Pepper Castle, Holland Village

Previously I had always assumed that Pepper Castle (33 Lorong Liput, tel : +65 9352 7742) was a typical regular sized stall in a coffee shop with a menu limited to.......well, what one could prepare in regular sized stalls. Until I stumbled upon their extensive menu on Grab delivery. We came down today and I realized that they did have a much bigger kitchen out in the back.

Pappadum. The accompanying lime/coriander dip tasted fresher than what I'm used to. Too coriander-y for me this one.

Sweet lassi was creamy and sweet.

These were one of the better Kashmiri naan I recall having. Apart from the cherries, these were also stuffed with chopped bits of nuts and I tasted something I'm pretty sure were dates. 

We had a dal palak - a savoury spinach and lentil curry. Not bad.

This paneer kali mirch was a first for me. The rich creamy gravy was savoury instead of what I had initially assumed to be sweet. Not as peppery as the menu led me to believe.

Egg briyani was not bad. The spices in the rice were delicious but I wished it had a bit more salt.

Saag chicken - also another first. I've had the mutton version of this dish a previously. The palak from the previous times were puréed but Pepper Castle's rendition was chopped. I like the flavours though. Buried in the chopped spinach were chunks of chicken thigh meat.  

Sin Thor Eunos Bak Kut Teh Kway Chap, ABC Brickworks Food Centre

We noticed Sin Thor Eunos Bak Kut Teh Kway Chap (#01-111 ABC Brickworks Food Centre, 6 Jalan Bukit Merah) the last time we were here. We got some today.

Landed ourselves a platter of mixed braise consisting of sweet intestines (粉肠), tau kwa, tau pok, pork belly, pig's skin and eggs. Liked it. Their red chilli sauce didn't taste like the regular variety with just fermented shrimp. This one also had the flavour of preserved plum (酸梅) in it. 👍🏼

Kueh/kway was tender and slurpalicious. Will come back.

米粉面 from Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle (來興香菇肉脞麵)

So I thought I'd try bee hoon with yellow noodles (米粉面) seeing that I've already had the other noodle types from Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle. I said yes to the extra noodles they offered. No charge for the extras noodles if anyone was wondering. In retrospect, that was possibly what happened the last time I had mee kia here. Huge bowl but I inhaled it steadily till the end without difficulty.

More stuff from Xing Hua (兴化) at Tiong Bahru Plaza

This pickled vegetable sea bass from Xing Hua wasn't very expensive so we ordered one to try. Fish was fried and ladled over with a pickled vegetable broth which was sour and spicy. It's not the awesomest or a very kickass rendition of 酸菜鱼 but it was also not bad. Had a home cooked feel to it.

That's their salted egg fried rice with shrimp. Pretty decent and there was a lot more salted egg yolk tossed into the rice than I expected.

Double chicken wings nasi lemak from Nusa & Tara

Got a nasi lemak with extra chicken wings from Nusa & Tara.😬 They didn't give me cucumbers today for some reason. I'm thinking of doing extra rice next time because there's just so much of that yummy sambal to go around.

A couple of more donuts from City Donut

Popped into City Donut since we happened to be in the vicinity.

Tried the 72% dark chocolate. Pretty rich chocolatey taste but not the particularly aromatic kind. Wouldn't bother with this again.

This key lime pistachio didn't taste bad but if one set their expectations from the name, it was kinda disappointing. Because I did. The pistachios weren't particularly aromatic and I wouldn't have known from taste alone that they were pistachios. Key lime flavour wasn't outstanding. Not a bad tasting donut but it's kinda sad when there are two main flavours and both aren't up to scratch.