Revisiting Xing Hua (兴化) at Chinatown Point

More food from this branch of Xing Hua. The more we eat here, the more we notice how these guys fall short compared to Putien. 😬

This was described as stir fried long beans (四季豆) with XO sauce. Not sure if this was with any XO sauce at all. Those bits were kinda like spicy dried shrimp/hae bee hiam. Lightly spicy, salted with a light sweetness. Nice. I thought this was a pretty competent rendition of the dish. 

We ordered the salted egg Duotou clams because we hadn't had them in this style before. I wouldn't recommend these. These weren't worth half of what they charged. Most of the plate were shells and batter for the salted egg. Those clams were also small and pretty tasteless. Nothing like the quality one gets at Putien.

Ordered their claypot seafood tofu. Tofu's not bad. There's a couple of slices of fish in there that's pretty muddy tasting and also a couple of sad looking scallops besides those prawns. The dish looked and felt like a obligatory item that was on the menu because someone felt that it needed to be there. Nothing outstanding about this.

Tried their claypot drunken duck because we've never had drunken duck before. Remember those boiled to death chicken in chicken soup where the meat has become hard and/or stringy and tasteless. That's what these duck tasted like. Not like duck. The braising soup/broth thingy was delicious though.

The chicken from this double boiled red mushroom chicken soup was actually pretty good eating. Tender, salted and easily slurped off the bone. Not dry and stringy like the duck. Not a bad one.

Charshu ramen with lemon from Marutama

Encouraged by the previous episode, we came back to Marutama. They charged a dollar for some lemon I asked for and gave me a whole half instead of a just wedge. Why the lemon? I wanted to see if I could somehow replicate the tori paitan bowl that I had at Uma Uma Ramen.

I'm don't think it tasted the same but I liked this anyways. There was quite a lot of juice from the lemon so the creamy broth got zested up much. I wouldn't mind doing this again. 

Yakiniku Like, VivoCity

Yakiniku Like (#02-60 VivoCity, 1 HarbourFront Walk, tel : +65 6974 9954) from Japan opened their first restaurant about a year before Yakiniku-GO which we've been to a couple of times. The former claimed to be Singapore's first restaurant to offer individual electric smokeless grills. And solo yaikiniku.

This was the main driver behind this trip. Suckered by a misleading ad on their social media. I should have been clued in by tsukimi but......

They have a bunch of sauces, something that didn't seem to be available in Yakiniku-GO. Tried the original, sea salt and garlic soy. Just salt and pepper were still the best for us.

The only truffle thing in their Truffle Tsukimi Wagyu & Karubi Set was the onsen tamago which had some sort of truffle sauce. Nada on the beef. We thought that there would be. 

It was clear that they wanted to give the impression that the truffle tamago was a separate item and I thought it was also outright misleading for the pictures not to include them as part of the set because they were. We didn't get the impression that it was, so we ordered them separately and ended up with two truffle tamagos per set.

A double whammy of misdirection.

Kimchi's nice with the rice. Wished the portions were bigger.

I'm more favourably inclined towards Yakiniku-GO at this point. They have lamb. But when I feel like yakiniku, whichever of them available is going to be as good.

Economy bee hoon (经济米粉) from Toa Payoh Vista Market

Don't know what the name of this stall (#01-10 Toa Payoh Vista Market, 74 Lorong 4 Toa Payoh) was but they have pretty decent bee hoon (经济米粉). Loved those molten yolked fried eggs. Their chilli sauce was a little too sweet for my liking though. Nobody does chilli like Ivan's Porridge for their bee hoon. 

Holy Crab, Capitol Piazza

Been wanting to try Holy Crab (#01-85 Arcade @ Capitol, 13 Stamford Road, tel : +65 8444 2722) for a while. Read that the chef used to operate a private kitchen at his home before the restaurant undertow swept him off his feet. The menu looked interesting and had enough variety that we were slightly overwhelmed by indecisiveness. 

Because it was Holy Crab, I wanted to get some crab on this first visit. There's a shelled option called naked green which features crab meat with their Green Mumba sauce that sounded good. Love the heat and loads of flavour from said sauce which involves green chilli, kaffir lime leaves and a bunch of other stuff I couldn't identify.

Was it good? I thought it was expensive for $90 and the meat was dried out. Sauce was fantastic when it was piping hot but the appeal kinda went downhill with the dissipated heat after some time. The lesson learnt here was to get whole crabs the next time. Those looked a lot better.

Stir fried kailan with onions, garlic and lard was delicious.

Chao tar bee hoon looked nice. Didn't taste as good as it looked. The toasty edges were kinda nice but the dish as whole needed salt and it was pretty greasy that even the small serving was a little too much grease for two persons. That was after we had squeezed in extra limes that they obliged. Some squid, pork belly, two prawns and some bits of egg. That was pretty much it besides the charred bee hoon. Wouldn't get it again.

We got ourselves steamed rice because of the green sauce and the kailan.

Kar Sou Hakka Yong Tau Fu (家嫂客家酿豆腐), Toa Payoh Vista Food Centre

Nice curry yong tau fu noodles from Kar Sou Hakka Yong Tau Fu (#01-04 Toa Payoh Vista Market, 74 Lorong 4 Toa Payoh). Curry's not the rich and lemak Peranakan rendition - this was thinner but still savoury, spicy and delicious. What I particularly enjoyed from this bowl were the hand made mince pork stuffings in the tau kwa, tofu, brinjal and bitter gourd which has salted fish flavour infused in them.