Queenstown Lontong, Tanglin Halt Food Centre

Ahhh....finally. Been trying to get to Queenstown Lontong (#01-21 Tanglin Halt Food Centre, 1A Commonwealth Drive) for their lontong for a while. Now that the kuih jongkong season is over, they're open for regular operations again.

Asked for extra serunding which the proprietress cheerfully obliged. That added a spiced richness and sweetness to the already creamy coconut gravy. Enjoyed how deliciously salty and savoury their begedils are. That and the mild heat from the sambal. I don't know if one can actually imagine the combined bunch of flavours without having had these before.

Of course I had some paru goreng on the side. Didn't realize these came with more serunding, sweet sambal and fried ikan bilis. So here's a new experience here. Ikan bilis + serunding  or ikan bilis + sambal = nice. Layer those on the paru, also delicious.

Porcini mushroom chocolate from Bootle's

I bought this from Bootle's months ago and totally forgot about them after leaving it in the fridge. They're apparently made specially for Bootle's. Recently, I bought more flavoured ones at their closing sale and came across this while packing those newer chocolates. Porcini flavoured chocolate? How could I not try.

Sadly, I couldn't taste that porcini flavour. There was something a little different about the flavour but that was about all I could detect. Not mushroomy at all. It was not a bad chocolate though.

Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks

I wanted to get this for nostalgia and also because I haven't had one of them for years. The first time I tried the pumpkin spice latte was many years back and I remember it being too sweet. I had it a couple of times (I think it was a couple, didn't count) since then and for some reasons I just felt like getting one at least once for this year's autumn. I did take my own advice and got the grande with an extra shot.

One Fattened Calf, Fusionopolis

This was a pretty new shop making burgers down at Fusionopolis (#01-31 Galaxis, 1 Fusionopolis Place).

What kinda distinguished them from the other burger shops are the wrappers. Those were made to unfold along the perimeter of the burgers as one ate them. Menu's also pretty stripped down and focused on a series of beef burgers where the grass fed New Zealand beef patty is made on premise. Since we're at that pic above, they have cheese fries that featured smoky cheese sauce.

What caught my attention was their butter burger, a charred and crusty beef patty burger with potato buns, thinly sliced red onions, pickles and two slices of butter. Wished that where was at least another slice of butter to melt and soak the buns and meat but I was happy with this working out with a great balance of flavours from the ingredients. Liked how their house made pickle wasn't forceful in tandem with the light sharpness of those thinly sliced raw onions cutting through the richness.

Especially apparent in balance was their Gold Burger which featured similar ingredients sans the butter. This one had sauce and stewed beef brisket. The brisket wasn't very fatty but it was tender, well sauced and yet not excessively so that it drowned the rest of the ingredients in the burger. It added to the burger rather than overwhelmed it with its sweet smoky sauce.

Kuih Jongkong from Queenstown Lontong

Queenstown Lontong was closed for a while recently to make this kuih jongkong which they mentioned is sold only a few days a year. From what I gathered, this steamed kueh was made with coconut milk, tapioca flour, pandan and gula melaka. I had this chilled so it was pretty good but for all the green-ness, I couldn't taste the pandan. Texture was kinda custard-y with underlying coconut flavoured creaminess and gula melaka sweetness. Did appreciate that it wasn't overwhelmingly sweet or coconut-y though.

Myung Ga (맛집) ll, Bukit Timah Plaza

The name Myung Ga II (#B1-55 Bukit Timah Plaza, 1 Jalan Anak Bukit, tel : +65 6469 5123) popped up numerous times while I was searching for Korean food along Upper Bukit Timah area. We came by for the first time today. Restaurant looked like some sort of cosy Korean diner.

Banchan was refillable except for the omelette which was for only the first serving. Nothing too fancy here - there's kimchi, myulchi bokkeum (anchovies & peanuts) and some seaweed thingy.

We wanted a go at their donggasu. Large slice of breaded fried pork thinner than tonkatsu slathered in a creamy sauce I am still at a loss to describe. There was sweetness in it and I think one of the ingredients might be ketchup. As we ate, we realized that this fried pork drenched in sauce was kinda addictive. Those yellow pickles on the side were invigoratingly sour. 

Here was a point I got a little confused. I ordered something call yulmu daenjang bibimbab on the menu which translated to a bibimbap with summer radishes. I didn't know what were the blacked out parts in Korean. The confusion was - yulmu from what I could tell is Job's tears. Didn't sound like that was in my bowl. Later on I found out that it might have been yeolmu instead. 

As far as I could tell, there weren't any radishes in the bibimbap......

......and I thought I had I ended up with a regular vegetable bibimbap. Not that it tasted bad. I emptied the seaweed and kimchi from the banchan, squeezed in some gochujang and ended up with a fermented bean-y spicy vegetable rice with a lot of crunch.