Re-revisiting Red Sparrow

More eating at Red Sparrow. Doesn't the portrait up there look like a zombie?

But first, a couple of pints of Brooklyn Lager.

These guys have the meatiest chả giò I've eaten so far. Tasted prawns, pork and taro stuffed in the deep fried rice paper rolls. There's supposed to be crab meat too according to the menu.

We remembered liking their cá cuốn so we ordered it again. Still good but it wasn't served with the pineapple sauce anymore though. 😢

These bánh khọt were good. If you were stilling figuring out from the picture, they were little pancakes of minced pork, tiger prawns with coconut cream and spring onions. Great flavour coming from the coconut cream.

Bò nướng - beef short rib marinated in fish sauce and some other stuff. Meat was tender and properly charred for that smoky flavour. Nice.

A soulful broth from their tasty phở bò tái to wrap things up. Before desserts that is.

We tried their donuts with Vietnamese coffee glaze. Pretty sweet and the texture was more dense than I had expected. Would have preferred a stronger coffee flavour from the glaze to balance out the sweetness. Those donuts basically rendered the chocolate ice cream on the side bland-ish. 

Yuguo Curry Rice (中國街玉国咖喱飯), ABC Brickworks Food Centre

I've noticed this curry rice stall (#01-136 ABC Brickworks Food Centre, 6 Jalan Bukit Merah) the previous times we were at ABC Market. Got to try them today. This was a basic plate with just stewed cabbage and fried pork chop. Curry flavour didn't seemed to have the savoury intensity I had been hoping for compared to say Hong Seng or even Traditional Hainanese Curry Rice (中国街海南咖哩饭). Noticed that the name of the latter like Yuguo states their origins from China Street?

The stewed cabbage was pretty good - tender and not bland like the pale colour might suggest with the flavour of dried shrimps. Liked the crusty breaded pork chop too.

More food from Xing Hua (兴化)

Trying more food from Xing Hua. Would recommend the tenggiri (Spanish mackerel) to my enemy. Fish was too thinly cut to survive deep frying well so the meat ended up being dry and hard. Not to mention pretty fishy tasting. I've had enough fried Spanish mackerel in my childhood to know that these were poorly done and not good eating.

The red wine chicken mee sua (红糟鸡面线) was pretty tasty though - liked the tangy creaminess from the red yeast wine gravy pairing with the smooth vermicelli. Those chunks of chicken were tender.

Pretty good dish of amaranth in a salted yolk infused supreme stock gravy (上汤笕菜). The flavour is pretty similar to the commonly seen three egg spinach dish with a gravy that is creamier.

Hammee's - from a nasi ayam goreng experience to a burger experience

These guys started with a cheeseburger experience. Then they became a nasi ayam goreng experience - for a while. Today they're a burger experience. The fries have changed but otherwise, I couldn't say that I could tell the difference between their old cheeseburger and the current one.

Bee Kee Wanton Noodle (美記雲吞麵), Market Street Interim Hawker Centre

I had the idea that the powers that be wanted us to disassociate with the word 'hawker' for some reasons. That's why they're mostly called 'food centres' these days instead of hawker centres. But Market Street Interim Hawker Centre is still called a hawker centre. Hmmm....anyways, this was Bee Kee Wanton Noodle (#01-15 Market Street Interim Hawker Centre, 5 Cross Street) - a local wanton mee stall with a truffle flavour option.

I ordered the large bowl. Liked the wiry noodle texture. Wantons were pretty okay-ish and so were the slices of char siew. Fried crispy pork lard (猪油渣) wasn't very crispy though. Not a bad plate. To answer the question that may have been on everyone's mind, yes there was flavour from truffle oil. It was a unique characteristic as flavouring for wanton mee. Not necessarily the best feature of the bowl though.

Do you Lokal?

It's been some time since we last ate at The Lokal. They had venison on menu for the end year season so we found ourselves getting a table one evening.

But first a refreshing cold yuzu shandy or two - made with Pilsner Urquell.

Much like the chicken liver parfait we had previously, there was also a creamy and smooth goose liver parfait with toasts and onion jam. Nice.

That's a mettbrötchen - minced raw pork served on toast. The pork had a taste that was quite similar to pate/sausage. The meat was spiced with pepper (among other things I couldn't tell) and topped with diced onions & chopped spring onions. We liked this.

Their seared venison loin looked awesome. That's their picture above by the way. The one that lured me into getting a reservation. 😬

What we got looked different. The venison loin looked much smaller than the picture led us to believe but at least we got the delicious seared spatzle. Would have loved a bit more sear/charring on the venison to up the flavour game but I'm not complaining. If anyone's confused, this plate was delicious!

Smoked wild trout - also delicious. There's a Bearnaise-y potato salad on the side with pickles and capers that was awesome. What's more, this came with shaven horseradish. I wonder if this is a permanent item on the menu.

Lovely sticky date pudding to end. Wished it was bigger. Heh.