Ikea's black (uh oh) hotdog

Hello darkness my old friend......it tasted like a cheese sausage hotdog if anyone was wondering. Limited edition for this month. A curious jet black for both buns and sausage but there was nothing weird tasting about it. The innards looked grey though.

Revisiting Happy Lamb Hotpot (快乐小羊)

Heh, we are back at Happy Lamb Hotpot (快乐小羊). The crowd's a little thin at the weekend so that worries me, but hey, look at that ewe! 

Like the last visit, the focus is mainly on the lamb. And the prawn paste with tobiko which I forgot to take a picture of which I will mention so that years later I could remember that we did like it as well.

After we processed the bill the last time, we were given a voucher which we could use to redeem some of their food items. One of the items included was their lamb skewers (羊肉串). No prizes for guessing what we used that voucher for. Man it was good.

Like I said, the main focus goes to the lamb. We got ourselves three cuts with their Nourishing Marrow Chicken Broth.

No Melaleuca rib this time. Picked the Sun Lamb Roll (太阳卷) which seemed to be undergoing some promotion. Pretty good meating.

Upped the number of mutton balls from 6 to 10.

Although no dip was necessary or provided, we paid a dollar for their sesame paste. That paste was creamy and aromatic from the sesame - like a Chinese tahini. I can see why they charged for this.

More tofu because these were good with the hotpot.

Daikon that got thrown in the hotpot at the start so that there was enough time to soften and absorb the lamb infused broth.

 Told ya we'll be back for the Mongolian yoghurt.

184 Family Cooked Food, Bukit Timah Food Centre

This was breakfast (#02-184 Bukit Timah Food Centre, 51 Upper Bukit Timah Road) just next door to He Zhong Carrot Cake. Bee hoon and kuey teow. Not bad tasting but a little saltier than I'm used to. Chicken wings were pretty darn good and slurp off the bone tender. Not excessively greasy as well. The otah was mediocre - not really spicy nor well flavoured. Couldn't bring myself to finish it. That blob of chilli on the side was too sweet. So I'll just stick to the chicken wings and eggs the next time.

S'Mao Barbecue, Cluny Food Court

Les Amis Group has opened Cluny Food Court - their very first food court located at one of the edges of Botanic Gardens (1J Cluny Road). One of the stalls in that food court was S'mao Barbecue which I had read about some time ago that operated Texan styled barbecue in some kind of pop-up-esqued mode at the defunct Casa Verde, helmed by a CIA graduate who also did a stint in North Carolina and a popular food truck in Austin. Sounds legit. I think.

I confess to having trouble navigating to the food court coming in from Bukit Timah Gate. I had to Google Map my way to the place.

We were there lunch time. No barbecue for lunch 😢, only a couple of sandwiches so I settled for the pulled pork. The sauce was smoky, not bad tasting and not outstanding either. Meat portions were kinda skimpy. The sandwich included bits of basil and mint. Didn't like the coleslaw and fries were kinda limp without much flavour or salt. Their rosemary scented corn cakes were not bad tasting though. I'm curious about their barbecue but it's kinda pain in the ass getting there and out.

Meat n' Chill, 6th Avenue

Mixed feelings about Meat n' Chill (#01-04 6th Avenue Centre, 805 Bukit Timah Rd, tel : +65 8812 4455). These guys are a local steak and ribs joint and appeared to know what they were doing. They don't make the best ribs in town - in fact, their slogan said 'meanest ribs'. 😂 But they seem to have hiccups with the operations on the day we visited. Strange that since they've been around for a while.

Anyway, their garlic bread sucks. We asked for extra garlic butter but these didn't even have enough for decent ones. Twice the amount of garlic butter they put on these wouldn't even have made good garlic bread so yeah, this sucked and I wouldn't waste money on them again.

I wanted to try some of their unusual glazes for their ribs. This was Journey to the Yeast - with Guinness, Marmite and molasses. Sounded fun. Not getting much yeastiness from Guinness and I'm guessing that the sweetness were from molasses. But it wasn't particularly molasses-y either. No idea how a strong flavour like Marmite could simply not show up in a three main ingredient glaze.

The meat was tender. Not glistening with juices and slip off the bone kind of tender but still tender. It didn't taste bad. It just tasted ordinary considering the description of the ingredients. Coleslaw had chopped pickles and raisins and I liked it. Cornbread was not bad but the flavour and quantity of that smudge of sauce seemed half assed.

For some reasons, our order of the lamb ribs didn't go through. Curse these newfangled and poorly implemented digital menus. The wait staff in charge realized something didn't go right and came over to get our orders and then got us the wrong lamb rib. She was apologetic (and appeared very busy) and we didn't want to further complicate the issue. We ended up with the original barbecue instead of the orange mint.

I didn't dislike this in spite of the fact that some parts of it were dry. Left to cook for too long kind of dry. Maybe it's also "I'm not sure this is lamb jerky or lamb biscuit" kind of dry. Yes, it got that far. Some parts which I had initially mistaken for bone were actually dried bits of lamb that was more biscuit than jerky. Kinda nice tasting because of the lamb flavour but that wasn't the point. Did not expect the ribs to be accompanied with yoghurt.

A disconnect happened between the making of their apple blueberry cobbler and it being served. The waitress brought over the stewed apples and blueberry - sans the crumble and ice cream. She really didn't have a fucking clue what the cobbler was supposed to be like. Sigh....

Thankfully, the other waitress in charge saw and corrected it. This tasted pretty good with the blueberry and spice infused apples which had a soft crunch. And with the crumble and ice cream that is. 

Revisiting Mrs Pho House

This revisit to Mrs Pho House was to hit up some of their barbeque/grill items and also take advantage of the half price promotion for their hotpot broth which has been extended till the end of the month. It was specifically the crab bisque broth for the hotpot that we came back for.

So before the food arrived, a glass of Phoever Young. Tacky sounding drink made with pennywort, coconut water and green bean. Supposedly good for health but I'll never drink enough to find out. Tasted like it was made with pennywort, coconut water and green bean. A pretty green-y flavour which wasn't very sweet.

Grilled mussels were not bad. Not the plumpest but still meaty resting in their juices on the shell. Would have been nicer if the crushed peanuts weren't just a token sprinkling. 

Marinated pork belly on skewer were not bad too. These were single long strips of pork belly folded in the the skewer so it was a pretty large mouthful. 

Nice tender lady's fingers made more delicious with their fermented beancurd sauce.

Got ourselves their mountain styled chicken again. Looked different from the last time but still delicious.

Another mountain styled item, this time it was zucchini slices which were tender and pleasantly sweet, paired with the salty "mountain spice".

Their stuffed squid sounded interesting. Not bad also. Squid was stuffed with minced meat and had a nice char at the tentacles. It was mentioned on the menu to be "Mrs Pho's childhood favourite". Who the hell is Mrs Pho? I thought it was just a name. 😱 Anyway, they did this with a pineapple sauce which had a good flavour from the fruit without being overly sweet.

Here begins the hotpot stuff. We had some fish maw. Not the better ones we've had but I think I was forgiving because the idea was for these to soak up the crab bisque.

More pig's stomach which was good with their spicy fermented beancurd dip.

Their house made prawn paste which I didn't get to show the last time. These were pretty well done with chunks of shrimp in the paste. Loved how the dill integrated with them. Works with their sweet calamansi dip.

Beef balls. Decent but nothing special. Great with the spicy fermented beancurd dip.

Frozen pork belly which were oddly folded. We had initially thought that they were thick slices but that was because each piece was folded in half. Pretty good stand alone or with both dips that they provided. 

Frozen beef slices which were also pretty good on their own. I don't know if the salt came from a marinate or the crab bisque. Hmmm......

Some watercress for fibre. These were pretty stem-my and those fibrous stems took a long time to soften.

There - the sweet and fruity calamansi dip with a hint of garlic which I had been mentioning. And also that delicious spicy fermented beancurd dip.

Tried their avocado coffee. I liked that the coffee itself was strong. I'm not assuming that all Vietnamese restaurants makes nice strong coffee.