Al Azhar, Cheong Chin Nam Road

Let me first rant. A peeve of mine that's emerged in recent years are QR scan menus. I don't begrudge that they're used in the name of hygiene these days but it doesn't change how I feel about horrendously designed interfaces for tiny mobile screens that originated from larger menus. Menus like those from Al Azhar (11 Cheong Chin Nam Road). I won't go into the details.

Anyways, these guys have been around for years and I'm pretty sure I've eaten here maybe a few times. Never wrote about them for some reasons. So here's a start. Teh tarik. How is that teh tarik? I don't see the effects of any tarik-ing. QR menu had some options for the teh which included something in the effect of having stronger tea. We chose that stronger tea checkbox but this tasted a little weak even for regular teh.

If you're wondering, this was two roti plaster stacked up. The top one had the yolk say about 75% solid so I was kinda disappointed. The floury chewy prata was nice. I enjoy them that way as well. In fact, I like these kind better than the crispy ones. But the eggs still got to me because it was poorly done. Chicken curry on the side was spicily moreish.  

We ordered a vegetable briyani. I didn't feel like this had enough vegetables in a vegetable briyani. Frozen peas/carrots/corns, a couple of cauliflower tops and wedges of potatoes. Kinda pricey for $7.50. But. Yes there's a but. There's a load of ghee in there. Which was what saved it. So much ghee that I did a 0.2 second pause for every spoonful of that buttery flavoured rice. I feel confused now.

Not much flavour from mint or coriander from their chicken hariyali tikka. Just salty, a little smokey and maybe a little yoghurt-y. Meat was frozen, not fresh and that was apparent from the texture. Not to mention that they were also kinda dry and stringy. Will not get these again or any other chicken tikka/tandoori thingies from this shop.

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 eye hasn'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.