Bak kua ong lai toast from Toast Box

I had imagined that the pineapples in the bak kua ong lai (肉干黄梨) toast from Toast Box would be of the canned variety. Instead it was the paste/jam that one could find in pineapple tarts. Which kinda made sense. A tangy sweetness from those, smokiness from the bak kua (and obvious torching) plus savoury melted cheese. Not bad tasting.

Chinese Tofu Magician (半仙豆夫)

Who would have thunk Chinese Tofu Magician would be a branding for a beverage? I admit to being intrigued. We've seen them around for a while and have been curious about their "fermented" soy milk tea so we finally got one recently - the one with soy foam and white jade. If anyone was wondering, said soy foam is under the heavy dusting of soy bean powder (kinako) above the soy milk. The white jade are mochi balls.

Liked it. The creamy and lightly salty soy foam was delicious. There's tea jelly in the sweetened soy milk too. Will come back for more.

More Saizeriya at Chinatown Point

Saizeriya has some new stuff on their menu.

Like the cipollata which I've just learnt is a Tuscan onion soup. Supposedly peasant food back in the day. This rendition has bacon bits, egg and cheese. Not bad tasting at all. 

What do you know...salmon pizza with pineapple. Also new on the menu. Added extra cheese for $1.50. Nice. 😏 👍🏼 This was my first pizza at Saizeriya. Their crust was thin and almost like biscuit. 

I've resisted ordering their Tuscan lamb chop for a long time because the meat was marinated. I've mostly found marinated lamb to be a waste of time. We gave in today and ordered it. Not as bad as we thought because there were bits of fat in the chop that caramelized. Those bits came through with the natural flavour of the meat. 

What also helped was that these lamb chop wasn't sliced very thin like local western food stalls (I don't understand those...half of those were just bones). Still a little tedious getting meat off a cut like this with bone but at least they mostly came off clean.

Meating Place, Duo Galleria

We've passed by this Meating Place (#01-27 Duo Galleria, 7 Fraser Street, tel : +65 8338 2918) a number of times in the past but haven't paid attention to them until recently. These guys charge for reservations by the way.

Ordered this because I thought I heard it as house made lemon tea. No lemon nor tea in there. I tasted lavender and mint. Not sure what else was in it but I liked it. 😬

I was looking forward to the khachapuri I saw on the menu. Did not look exactly like the khachapuri I had in mind but hell yeah it was delicious! Loved the garlic mushroom cream, the cheeses and molten yolk that made it.

We ordered this because it was called duck liver min jiang kueh. We thought there would be min jiang kueh but what we got was a representative of one that's actually a pancake made with sourdough flour. First impressions was that the duck liver mousse and bacon espresso jam in it were awesome. That's a coffee/caramel bitter sweetness that bolstered the creamy richness of the liver. 

And yes, those ragged brown strips were indeed bonito. Supposed to have lavender honey according to the menu but it must have gotten lost with all the other flavours.

Lamb lollipop was fried lamb riblets with sour plum honey glaze. Pretty sure I got the herbaceous aftertaste of mint in said plum glaze but I cannot be sure. Made me think of sweet and sour pork because it was basically fried meat tossed in a tangy sweet sauce. Not bad.

This was listed as a dry aged porcini ribeye on the menu. 30 days on the ageing and grain fed cow from Stockyard. 

They explained that the steak was dry rubbed with porcini powder. If anyone was wondering about the last part, not much of that was recognizeable in the flavour. There was something faint and herbal (or fungal, I don't know) in the middle of the ribeye but not enough to properly discern. Anyways, great tasting steak. Love the caramelized onions too.

Steak came with aligot on the side. Did not expect that. The silky potato was deliciously cheesy and creamy. Texture was like foam. But there wasn't enough cheese for any pull.

Yuzu Brussels sprouts with almond and cranberries on the side; our obligatory vegetables...sorta. Fruity and sweet along with the toasty almond slices with the bitterness from the sprouts was kinda nice. Textures altogether were great. Couldn't discern any yuzu at all though. This got a little sweet at the end.

Kamoshita, Neil Road

Have been wanting to come to Kamoshita (5 Neil Road, tel : +65 6221 3950) for a long time. Today was lunch - not exactly the ideal showcase of the oden-centric izakaya they are but I'm not complaining.

Lunch beer is $9. Asahi.

These were house made cream cheeses. Clockwise from the top left is with smoked daikon, kani miso, miso marinated and shoyu konbu. I liked them all.

• Smoked daikon - creaminess wedged between smokey and crunchy slices of dehydrated radish.
• Kani miso - I thought there was a good balance struck between the cream cheese and the crab fat/butter flavour that's infused in it.
• Miso marinate - intense from both the rich creaminess of the cheese and fermented bean flavour
• Shoyu konbu - not quite getting the kelp. It wasn't seaweed-y if anyone was wondering.

Was curious about the oden daikon tempura. I know, right? It turned out to be how I imagined it. A tender boiled radish infused with the smokiness from the broth of the oden that's clad in a light crisp fried batter. It was actually juicy. 🤯

We had another daikon which the menu described as grilled. We ordered it because there was uni. There wasn't enough of that uni to go around in my opinion. Came dark caramel-y sweet glaze. It's not bad for radish but not worth paying for because of the uni because there was too little of the sea urchin to matter.

Kamoshita does a pretty decent iekei ramen in tonkotsu shoyu. I detected more complexity than just plain pork bone and soy sauce in the rich salty broth but what else exactly made it eluded me. Maybe fish powder? I couldn't be sure. Noodles were thick and chewy and the aji tama was nicely flavoured with shoyu. Charshu were thick sliced - not hard but a lot more jaw work than what I'm used to.

Current lunch special was a gyutan teishoku that came with a slice of duck with cucumber and some sashimi on the side. Nice peppery gyutan which required quite a bit of jaw work as well. 

Ramen Hitoyoshi (ラーメン人吉), Tiong Bahru Plaza

Ramen Hitoyoshi started a few years ago by some guys who were the alumni of Keisuke. Their game's tonkotsu ramen because...erm, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree? They've recently set up shop in the space vacated by Marutama at Tiong Bahru Plaza (#02-138 Tiong Bahru Plaza, 302 Tiong Bahru Road).

There's bottomless bean sprouts that you can help yourself to. Seem to get the impression that the ones at Keisuke's shops are better but I cannot be sure. These guys don't offer the same for hard boiled eggs though. Would be awesome if they did. 

Gyozas were meaty. Not bad tasting.

Our fried shishamo didn't have a lot of eggs. I don't think they cared about the eggs here so we won't be getting it again. But otherwise it was a decent fried fish.

This was their special charshu tonkotsu bowl. Charshu was much more thinly sliced than what the pictures led us to believe and it was also delicious. The kind that fell apart in the mouth without much chewing. Broth was richly flavoured, porcine and salty - like how I was hoping for it be. 

Would be great if they offered "extra hard" noodles but I guess their "hard" passed muster. Kinda pricey though.

There's also mazesoba.

Doesn't have the flavour intensity like Menya Kokoro or Kajiken but I thought therein laid an appeal to how it was less heavy on the taste. With a splash of vinegar and crushed sesame seeds, it was easy to inhale.