A bowl from Li Xin (立兴潮州鱼圆面) at Breadtalk IHQ

Here's a bowl of fishball mee pok 白 from Li Xin (#01-06/08 Food Republic, BreadTalk IHQ, 30 Tai Seng Street) at the branch in the food court at the BreadTalk building. 白 works with their bowl because of the crispy (猪油渣) and rendered (猪油) lard that they put into their bowls. Pairing that with their soy sauce marinated sliced red chilli was just the thing I wanted to spike the bowl with some sharpness. The additional minced pork was $1.20 though. 😱 

You might be wondering where's that lard I was talking about. They were hidden at the bottom of the bowl so after it's all tossed up, the melange of flavours and textures from the various ingredients were what made it rock. Nothing life changing but a pretty solid bowl of delicious fishball noodles. I wished that it was bigger though.

Lye Bo Roast (黎寶燒味), Alexandra Village Food Centre

Pretty decent char siew and roast pork rice from Lye Bo (#01-27 Alexandra Village Food Centre, 120 Bukit Merah Lane 1). I asked for no sauce and the proprietress agreeably responded that it would be good without because the char siew was already fatty. She did offer a drizzle of dark soy sauce which I had already intended. I guess we both agreed that there was no need to mask what already sufficed. That toasted chilli on the side was not bad too. Will try the noodles the next time.

Steamed egg with durian from Ah Chew Desserts

Just so that you know, one can request to add durian into the steamed egg dessert from Ah Chew. But because their steamed egg isn't particularly eggy, the durian does kinda overwhelm the flavour. Not complaining here.

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.