Tempura Makino, Suntec City

There's been a bit of chatter on Tempura Makino which has opened at Suntec City (#02-305/308/311 Suntec City Mall, 3 Temasek Boulevard). I had the impression that these guys are supposed to be tempura specialists. I think. Right? While I was curious, we were also skeptical. After all, social media is always full of buzz even through the sludge that is mediocrity. More often than not - especially so when it is through the sludge that is mediocrity.

I know it's not fair to compare this guys with Tenshin so I won't. Not even going to talk about Tenjin which I liked better on hindsight.

But I did want to point out that we were graced by the other half of Jeff Goldblum's character in his 1986 horror which could be spotted quietly hanging out on the bronzed tempura dome.

The first two thirds of our order for some reasons came together in a plate. There's scallops (not bad but Anzu kinda got their timing better), corn (couldn't beat Suju) on partial cob, kisu fish, maitake (tasteless mushroom that was mostly batter, have had better), prawns and nasu. Was very disappointed with how these people had handled the maitake.

Bacon wrapped asparagus and mentaiko were decent. Actually I liked the mentaiko but it had nothing much to do with them being tempura. It was salty, spicy and delicious with rice.

Oysters didn't taste bad but the batter was kinda thick. And soaked with oil if your eagle eyes haven't caught on.

The tempura steak was being sucked dry of juices as it was served. Most of the flavour came from the shiso at the beginning and at some point, if you were still chewing and not swallowed already, a bit of the beef flavour came through. Wouldn't bother with this again.

I had hoped that they would surprise and do something good with the fried Okinawan mozuku. Also disappointing. Not much flavour coming from the seaweed. Most of the taste was the batter and the oil that was trapped in it. For better tasting tempura seaweed, there's Nirai Kanai's rendition.

Should have read the warning signs on the uni from how much they charged. This wasn't enjoyable.

Their tempura egg was pretty good though. Came with a nice tare.

Good with their rice but not yet.

More like this with the bleeding molten yolk.

Chilled soba was not bad tasting.

Wild Child Pizzette, Circular Road

Wild Child Pizzette (50 Circular Road, tel : +65 6970 6592) is a new pizza bar/restaurant by The Cicheti Group, the folks behind Cicheti, Bar Cicheti and Caffe Cicheti. What they've done to distinguish themselves from their previous restaurants are a focus on their 10" Neapolitan styled pizzas. I've generally thought well of Cicheti and their pizzas so it would be inevitable that we'd come by.

There's roasted kurobuta pork belly on the menu. By another name - also known as siew yoke/shao rou (烧肉). Meat had a salt and pepper marinade and I had perhaps caught a subtle star anise in the flavour. I'm not sure. Pretty tasty but as we got to the last pieces, it became less peppery and more salty. The crackling was also inconsistent with texture ranging from a enjoyable crispiness to "I gotta spit this out!". Those house giardiniera sure helped cut through the rich fattiness of the pork though.

We tried their spianata calabrese because I wanted to see how different it was from their sopressata. There was a bit of heat but I'm not feeling any Sichuan from the Sichuan chilli honey. Between this and that sopressata, I was more impressed by the latter.

Other than satisfying the curiosity in having another fried pizza, this fried Margherita was for comparison to the pizza fritta from Bar Milano. In my not so humble opinion, Wild Child wins by a mile here. The texture of the crust was chewy with a light crisp without being greasy. That along with savouriness and bite which kinda reminded me of you tiao (油条). Loved the milky creaminess from their stracciatella and cheesy saltiness from the Parmigiano Reggiano.

I liked how each ingredient came through for this pizza.

Pistachio gelato also pretty good. Creamy and had a good flavour from the nut. I liked the bits of salt inside.

A banana mocha at Singtel

Singtel has a robot barista at Comcentre. A soulless robotic arm that collects coffee from a coffee machine. No ghost nor human in either machines. One selects an order from the menu, pays and gets a printed receipt with a QR code. Receipt can be scanned and collection point to get the coffee. The process was kinda slow - took a few minutes I think.

I got a banana mocha. $5.90 for coffee from a machine.

Silly me thought that the banana flavour was weak. My fault for not getting a stirrer because all that banana syrup was at the bottom. Didn't realize it until I've almost finished and the remaining drink was diabetes inducing sweet. But for what they charged, I had expected (realistically or not) flavour from a real banana and strength of coffee like the Banana Spin I used to get at Spinelli years ago.

Dassai Sakura Rice Burger and an update of the mussels nuggets from MOS Burger

MOS Burger hasn't inspired much confidence in the past years. I remember that they used to be tasty a long time back but their food standards have since declined. And that's not because we have gotten used to better alternatives. Still once in a while, I get lured in by something from them. Like their disappointing Impossible burger.

Things still look pretty good at this point. I was looking forward to trying the Dassai Sakura Rice Burger. I've had the mussels nuggets before and I remember them being not bad. These looked fat.

This didn't look much like the picture in their banner. I would construe the images of the sakura ebi in the picture of the burger to be deliberately misleading. The spear of asparagus was tiny enough to be hidden entirely between the rice buns.

I'm not tasting much from the sauce that they're trying to sell here. It didn't taste bad. It was just ordinary. For some reasons, it didn't pair with the prawn patty and vegetable kakiage which tasted like they were separate from the sauce.

Sadly, a large proportion of those "fat" mussels nuggets were batter that I had remove them. Some of them nuggets were at least 50% batter.

Paninoteca by d.o.c, Tras Street

Paninoteca (#01-01, 32 Tras Street, tel : +65 6223 0206) is a sandwich shop by d.o.c.. They're just about a minute's walk from each other. Besides a slew of panini, there's actually also a bunch of pizza, pasta, salads and desserts. We were here for their sandwiches today.

That's their Il Padrino - porcini cream, spinach, roma tomatoes, salami, prosciutto di Parma, pancetta, boiled egg, pecorino and walnut oil. According to the menu. I'm not sure how walnut oil tastes like so I couldn't tell but I'm pretty sure they forgot the pecorino. I liked this. The bread was crisp on the outside while tender and chewy on the insides. Fillings were solid, had great texture and deliciously salty.

Another sandwich type they had was a folded pizza. Was pretty good as well, not to mention generously portioned. This one had sliced octopus and salad which paired nicely with the briny bottarga. Couldn't get past that cold tomato and pesto dip on the side which was very refreshing. They obliged when I asked for extras of that dip.

Caffé B, Club Street

We first noticed Caffé B (64 Club Street, tel  : +65 6887 3311) years ago when they were at MBS. They've moved to Club Street since, have been operating there for some time and eventually announced that they were closing for good at the end of September 2021. We visited about a couple of weeks before that. 

These guys by the way are Japanese Italian. Like Trattoria La Vita, Trattoria Pizzeria Logic, goo Italiano, Luka and Enoteca L'Operetta.

That's salad.

And bread. They were served to everyone who ordered food.  

We ordered Farmer's Egg with sea urchin. This was good. The menu description was clam cream espuma, shio kombu, lemon jam, chives, caviar. Pretty sure most of the ingredients were lost to me. I identified the lemon jam, clam cream, uni and molten yolk. 👍🏼

Loved the sea urchin capellini with ikura. There's a lot more stuff in it though. Like shoyu, white truffle oil, julienned ohba leaf, shio kombu and chives. Pretty sure there's EVOO as well. The flavour is not unique. There're plenty of restaurants, especially Japanese ones that have a few tweaked recipes of their own which tastes similar. Doesn't stop these from being good though.

What I thought was outstanding was their pepperocino shirasu spaghetti. Look at how fine those shirasu are. The flavour was a good balance between the light heat from the chilli pepper, toasted garlic and the brininess from those shirasu.

This came after the pasta because we ordered it midway. Cold cuts of prosciutto di Parma, speck, coppa/capocollo and Mortadella. Prosciutto was very good. There was a sweet and full body to the taste that was beyond many of the cheap hams that gets put into a generic salumi platter. Loved the smokiness from the coppa and speck.

Lobster risotto also pretty good. There's a whole lobster of meat, pairing with the flavour in the rice which was a good balance of tomato, butter and crustacean. That and the parmesan cheese crisp.

I liked Caffé B. A pity that they aren't going to be around anymore.