非同小可 (Really Something), Chinatown Food Centre

Wanted to try 非同小可 (#02-207 Chinatown Food Centre, 335 Smith Street) for a while. Here's a bowl of their Chiayi chicken rice - presumably Taiwanese chicken rice. Nothing like the local rendition which is flavoured with chicken fat. This one has a sweet savoury sauce and sesame oil with fried shallots. The only chicken component were the shredded bits on top. Not bad tasting.

Re-visiting Ayam Penyet President

It's been a few years since we were last here at Ayam Penyet President.

We ordered beef rendang today. It's not bad - tender for most of the parts and a little stringy for the larger pieces. The sweet savoury coconut infused gravy was good with rice.

Had ourselves a serving of lotek - another dish we're getting for the first time. The steamed vegetables drenched in a creamy sweet peanut sauce was delicious.

Couldn't resist not getting the ikan bilis sambal ijo. Savoury and mildly spicy green chilli sambal that was additionally flavoured and textured by the umami saltiness from the crispy fried whitebait. This stuff makes one a rice monster. 

Tender fried chicken thighs from their ayam sambal ijo.

And chunky grilled chicken satay draped in their thick and peanut sauce. These were bigger/meatier than the local renditions and the chicken didn't taste marinated. Still rocked with that sauce though.

Of course we had rice with those dishes.

Fish eggs at Leng Kee Fish Soup

 Uova di mare. 😬

Mee kia from Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle (來興香菇肉脞麵)

I've tried a few of the noodle options from Lai Heng. Between the kuey teow, yellow noodles and their mee pok, I prefer this mee kia the least. Not that it's bad but that's just the way it was for me. The portions today were huge. Larger than usual even though they've all been the $7 bowl. Felt like a "Jiro" version of bak chor mee.

Prawn and oyster hor fun at Poh

One can get the preserved vegetable kuey teow from Poh with both prawns and oysters. Just two prawns and two oysters per serving. I'll stick to either the regular (prawn) or oysters only the next time. 

Cowaramup, Telok Blangah Road

Heard about Cowaramup (404 Telok Blangah Road, tel : +65 8500 1111) a while ago. They're apparently Australian styled and set up with the chef Jimmy Teo who's also responsible for Meat 4 Meet at East Coast Road so there're parallels in the menu which I had initially thought to be the same dishes. Didn't taste so. Sadly by the time we visited, the fried sweetbread that used to be on the menu a couple of months back were not longer available.

I remember this as the double bacon cheese burger pappardelle on their older menu and it's been renamed to omit the 'double bacon cheese burger'. Someone must have noticed that it was outright misleading because this was just a bolognese with some cheese sauce. No onions, or pickles or cheese burger cheese in there that would have made it cheeseburger-y.  

One of the parallels in the menu mentioned earlier was their lamb cutlet. Looked very similar to the one at Meet 4 Meat. Just more expensive and smaller portions. The flavour from one at Meet 4 Meat made me think of balsamic glaze while the sweetness of this one tasted more sugary like char siew. Not bad tasting but I felt the lamb flavour was a tad subdued. Menu also mention corn ribs but this was obviously some generic mesclun salad on the side. Would have been basic courtesy for them to mention what they're failing to deliver.

The ordering person registered medium rare but it arrived more like medium well.

Duck Wellington's not bad. The crust looked like it had a nicer egg wash and was more buttery than the one on the Beef Wellington at Meet 4 Meat. Generous portions of duck and foie gras in this one. Not bad.