Joséphine, Amoy Street

Mixed feelings about Joséphine (97 Amoy Street, tel : +65 9642 4901). Great service crew with food that were hits and misses. Got the sensing that the balance of their setup leaned a little bit more towards style over substance. 

Not that the food was bad but I had this feeling that they're were trying to impress rather than feed you.

Bread - first round's on the house and any extras are chargeable. I'll understand if a place like Belon charges for bread. Even Claudine or perhaps Gaston. Because they have bread that's above the run of the mill or even exceptional. But this?

Portion of the sea bass ceviche was small. Not bad tasting but not getting much for $24. Fish was so cured that it looked cooked.

Pan fried foie gras on toasted sourdough was delicious. Menu mentioned honey sauce but that sauce tasted like caramel. Nice.

Here's when they brought out the more serious knives. Joséphine knives.

We had pork tenderloin with what was described as foie gras and morel sauce. Said sauce was not bad tasting but not outstanding or memorable. For something that was described to be made with foie gras and morel, I tasted neither the liver nor mushroom in it. Otherwise, it's a not bad tasting dish which I will never order again.

I liked how the flavour of the fish was in the sauce of the monkfish blanquette. Love the buttered bread that came with it. But for $36, that was pretty much all the monkfish there was.

Lamb was marinated and processed to subdue the natural flavour of the meat so I'm sinning it. Kinda defeated the reason why I ordered it. There was a caramelized sweetness on the meat which I didn't expect. 

The only silver lining that came out of how they treated the meat was that I could use the blue cheese sauce without feeling guilty about drowning out the natural lamb-y flavour because there was little to drown in the first place.

Dessert was riz au lait. Nicely done with a creamy vanilla richness in the rice and crispy caramelized fragrance from the sliced almonds. Pleasantly surprised.

Revisiting Un-Yang-Kor-Dai

S'been a while since our last and first time at Un-Yang-Kor-Dai. The restaurant has expanded with larger seating capacity. The vibe here for Thai food feels somewhat like how Tambuah Mas is to Indonesian food.

Cha ron was thick, creamy and not excessively sweet. Nice.

These were deep fried prawn and scallop cakes. Underneath the crispy surface was fluffy and tender almost like crushed tofu or egg white. Couldn't definitively discern prawn or scallops in it but it was seafood-y and pretty tasty.

Pretty impressed by their rich red curry with grilled chicken. Think sweet, fruity, spicy and creamy altogether. Pretty lemak stuff. Menu mentioned lychee and tomatoes but there's also mango and pineapple. This one has just stepped up to replace the panaeng roast duck curry from Sawadee Thai as my favourite fruity roast bird curry. 👍🏼

Omelette with minced pork not bad. 

What was kickass with rice was the stir fried morning glory with chilli and garlic. I think I tasted fish sauce and oyster sauce in it too.

Did not expect the tom yum mama noodles with prawns and minced pork to be in so large portion. Broth was sweet, tangy and spicy while those large prawns were fresh and sweet. A little refined but not bad.

Part of their festive menu included a sea bass tom yum coconut soup. From the picture, we were given the impression that it would be like tom kha gai but the real thing didn't have coconut milk. The broth was made with coconut juice. Slightly disappointed but the tangy spicy soup was delicious and the thick slices of fish were fresh and good quality.

Seaweed shio pan from BreadTalk

Regular shio pans (salted and buttered rolls) can be found in a number of bakeries here. Came across these seaweed ones from the BreadTalk at ION Orchard. That "special-er" one that has stuff most of the other outlets don't. This was actually pretty good. Buttery, salty and at the risk of being Captain Obvious, seaweed-y. Yeap, the seaweed flavour came through. I like this. 👍🏼

Truffle Fried Rice/Udon Max from Wok Hey

I've gotten fried rice from Wok Hey a number of times. They're generally okay (from my experience at least) for something that's a quick hot meal. Because each time is probably a different person cooking, the standards tend to fluctuate. Somewhat. This Christmas special from them is Truffle Fried Rice Max. There's a cheesy chicken snail sausage, macadamia nuts and cranberries. Not bad tasting. Savoury and occasional pops of citrus sweet from the cranberries. Pretty flavourful from the truffle paste they put in it.

A few days later......

So I wanted to try the udon just to see what was the difference. There's macadamia and cranberries along with the cheese chicken snail sausage like the fried rice. What's apparent was that this tasted sweeter compared to the rice which was more savoury. Was also less truffle-y. The texture and sweetness kinda reminded me of char kuey teow. Pretty sure there's a generous amount of oil in there for that smooth slurpability. Between the two, I like the rice better.

Shake Shack's Black Truffle Burger

Okay, this tasted like how I imagined it - a little less cheesy because it was Swiss cheese instead of American, a bit more creamy, truffled from the black truffle mayo and shot through with the bite from arugula. Much of the fried onions were lost among everything else but no complains from me. Happily washed this down with the Shackmeister which an ale as golden as the brass emblems on their marble walls.

Yu Zhong Bu Tong (鱼众不同), Food Republic @ Wisma Atria

I hear words like farm-to-table associated with Yu Zhong Bu Tong (#04-02 Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Road) which makes me slightly wary. It shows that they have some marketing savvy but often those are in place to make up for the lack of actual quality. Then there's also because 'farm-to-table' in my view is this era's literary prostitute. But we took the bait to find out for ourselves.

This was the zesty winter melon - winter melon in some orange-y sauce. Awesome. Lived up to its namesake by the sweetness that paired with a vibrant citrus. Refreshing is the appropriate word.

Tried a couple of broths for their fish. We ordered grouper in sauerkraut and sea bass in tomato. Latter's sweet and maybe because of the real melted tomatoes, reminded me of 番茄蛋. Not a bad one, couldn't hate it but I wouldn't get it again. Much prefer the sauerkraut (酸菜) broth which naturally appealed with the light heat, tanginess and salt. Very drinkable stuff.

The gripe I had was with how they prepared fish. As much 'farm-to-table'-ism they'd like us to buy into, it's not relevant to the execution which was far from satisfying. Fish was sliced too thin so it's kinda hard to tell that the grouper was grouper since the texture was kinda similar. Said thin slices fell apart easily. Mouthfeel differentiation was also lost. So, no need to pay more for the grouper.

Topped one of the bowls with fish stomach. Pretty sure I've had them before and these weren't like those. This was tough. Tougher than pig's stomach kind of tough. If these were sliced into strips, it's still be generally too tough kind of tough. Couldn't eat most of them. Note to self : never get fish stomach here agin.