134 Yong Ji Carrot Cake (永記菜頭粿), Bukit Timah Food Centre

I realized that I've been having a few radish cakes this month. It wasn't planned. I happened to be here in the morning again and wanted to see if this stall (#02-134 Bukit Timah Food Centre, 51 Upper Bukit Timah Road) was good because I'm not big on He Zhong and alternatives would be nice.

I'm not big on this either. I guess it was a little too wet and the radish cake didn't stay in the pan long enough for anything to caramelized into those aromatic crispy bits. There seemed to be this bitter edge in their chilli paste too.

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.