Hoàng Hâu, Jalan Bukit Merah

If anyone thought that the name Hoàng Hâu might sound familiar, it's the word for 'empress' in Vietnamese which also sounds similar to how the Chinese addressed their empresses as 皇后. The restaurant is at the foot of the block (#01-1090, 146 Jalan Bukit Merah, tel : +65 9622 1077) facing the side of Wat Ananda Metyarama Thai Buddhist Temple.

Salted lemonade with mint.

The talked about dish from Hoàng Hâu is their freshwater eel porridge which the proprietor mentioned many people order as an appetizer. It was pretty good tasting with intense flavours. The spiced creamy porridge bowl laden with strips of eel was savoury with some sweetness and also quite peppery. I identified something that tasted like laksa leaf in there. It would be remiss of me if I did not also mention that there wasn't any muddy taste from freshwater eel.

Pretty fresh tasting grilled prawns that were easily stripped off their shells. There was a sweet/spicy glaze but I couldn't tell what it was.

We ordered a couple of gỏi cuốn and chả giò. The summer rolls were thick with vermicelli, sliced pork and prawns. I had imagined that there would be herbs like mint/basil but there were only lettuce which kinda made them less satisfying.

Surprised by their chả giò which also featured stuffings of vermicelli along with porcine bits of finely minced meat with pepper under the crispy fried skin. Tasted better than I had imagined.

We wanted more food and were originally gunning for their grilled ribeye but it was sold out by the time we ordered. So we fell onto the second choice which was grilled catfish which also happened to be finished for the day. Tried ordering their ham and pâté banh mi but they couldn't do it because they had problems getting the ham in. So that's how we ended up with the sandwich that had grilled pork and meatball. 

I liked the soft airy bread but the meats were more sweet than salty and there weren't much pickles cut through the sweetness. On top of that, there's even more sweet from chilli sauce and mayo which reminded me much of roti john. Don't think I'm a fan of their banh mi.

The drip coffee's good though.

Pasta Bar, Keong Saik Road

Mixed feelings about Pasta Bar (#01-05, 55 Keong Saik Road, tel : +65 6222 0637). Didn't enjoy half of what we tried. Wait staff has attitude and the food is pricey. These guys are by the SJS Group - the people who are behind Bar Milano.

Bread. Not bad.

Their smoked ricotta was nice. Smoky from the first mouthful but oddly lost the smokiness which came back later. Loved the quince/apple compote and marinated grapes that brought in an enjoyable tart sweetness to the creamy ricotta. Those stuff on the top were spiced nuts.

This one was probably me because I didn't know what to expect of the stuffings. Like many contemporary menus, they can be confusing because it says veal & mortadella tortellini, chicken, ricotta, pistachio & sage butter. 

I'm assuming the mashy stuff in the tortellini were the veal and mortadella because I couldn't tell. Don't know where the chicken or ricotta was unless they were also in the tortellini. I thought I tasted rosemary but they convinced me it was sage. Didn't enjoy the sage then because it was a little too much. 

Those pistachios were soft, not crunchy and not flavourful. That's on them.

So pretty their fettuccine black truffle. This deserves another picture because it was the tastiest pasta we had and was also the most expensive single serving portion. I'm not griping over how much it cost because it was delicious.

From what I saw, just truffle butter, shaven black truffle and Parmigiano Reggiano. Simple and nice and pretty generous portions of the nutty truffle. Love the texture of their fresh fettuccine.

This was their reginette with smoked duck. Check out those chunky duck fat croutons.......on this picture in their social media. 

This was the real thing. Don't know where the duck fat croutons went unless those bread crumb-y things were it. Pretty sure no one can tell if they were really duck fat croutons. Nothing particularly Italian about this. Tasted like a stir fried mee hoon kuey with cabbage we could do at home. For $36, it was borderline criminal.

Home made shepherd's pie

Home made with no peas, corn or carrot. But there's blue cheese in there somewhere. And goat's cheese too. The only vegetable in them were diced onions that were cooked with the minced lamb which subsequently had the rendered fat folded into the mashed potato with butter and pepper.

Delivery from Goobne for a whole chicken

These oven baked chicken from Goobne survived delivery pretty well. They were still hot and juicy that something hot squirted out when I bit into a piece. Which doesn't happen often. 😬

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.