Wen Ge Charcoal Delights (文哥烧腊), Bukit Merah View

These guys (116 Bukit Merah View) are the roast meats stall located at the same coffee shop as Tian Tian Hainanese Curry Rice (天天海南咖哩飯). What piqued my interest about them was that they had mala three treasure noodle (麻辣三宝面).

I kinda enjoyed it. Just as I had suspected, it wasn't very 辣 and does not 麻 at all. It was that Szechuan peppercorn flavour in their blend of chilli paste they used which gave a hint of mala flavour and that was pretty much it. Couldn't even content with the sweetness from those sausages or from the burnt ends of the char siew - both of which were nice by the way. Roast pork was respectably tender and meaty. Will come back another time.

TamJai SamGor Mixian (譚仔三哥), Chinatown Point

We went over to TamJai SamGor (譚仔三哥) for their soup noodles again. This visit was at their shop at Chinatown Point (#01-01 Chinatown Point, 133 New Bridge Road, tel : +65 6223 1167 ). I just noticed that they mentioned their rice noodles were from Yunnan but these guys are a chain from Hong King. The marketing in this shop is clearly local so....the feel was kinda rojak. 😬

Anyways, I figured out how to interpret their spiciness meter. I was previously baffled by the numbers in those ratings but those numbers only indicated the amount of 小 before the 辣. Halfway up the spice meter (50% mark) the last time simply got me to 小小小辣. Today was a bowl of 过桥米线 with mala broth at 小辣 (70% mark).

I could taste that the heat was revved up. While it was bearable heat, one doesn't want to choke on this stuff. The appeal of their 过桥米线 was variety for their toppings so it works for people who want a bit of everything. I'll stick to their regular bowls the next time. I got the impression that the only thing that voluminous in the boat shaped bowl was the soup. 

Today's noodles came with their pickled vegetables and a nutty minced meat dip. Both were nice. The former was especially good pairing with the slices of meat.

We ordered the 5 piece 土匪 mid wings this time.

Pure Imagination, Great World

So this place (B1-K119 Great World, 1 Kim Seng Promenade, tel : +65 9640 6397) popped up in the space that Plentyfull Bakery used to occupy. From that I had gathered, they're by Janice Wong of 2am: dessertbar - featuring a chocolate focused pod to bar experience with a live chocolate production facility. We were actually lured in by their delicious looking cinnamon buns at their counter.

Said cinnamon buns were heated up when they served. These were tender and slathered with cream cheese. Nice. Not heavy at all. One could arguably also describe these as fluffy. 

Pretty taken in by their buttery pound cake which was warm, moist and dense.

The only chocolate thing we tried was their was their bacon and egg cocoa waffle. While it cannot be seen from the picture, the cake-y waffle had tiny bits of ham in them. Nice combination of sweet salty which I thought was pretty good. Liked that velvety chocolate which was surprising light and not overly sweet.

Qin Ji Rougamo (秦記肉夹馍), Guoco Tower

I wanted to try the black pepper beef rou jia mo from them (#B2-04 Guoco Tower, 7 Wallich Street) because I've had the pork ones from the shop at One Raffles Place previously. What I didn't expect was that the black pepper fillings had a flavour pretty similar to a less intense McPepper. I liked it. There was less meat than the ones with pork though. Now I wonder how their noodles are.

Mapo tofu don from Keisuke Gyoza King

Keisuke Gyoza King has mapo tofu don on their menu limited to 15 serves a day. I don't know for how long has this been available but we wanted to find out how it tasted. One gets bottomless pickled vegetables and bean sprouts with a soup of choice like their gyoza teishoku. The difference for the mapo tofu don was that it came with 3 gyozas instead of 5 and their side dishes are excluded though one can choose to have a nama tamago over rice.

How was Keisuke's rendition of mapo tofu you might wonder? I thought it was pretty good - savoury fermented bean sauce with bits of pork and also made better with that Szechuan peppercorn chilli thingy ladled over them on serving. It's not like Chen's Mapo Tofu though. Don't know if the nama tamago was supposed to be eaten together with that but I didn't. I'm gonna see if they would make it spicier if I come back the next time.

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.