Covent Garden Prawn Noodle (哥文園蝦麵), Havelock Road Food Centre

First meal out after the end of the 2nd phase of HA. This stall (#01-24, Havelock Road Cooked Food Centre, 22B Havelock Road) has always had a queue which had previously discouraged me from trying. They were closed for some time and had just recently re-opened so we thought it was time we gave them a try. After all, we've had almost everything else in this food centre.

Their prawn noodles tasted old school. The ingredients included thin sliced prawns, sliced pork and fish cake. Just like how prawn noodles were many years ago before the more luxurious renditions with big assed prawns started turning up. Broth had a pleasant savoury sweet crustacean flavour that was more lightweight than a punch in the face. I like the dry bowl with chilli.

Bukit Merah View Kway Chap

First time doing group buy for kway chap. We were interested in this stall (346A Kang Ching Road) because on top of the regular braises that the other kway chap stalls do, this one also has pig's tongue and hearts. Couldn't resist not trying.

The braising from Bukit Merah View Kway Chap has much less intensity than I had been expecting. The meats/offal hadn't as much savoury saltiness which I normally preferred. So what about those hearts and tongue? The former were sliced, a little raggedly and chewy while the latter was just textured pretty much like other tongues. They exceptional items I thought were the pork belly, boiled eggs and the pickled mustard. The kuey was also tender yet firm.

Between this and You Fa, I prefer the latter which had better flavours from the braise and broth going on.

McRambling

So I tried the Kopi Frappé today. While they claim that it tastes like local coffee, we've had enough local coffee in our lives to distinguish the nuances of their flavours to tell that it doesn't totally pass off as one. Don't have the words to describe it now. It was a good attempt at kopi though and I didn't think it tasted bad.

The Big Mac is nostalgia. For me that is. It remains one of my earliest memory of a sandwich from McD as a kid besides their hamburger. While hazy, I still recall the first times I've had it not knowing then that it had sunk its insidious eldritch claws into me, threading into me the spores of happiness that will be triggered years later. This one tasted very much like how I remember them - even though the kiosk has options for customization these days where I could remove 1 unit of sauce and add another unit of onions to it.

I got the limited time banana pie hoping to be at least be able to pretend it was goreng pisang. The operative word here is 'pretend'. Which many of us do many times for varying reasons. I like bananas anyway.

Somewhat worked but this sauce and banana chunks will obviously never replace actual goreng pisang. 

What I couldn't fathom was what has Ben Yeo to do with chicken rice in any degree at all to even coalesce into a collaboration that made sense. McDonald's X Ben Yeo? How does that even compute? As far as gimmicks went, this was flaccid. 

Yanti Authentic Nasi Padang, Keong Saik Road

I've seen this nasi padang shop (45 Keong Saik Road, tel : +65 6324 9268) countless times. They're another one of those I've been meaning to eat at and has never happened until recently. 

The ordering was a little worrying because they had gotten one of my dishes wrong and forgotten another item in spite of appearances of having diligently written them down on a notepad. On top of that, there was an obviously angry delivery driver who looked like he was on the verge of lashing out because they had packed orders with missing items to him and he as the messenger delivery person had been blamed for the mistake and had his time wasted by the return to correct the order.

Food's not bad. 

Opor ayam was quite coconut-y and had chicken thigh meat that was slurp off the bone tender.

A decently done sotong hitam. What was strange was that towards the end, there was a burst of lime flavour in the gravy. I had no idea where that came from.

Paru belado was moist and tender. The chilli wasn't as fiery as appearances would suggest.

Sambal goreng nice.

Sambal petai packed a bit of heat, was slightly sweet and also savoury. Liked the flavours that the ikan bilis added to the sambal. Delicious with rice. Not much petai in it though.

I liked their garlic-ky and savoury stir fried kang kong but the dish was very stem-my. After a while, the chewing got tiresome. 

The rice that we had to have to go with the food. 

I'd rate the experience of the food at eateries like Sari Ratu, Tambuah Mas and Rumah Makan Minang to name a few to be better ones than Yanti. So while Yanti is like not bad, it's also not exactly on the top of the list for nasi padang in my books.

Lunch delivery from L'Angélus

I recall that in the last or the previous "dine out prohibition " before last time, we kinda had a craving for beef tartare. Maybe it was just me that had that craving and couldn't have them because none of the places that sold tartare de boeuf had them available for delivery. I had thought that perhaps it was for food safety reasons then.

Found them at L'Angélus this time in their $35 set lunches this time round. 

There's bone marrow with butter toast that came with a savoury sauce that served as the salt for the marrow. So good. 

Loved that livery porcine pate that they have as well. Their sweet onion chutney on the side was delicious - good with the pate and/or with the cornichons.

Here's their tartare de boeuf......portions were larger than I had imagined and to answer what might be unasked, while it was also not as nice as having it at the restaurant, it wasn't bad tasting at all. The condiments leaned towards being tangy rather than "seasoned to your liking" as the menu claimed though. The latter was for obvious reasons.

Crème brûlée was the only option for dessert for this $35 lunch. Nice creamy custard with dried raspberries to end.

Makan Society SG, Chinatown Food Centre

At least half of the stalls at Chinatown FC were closed. I was looking around for lunch because what I had wanted was also not opened for the day and I stumbled upon Makan Society SG (#02-052, Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre, 335 Smith Street). These guys are just a few stalls away from Lin Da Qiang and Mr Fish.

That above was rice layered with sotong hitam, some curry mutton and sambal goreng. Pretty decent. I had initially thought that the rice needed more gravy but I found that there was a pool of that cuttlefish ink gravy from the sotong hitam at the bottom of the box. Plenty of savoury/umami going on - was pretty happy with the flavour of mutton from the curry and the cuttlefish ink. 

Speaking of mutton, they were relatively tender but tasted like frozen meat. Squid had that seafood-y flavour of something stewed in that ink so that was nice. I've had tastier sambal goreng though.