Nasi lemak from Queenstown Lontong

Remember that I mentioned Queenstown Lontong doing more than just lontong? I got myself a plate of their nasi lemak this week and I liked it. Especially so in the morning when everything was just freshly cooked. Loved that their rice had a nice coconut flavour, was sufficiently salted and very moist; pairing with a sambal that had just enough heat and sweetness without being excessive for the latter. The plate came with a fried chicken wing with turmeric seasoning, a chicken nugget, a boiled egg and some crispy and fragrant ikan bilis which I also found myself enjoying with the sambal and rice. I'm usually not so big on ikan bilis.

Now I'm just waiting to find out where will they relocate after Tanglin Halt gets shut down.

Deep fried intestines porridge (炸肠粥) from Ivan's Porridge

I've posted the bee hoon from Ivan's Porridge once. Or twice. Maybe thrice. Or was there a fourth? Won't be talking about that anymore. This one will be about their porridge since the stall is called Ivan's Porridge. Not that we haven't had it. For some reasons, I've never talked about and they deserve mention. Their porridges are available with a variety of different ingredients.

Here's a recent bowl of 炸肠粥 with extra 肠粥 and egg. That's deep fried intestines porridge with extra deep fried intestines for those of you who didn't understand. I added extras because I thought the regular portions don't come with enough of them fried crispy bits. If savoury,  crunchy and offal-y in small bites is your kind of thing, this will be delicious in the creamy porridge richened by the egg. 

Mushrooms and shabu pork soba from Healthy Soba IKI

We've been getting soba from Healthy Soba IKI quite a few times over the past - more than a year. Back from the first visit, I remember liking their lemon soba and shirasu avocado don. Still like that lemon soba which has become a permanent item on menu now and I'm still getting that shirasu avocado don. Here's a look back to the previous visits (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十, 十一, 十二)

This visit was us catching some year end seasonals. The bowl at the top was their VGA porcini soba with broth made with vegetable stock, kombu and porcini. VGA simply implies it's vegan, gluten free and additive free. It's one of the more enjoyable clear mushroom broths I've had in a while - crisp and umami at the same time. Loved the toasty dried bean curd strips.

The second bowl was a spicy pork shabu soba which I'm not so enthusiastic on personally. It's not much spicy at all. There's a walnut sauce drizzled over which got diluted after you had tossed the soba. Pork slices weren't exactly shabu thin and some pieces were a little hard. Much preferred the porcini one. 

福海咖喱雞米粉麵, Tiong Bahru Food Centre

There has got to be some, perhaps complicated story behind this. The sign reads 福海咖喱雞米粉麵 (#02-16 Tiong Bahru Food Centre, 30 Seng Poh Road) while WhyQ listed them as Hock Hai Curry Chicken Noodle. I know that there's at least another stall that is called Hock Hai (Hong Lim) Curry Chicken Noodle 福海(芳林)咖喱鸡面. Not gonna bother to untangle all that here.

This stall was very edible. The thin curry became much richer and spicier after having the sambal stirred in so I recommend it. Tau poks were chewy and the chopped up boiled chicken was tender. What didn't feel right was the potato in the bowl that was just the slightest bit crunchy because it hadn't been cooked for as along as it should. These guys also apparently have briyani as well.

Fat Belly Social Steakhouse, Boon Tat Street

Dinner at Fat Belly Social (21A Boon Tat Street, tel : +65 6227 2247). These guys are kinda similar to Keef the Beef offering a contemporary steakhouse experience minus the frills. You know, it's a little bit of the classic experience without the stuffiness and a more international take on the ingredients that make the menu. There's also a bit more variety on the menu here though.

And within the fat belly, we found a heart of darkness. A toasty, malty and chocolate-y heart of darkness.

First up was uni and lardo topped with caviar. Nice, I wished that the uni had covered more of the toast for what they charged though. And who would have known that the sourdough is from Starter Lab if they hadn't mentioned. I sure wouldn't. That aside, the subtle sweet creaminess of the sea urchin pairing with the unctuous blanket of lardo - how could I say no?

That's grilled octopus tentacles with trippa and what was described as nduja stew. I couldn't definitively identify the nduja portion. Didn't stop it from being delicious paired with the tender tripe. For some reasons, I kept thinking cumin. Octopus was also tender.

Grilled ox tongue and some. Loved the fennel salad with jalapeño. That needs to go onto the sides menu. As a whole, the tongue wasn't impressive because it was room temperature and buried under the flavour of the salad and the salsa verde. Ingredients were faultless but I didn't think much of this as grilled ox tongue.

Our steak was the zabuton cut of Black Opal F1 Wagyu with a marbling score of 6/7. Not bad. 

That steak was good on its own or with our choices of dips/sauce/things. A safe but delicious tangy horseradish creme or their superb scampi butter - kinda like hae mee tng in butter form. 

Instead of spinach, creamed kale. The sphere was supposed to be Parmesan crusted egg. Didn't taste like Parmesan. Thought it was just thin breading.

We ended with their burnt Stilton cheesecake. Had to compare with Olivia because this was the only other Basque styled cheese cake I've had and also one with blue cheese. Just like the one at Olivia. This one was less oozy and there was more of that burnt flavour. Those dark dried things beside the berry sorbet - I thought they were dried giant raisins or prunes but were apparently roasted strawberries according to the menu.

Re-visiting 藝 yì by Jereme Leung

We came back to 藝 yì for some of the food we liked from the previous visit and to try some of the hairy crab dishes that they're doing for the season. Also, this was a lunch to commemorate.

Some fried dumpling they gave on the house. I actually couldn't tell what it was inside but it didn't taste bad. The skin was softer than it looked and the sharpness of those onions cut through as a complement.

$18 purple sugarcane juice. Expensive but nice.

What we liked from the last time included this luffa and pig's stomach soup with peppercorns. Creamy smooth peppery broth swimming with "juicy" strips of luffa and pig's stomach. A pot was good for four small bowls. So delicious.

There's Parmesan cheese custard buns with crab meat and roe.

The flavour from the roe reminded me of 流沙包, which this was a crab rendition of if you thought about it. Rich and creamy salty sweetness with bits of crab meat. I thought it might have been more impressive there were more crab meat for the texture.

Menu described this as Hangzhou styled hairy crab meat and roe stuffed in baked orange. Nice. Imagine hot orange puree with minced hairy crab meat and roe in them. Wished this was bigger.

Another dish we liked from the last round was their steamed chicken claws (凤爪) in a sweet fermented bean sauce. Like I mentioned previously, these were slurp off the bone tender.

Claypot kailan with prawn paste and Shaoxin - also something we caught on from the last visit. These were well done.

Back to the crab dishes, there's la mian with Japanese snow crab, beancurd (豆花), chilli oil and the works. 

The chilli was much more subdued that the appearances belied. There was barely heat and wasn't as aromatic (or toasty) as I had been expecting them to be. Which was kinda odd. The noodles were quite nice still after it was all tossed up though.

The last of the hairy crab food we had was their freshly baked custard soufflé. I was curious because it had hairy crab meat and roe. The melted roe ended up tasting like sweetened salted egg yolk similar to those black buns above. The minced bits of crab meat weren't so out of place with the hot eggy custard. Think chawanmushi. Sweet chawanmushi. Sweet and fluffier chawanmushi. Too bad these are seasonal and the season's ended because I'd come back just for them. Next year perhaps.