Lamb pot and a couple of other stuff at Boon Keng New Taste

Looking again at the menu from Boon Keng New Taste, I noticed that they categorized the food into at least a couple of regions from China. The kitchen and staff are Malaysian. So "Malaysian 东北-esque" is probably a pretty accurate description.

Noticed that there was a lamb pot in the menu. Was a little excited until they brought it to the table.

It's a 麻辣 type of broth as far as I can tell from the Sichuan peppercorns hovering in the range of 小辣. It got pretty salty towards the end. The non-meat ingredients included some bean sprouts, measly portions of thin sliced radish (白萝卜/daikon) and even more measly portions of even more thinly sliced carrots. Heh! I would have loved more bean sprouts and radish in there.

No gripes about the portion of the lamb but they weren't as tender as I was hoping for. Not likely to get this again. 

Standards of their 烧烤 seem to fluctuate. Today's was not as nicely done. The pig intestines were hard and chewy. I recall them being more edible previously. Not in picture was their grilled bread - which was basically sliced white bread with butter and sugar. Today's had garlic as well. Sugared garlic toast! Not bad tasting.

Fortunately, their seafood fried rice was dependably delicious. Since I hadn't mentioned previously, seafood here translates to some squid, a few shrimps and crab sticks. A little pricey methinks but if I had to call it, I'd take this over Din Tai Fung 99% of the time.

Supercurry, Telok Ayer Street

Pang Kok Keong, aka Chef Pang formerly of Canelé Pâtisserie, Antoinette, Pang's Hakka Noodles and perhaps still with Sichuan Alley has a new curry rice shop Supercurry (121 Telok Ayer Street). Right next door to Uptown Nasi Lemak. Curious series of twists and turns from pâtissier to curry png. But I read that he's not cooking. Someone else is.

It's not bad tasting. In spite of the starchy curry, I liked it because it had a flavour which I enjoyed that many curry rice curries don't. Don't know what's in it but it had a bit of heat, creamy tanginess and lemak richness going on. The toppings which included onion omelette, some bean curd skin rolls and fried chicken were nicely done. Weakest link was the chap chye - not intensely flavoured and would benefit from being more tender.

This plate reminded me more of Babas Peranakan than Hainanese curry rice.

Some stuff from Sushiro recently...

There's a bit of fried stuff going on lately at Sushiro. The place smelled of grease when we were there and we smelled of grease when we left. But they did a surprisingly tasty aji katsu for their sushi. Piping hot, crispy and moist jack mackerel. Freshly fried.

The other freshly fried one was their Hokkaido sardine tempura nigiri. Crispy batter also, appropriately salted and moist inside. They appear to be doing a pretty decent job with their fried fishes.

Just mentai mayo on their jumbo scallops but it's tasty.

Not mentai mayo on this gunkan. It's mentaiko and mayo.

Shiodare pork belly was also pretty good. Go pork sushis! Greasy and peppery.

The shirasu mountain gunkan was a little dry. I wished it didn't have ginger.

That's the wild southern tuna wrap. Not sure what's wild southern tuna but this as one can imagine tasted like negitoro.

Black (Tap) Velvet

Have been wanting to get the peanut butter milkshake from Black Tap again for quite a while. The last time happened all the way back from the first visit a few years back. Yeah I'd love to get the Greg Norman again too but we had a delicious substitute today. More on that at the bottom.

One of the things we noticed from previous visits and was curious about was their buttermilk chicken tenders. Enjoyed it. Crispy on the outside, tender and moist on the inside unlike many "tenders" from fast food joints that weren't actually tender. Those liars! I liked the dips too....buttermilk dill, Korean bbq & lime honey mustard. 

Their buttermilk slaw was less sweet than I had imagined. Not bad but if I had to pick a preferred slaw, the one from Luke's is superior. 

*Gee Anzalone drumroll* Behold the Greg Norman substitute. We ordered a lamb burger and swapped the Swiss cheese for the blue one. Damn it was good! Notice we discarded the pickled onions. Do that.

Revisiting Nusa & Tara

We were reeled in by plates of lontong kering we noticed on the neighbouring tables around Nusa & Tara. While the queue didn't look encouraging, we thought why not since we don't end up in this hawker centre often.

Lontong kering if you didn't know was dry lontong. Sans gravy in other words. Also not to be confused with lontong goreng. The plate of deliciousness included paru goreng, sambal goreng, begedil, fried chicken wings, a fried egg (add on) and a shower of serunding heaped over rice cakes. Very solid fried chicken wings there.

Their nasi lemak was the other item we had that I wouldn't mind coming back for. What made this was their delicious coconut milk infused rice and a sensible amount of salt to bring out flavours and also make it savoury. I tasted more of the rice today than the last time because there was too much going on previously with that nasi lemak sambal goreng.

Suju Masayuki (酢重正之)

(一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十, 十一, 十二, 十三, 十四, 十五, 十六)

I had the impression that we haven't come by Suju for a long time but the last time was just February this year. Not exactly recent but it wasn't that long back either. The red wine miso beef cheek doesn't seem to be available on the menu anymore! 😱

You know it!

One of the specials of the day was garlic butter beef cubes with mushrooms. It's not something I had expected as a special from these guys but hey, tori karaage was once a special here. To their credit, this was one of the nicer saikoro suteki I've had. Also the most expensive one as well. The meat had a good bite yet quite tender amid the beefiness. Don't know what beef it was they used for this though.

Pulled the trigger on their wagyu sukiyaki. Pretty pricey this one and the bowl was much smaller than I had imagined. It was packed with a generous portion of thin sliced wagyu - meat that readily fell apart in my mouth before any chewing.  

Gindara harasu - something we've ordered before. Rich and greasy cod belly which was superb with rice.

A familiar sight of their gohan tray. And the nama tamago.

It beckoned.

Itadakimasu!