savoury pork and fennel sausages. 

くろ in Healthy Soba IKI

Healthy Soba IKI has some new black stuff on their menu. If you hadn't realized, we've been having soba here a number of times in the past year. Here're the links to our previous visits. (一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八)

There's squid in squid ink as a starter/side dish. This was very good. The sauce had the rich sweetness/umami of the ink while the rings of squid were very tender. Tender like those we had at Ink-redible Calamari.

This month's soba was in a kurogoma and kurozu broth. The broth had a creaminess like a less viscous black sesame paste paired with an appetizing tanginess from the black vinegar.

There were some shredded chicken an artichokes in the bowl as well. I liked the broth enough that I drank it all up after the soba.

Didn't want to let the squid ink gravy go to waste because it had so much delicious-ness so we used it as a dip for the salmon/tuna in their mini kaisen don.