Famous Queens Briyani, Maxwell Food Centre

Can't say that I've noticed this stall (#01-12 Maxwell Food Centre, 1 Kadayanallur Street) previously but their butter chicken briyani intrigued me so I ordered one. It's not the same butter chicken that I'm familiar with in a couple of ways. Instead of chicken tikka, it was a fried chicken drumstick/thigh that's slathered with the butter chicken gravy. Secondly, that gravy was much more savoury and less sweet. That didn't mean that it wasn't rich though.

How was it? Not bad I would say. The rice was fragrant with spices and properly salted that it was good enough to eat on it's own. The sambal from the egg was delicious.

Peanut butter, banana and Parma ham sandwich

I used the seedy Everything Butter from Fix & Fogg from the last time. Ham is from Huber's. Banana for its taste and sweetness because the latter helps with the nut butter. The lesson here was not to hold back on the prosciutto di Parma because the flavour from the banana is pretty strong. I only managed to get the aroma from the ham in some bites while for others, it was just a mild saltiness. Overall pretty tasty. 

Old Village, Tanglin Halt

A small section of social media is abuzz lately with mentions of this stall (#01-265, 49 Tanglin Halt Road) selling what is termed as KL styled pork noodles. Said stall is run by the guy who started Old World Bakuteh. If anyone is wondering about the address, it's in the same Peking Room coffeeshop as Tanglin Halt Roti Prata & Nasi Briyani.

The thing to eat here is their pork soup. I got the mixed pork bowl that came with minced pork, sliced pork, pork liver, pork balls and sweet intestines. Not forgetting bits of fried pork lard (猪油渣) and some vegetables. The soup was mild and it had a layer of oil on top. I don't know if lard (猪油) has been added to that soup but I couldn't taste it.

One can pick a starch of noodles or rice or long bean pork belly rice to go with the soup. This was the latter. Long beans and cabbage in the rice were pretty wilted and actually pretty sparse. There's a prominent black pepper flavour but otherwise, it tasted like a salty yam rice. Deliciously salty in my opinion. Not sure if I tasted any pork belly.

They have a green chilli sauce. It's good. Both as a dip for the morsels of pork or on the rice. Spicy, tangy and there's some sweetness.

Nanyuan (南園), Beo Crescent Food Centre

I usually see a queue at Nanyuan (#01-68 Beo Cresecent Food Centre, 38A Beo Crescent) whenever I'm in the area and that had gotten me intrigued. Though I'm more of a bak chor mee person than a fishball noodle one, I don't mind the latter.

Got myself a bowl of mee pok dry with extra Teochew dumplings (潮州饺子). I'm not sure what's the accurate name for these type of noodles as they're basically fishball noodles with minced pork. The minced pork here are placed with the ingredients in the soup instead of the bowl of noodles.

Mee pok was generic. Not impressed with their chilli sauce. Lard was borderline expiring. Nothing about the noodles (texture or otherwise) nor saucing was special so that's that. 

What I enjoyed was the bowl of ingredients though. Fishballs, fish cakes, fish dumplings and the additional Teochew dumplings I mentioned earlier. The latter looked like wanton and have pork fillings flavoured with dried sole. Similar to the ones from Xing Heng Feng Guo Tiao Tan (新恆豐粿條攤) which I think are a little nicer. 

Spicy Chocolate Chicken from Mom's Touch

What do we have here? Halloween's treats from Mom's Touch with a Freaky Chicken set? What could the spicy chocolate chicken be? I needed to find out.

I had initially thought that they would ladle chocolate sauce onto the fried chicken. Instead, they dunked each piece of the fried chicken into a pot of chocolate sauce and coated them thoroughly. That chocolate sauce looked thick and rich. Could smell it before we even put our noses to the fried birds.

It was too much chocolate sauce. Besides the little heat that managed to push through from the spicy fried chicken beneath, it was mostly chocolate flavour. Which was the problem. 

While it wasn't crazily sweet, the minuscule heat didn't integrate well with the thick chocolate which was overwhelming by virtue of quantity. Couldn't get any of the savoury from the fried batter. Everything got cloy pretty fast. Would have worked out better if it were some sort of spicy chilli chocolate sauce in less excessive amounts. Chocolate flavoured chicken breast takes time getting used to and I'm not getting any more used to them after today.

Coleslaw was thankfully not sweet and served as a reprieve from all the thick gooey chocolate.

Ivan's Porridge's bee hoon has changed

The bee hoon from Ivan's seems to have lost their magic. No more smokiness that used to mark their flavour. Not that they're bad. They're not. But for some reasons the noodles doesn't taste as good these days. I still enjoy it though. Nowadays, it's that roasted chilli that's getting me through when the bee hoon alone in the past would have.