Chao Shan Cuisine (潮山林), Philip Street

Have read/heard quite a bit about Chaoshan Cuisine (#01-01/02 Grand Building, 17 Phillip Street, tel : +65 6336 2390). These guys are supposed to be an institution for Teochew food. Look at how deep brown that Pu'er tea is up there - it's practically tasteless. I wonder why is that.

Both their pork aspic and fried liver rolls were delicious. The former had a nice flavour from the melty collagenic jelly while the latter was moist and didn't have a strong livery taste. Great use of spices for these starters which I didn't find excessive.

Sambal kang kong has lard. Pretty competent rendition.

That's stir fried leather jacket - a fish I generally like and have had numerous times in the past. They're not difficult to debone as fishes go. What disappointed me was how tiny these were compared to those that I used to have. The salty black bean sauce was awesome though.

The sauce for the steamed baby squids was bland. Easily rectified by the plum sauce that was served on the side.

Pretty solid smoky olive fried rice there. Gotta remember that these have chopped bits of 芹菜 - something that Google thinks is parsley or celery but it's specifically the local variety found often in beef noodles that I don't like.

Breakfast bagel from McD

Mine was oozing bright yellow cheese from its belly button, it's not mustard. 😂 I was just straight up curious about how a bagel from them would taste like.

So - it's got a slice of that yellow Cheddar and also another they say is White Cheddar. Slices of "succulent" mushrooms, egg and sizzling chicken roll. Hold up. It wasn't sizzling. Chicken roll looked and tasted exactly like the thin slice of chicken ham in their egg McMuffin.

Didn't taste bad. Tasted exactly like how I imagined it and I actually kinda appreciated the mushroom flavours in there. One could and would logically surmise that these aren't in the same league as those from Two Men Bagel House. The texture's just not the same.

The shoyu bowl and the spicy miso megamen with new charshu at Brothers Ramen

While I am sure that they have amassed their legion of appreciators, this might have been the first time we've seen a line outside Brothers Ramen. But then again, this was also the first time we've arrived at their shop just before they're open for business.

That's their shoyu bowl which I've been wanting to try for some time. I liked the broth - parts of it reminded me of cheap fried sausages for some reason and I had meant that in a positive way in case anyone was wondering. Delicious cheap fried sausages. That and how those firm thin noodles had soaked up the broth. I'd rank this up there with their tori paitan bowls. Will be back for more of this.

Wanted to get a megamen because they've a new charshu for it. Was intending to get my usual order of the dry spicy one when I noticed that there was a miso bowl for the megamen which I've never seen before. So here's that spicy miso megamen. Didn't get the extra bean sprouts today.

While in general I've never been much of a miso ramen person, I did enjoy this more than I had expected. Broth was thick, salty and rich with flavour and a spicy warmth. I almost finished it all. 

Did not think that the new charshu was remarkable though. It's a little dry. I like the dark soya sauce stewed pork belly better because those were much more tender. 

Putra Minang, International Plaza

We noticed Putra Minang (#01-33 International Plaza, 10 Anson Road, tel : +65 8262 3535) some months back and have always told ourselves that we'll try it one day every other time we've seen it again. One day has finally arrived by happenstance.

I'm not sure why but the portions were humongous and the price tag was there to match. Beef tendon in sambal ijo, sayur lodeh, begedil and sotong hitam which could have easily fed two for $17 - good thing there were two of us.

Food was pretty good. Solid egg wash on that begedil and I liked that the squid wasn't chewy. Tendons would definitely benefit from a longer stewing. I'm not getting much intensity from both sambal on the side but then again my benchmark is Sari Ratu. 

AmiYaki ( 一汁三菜), Icon Village

AmiYaki (#01-16 Icon Village, 12 Gopeng Street, tel : +65 6970 9963) has taken over the space that used to be Tokyo Soba - which has moved into the area a stone's throw away that used to be occupied by Tom N Toms Coffee. 

From what I gathered, they're teishoku styled incorporating ichijju sansai - a foundation of Japanese home cooking involving the four elements of one soup and three dishes. Rice, soup, a main dish with sides and pickles.

Kinda like how some of the stuff we had previously at Ootoya.

Tried their lamb leg and gyutan sets. Not a fan of their lamb because of the pretty strong marinate that was sweet and had ginger in it - a pairing I wasn't expecting as opposed to lamb-y and savoury which I was looking forward to. Gyutan's not bad, just a lot more jaw work than I am used to.

The soup's miso and pretty good with a squeeze of lime, rice was obviously incomparable to Suju while pickles were young and zested with yuzu. Spinach was tender and pretty good eating. Not a fan of their chikuzenni - would have much preferred the renkon/beans to be more cooked and the broth to be more intense from a longer stewing.

Kawa - we ordered it on the side. These were freshly grilled like their meats plus a bit of bitterness from the charring. Made nice munching. Odd thing was that they weren't salted at all.

Revisiting Run Ji Cooked Food (润记熟食)

I haven't eaten at Run Ji in over a decade. Not sure what exactly has changed but the person in the stall didn't look familiar and the food was different from what I had previously. There's no longer hae bi hiam topping for the rice and I don't recall that rice being this sticky and short grained. But I like this current sauce they drizzled over which tasted of sesame oil amongst soya sauce and light herbal sweetness.

This was a plate of braised duck drumstick (鸭尾) with pig's skin and tau kwa. Some parts of the meat were relatively tender while others were a bit more chewy. It did inherit a good flavour from the braising sauce; ditto for the pig's skin.