Kotobuki, One Raffles Place

These guys are just next door to Healthy Soba IKI. We've seen them for a while and well, we're here. Getting to the point, I thought this place is overpriced and wouldn't recommend it. That deluxe bakumori don up there didn't feel very deluxe for $40. It was small. Didn't have the minced toro the menu mentioned. The yellowtail (buri or hamachi I don't know) was omitted and they quietly replaced with mekajiki. Uni was so so. Kinda mediocre there without quantity nor quality.

Their aburi sake bakumori don was not bad. For some cubed salmon and mentai mayo over rice, $28 was expensive. To add on, the rice from both bakumori dons were stiff and dry. I get the feeling that these guys simply didn't give a flying f......

Unagi shirayaki was no good. The eel was dry-ish and burnt. While some may think it unfair to compare with shops like say Man Man, I'm pretty sure one can find better than this place. Will not be back.

Nasi padang from the Food Hub at Oxley Bizhub

Got this plate for $7.80 at the Malay food stall in the food court at Oxley Bizhub (61 Ubi Road 1). Not cheap at all but it was also tasty. Lots of flavour going on in this plate of rice - gravy from the umami sotong hitam, opor ayam and the limey heat from the sambal. They were also pretty generous with the paru goreng which were sliced a bit thicker. Those were fortunately properly cooked that the well seasoned lungs were still pretty tender and yet slightly chewy.

Kopifellas, Toa Payoh Central

I've gotten coffee from the branch of Kopifellas at Beauty World a few times and for local coffee, they were competent. Their brew was sufficiently aromatic and wasn't diluted at all. Especially if you ordered them di lo. This other outlet was in the Food Alley at Toa Payoh Central (#01-532, 190 Toa Payoh Lorong 6, tel : +65 6902 7105). Coffee's pretty good here too.

There's some food on their menu. Bak chor mee was pretty decent. The lady prepping the bowls looked like she knew what she was doing. Without comparing to the popular names out there, this was a competent basic bowl with generous amount of ingredients. Liked it spruced with chilli and vinegar.

They have toast with Earl Grey jam. Erm...not bad tasting. I thought this would have butter as well but it didn't. 

Healthy Soba IKI before the lunar new year with reds, tomatoes, oranges, wafu dressed burrata and what could be argueably construed as yu sheng

Came back Healthy Soba IKI for a couple of their limited soba bowls. (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十, 十一, 十二, 十三)

They have sashimi sometimes. We've seen people order them. This was our first.

We managed to snag the last bowl of mini don for the day.

That's burrata with wafu dressing - which from what I could tell contained olive oil and some shoyu. It's pretty good with the creaminess from the cheese. The thing that had never occured to me was that the milk component from the cheese took away most if not all of the heat away from the wasabi leaving it sweet. So wafu dressing, wasabi and burrata were a new combination of flavours for us which I thought was nice.

Lou hei soba - we wanted to try this when it was available last year but missed it. Those candied orange peel, smoked salmon and crushed peanuts basically made the dish. Pretty refreshing with the citrus flavours and light sweetness. 

I was curious about their jewel tomato soba which were flavoured with little beyond olive oil, dashi jelly, some shreds of shiso and toasted buckwheat. This plate of noodles tasted Japanese Italian. Tomatoes were sweet but not as sweet as I had imagined.

Re-revisiting Nanjing Impressions (南京大牌檔)

It's been some time since we were last here.

Madam Chiang's Nutritious Beauty Porridge. Again.

Managed to try their glutinous rice with pork belly after so long. The glutinous rice was very tender. We were expecting the slices of pork belly to be the same but they were just hard. Surprisingly mediocre dish which we will never get again.

Repeat order of their chilled julienned bean curd because we remember liking it the last time we had it. It's still good.

Another repeat order was their tofu in shrimp sauce. This was shrimp-y delicious. As good as we remembered it.

Tried their claypot cabbage with waxed meat. Wasn't bad. It was spicier than I thought from the dried chillis. The waxed meat tasted like lup cheong.

What was impressive and new for us this time round was their sautéed beef tendon with leeks. Those tendons were tender and gummy while the leeks were lightly crunchy with sweetness. Would have no qualms getting these again the next time.

All these dishes just calls for steamed rice.

Shun Feng Roasted Delights (顺沣港式烧腊), Toa Payoh Central

I changed my mind real quick here (#01-120, 177 Toa Payoh Central). Was intending to try their sui gao noodles and was distracted by the tray from the guy in front of me in the queue who ordered roast pork rice. So this ended up as char siew with roast pork and tau kwa. Haha. The roast pork wasn't bad but I swear the ones that the guy in front of me had looked much better.

What I was more impressed with was the char siew. I asked for the fatty one which turned out well caramelized with a respectable char. I'd come back for that again and maybe also the duck which I heard was the thing to try at this stall.

A week later...

I missed the duck again by having wanton mee with fatty char siew and a bowl of sui gao. The latter was pretty darn good as well packed with minced pork, shrimps and black fungus. My bowl of soup had tender vegetable stems. Those noodles were unimpressive on their own but with the chilli paste and pickled green chilli, it because a different thing altogether. What I ended up with was fusion of a savoury nuttiness from the red chilli (not very spicy but deliciously savoury) and a invigorating tanginess from the pickled green chilli. Nice.