黔莊贵州牛羊粉 (Noodle Villa), 313 Somerset

The name's a little confusing for this one (#B3-10, 313@Somerset, 313 Orchard Road). As I interpret it, the name of the shop is 黔莊 (Qian Zhuang) and they do 黔莊贵州牛羊粉 which is Guizhou styled beef and lamb rice noodles. There are individual sign boards which prints 贵州牛肉粉 (beef pho rice noodle) and 贵州羊肉粉 (beef pho rice noodle). Even though the shop is selling rice noodles and there's the mention of pho, there's no relation to Vietnamese phở. The English name at the front is just Noodle Villa.

Couldn't Google much information about them. We were mostly intrigued by their lamb noodles......

......and didn't mind some lamb skewers (羊肉串) while at it. The server reminded us that these should be eaten while they're hot because we all know what happens when they cool down. These were not bad tasting but they appear to be fried rather than grilled.

No bad at all. I enjoyed it. Liked the fatty tender cuts of lamb they used for the meat. Noodles were smooth, slurpy and had absorbed the flavour from the broth. I added a fried egg which had molten yolk. But I did think there were a couple of things that could have made it better in my opinion.

A stronger lamb flavour to the broth would have made this bowl amazing. The broth to noodle/ingredient ratio also could have been improved by having less broth. Even though I enjoyed it, it was a lot more soup than noodles and meat in the bowl.

One of our bowls of noodle was supposed to come with lamb offal, not meat, which they overlooked and we ended up with two bowls with meat. Service recovery was immediate. As soon as we told them, they offered an additional serving of offal on the side for the wrong order.

There's some pretty smokey "firewood chilli powder" at each table. Not bad with the meats. Will try it with their broth another time.

Mala charshu kombu noodles and duck karaage from Chen's Mapo Tofu

So Chen's Mapo Tofu has aburi mala charshu. Couldn't help but to compare them to the one from Ch叉r because there aren't any others. At least not that I am aware of.

I like the sweet smokiness in these thin slices of pork belly. Not especially tender considering that they weren't chunky cuts and had a bit of bite to them. No disintegrating fat as well. Like Ch叉r, it was mostly sweet with a light heat that's layered with the flavour of mala spicing. I didn't think it was bad tasting. Nicely done aji tamago with shoyu infusion on the side and I don't know what's up with the kombu noodles because it neither looked nor tasted like kombu. Or are those not made with kombu? 🤔

We grabbed the duck karaage because we've never had one. Batter wasn't so much like what we know of tori karaage. It's thicker, was suitably crispy and had a nice taste to it. What pleasantly surprised me was how tender the meat was. I might not have known it was duck.

McGriddlestacked

I cannot help but feel that McGriddles seem to get smaller as the years go by. This one also looked stumpy compared to the one from last year.

Tokyo Soba at their new shop

This was our first visit to Tokyo Soba after they've relocated to the unit nearby (#01-12/13/14 Icon Village, 12 Gopeng Street, tel  : +65 6410 9353) from their old spot which has been taken over by AmiYaki.

A mushroom-y mushroom soba. Hah!

There's a black sesame soba on limited run. No black sesame flavour in it if anyone was wondering. In any case, the dominant flavour for their cold soba will always be the savoury smokiness from the tsuyu. Not a fan of the basa tempura which had a texture like the overly soft dory that's used in many local fish and chips.

I mentioned their natto tsutsumi age previously.

These were loaded.

Porterhouse at Wolfgang's Steakhouse

We've finally come over to Wolfgang's for their porterhouse.

Did they downsize the portions of bread? Not that we needed more...

Couldn't resist the wedge salad. 😬

That'll be the porterhouse for two. Got that with a side of German potatoes which were also kinda nice.

Arrived picture perfect in those thick sliced chunks of beefiness sizzling in butter. The meat was pretty much how I imagined the steak to be with arguable tenderness, firm and full of bite. I liked that even the tenderloin side had a good flavour which was very obviously the result of their ageing of the meat. 

28 days dry aged I heard and that flavour beat that 30 days dry aged piece from The Ranch. This was obviously at least a level up from that. 

Couldn't let any of those go to waste.

Pretty enjoyable key lime pie even though it was really sweet with the condense milk flavour through the citrus. 

A bitter brew after the pie.

Xing Xing Mala & Chicken Pot, Tiong Bahru Plaza

Xing Xing Mala & Chicken Pot (#02-113 Tiong Bahru Plaza, 302 Tiong Bahru Road) took over the spot vacated by O Banh Mi (một hai ba bốn năm). The food's generic Chinese with stir frys, mala xiang guo (麻辣香锅) and chicken pot (鸡公煲).

Their yang zhou fried rice was bad. Bland and used the cheapest of ingredients they could get away with. Wok Hey makes much better fried rice. And what are thos......could it be Impossible prawns?

Spicy vinaigrette noodles (红油燃面) was edible. Tasted mostly of Szechuan peppercorn with some tanginess from the preserved vegetables (酸菜). Would have been great if the noodles had a firmer texture. 

Okay tasting 酸菜鱼. I thought it was overpriced. 

Those are eggplant and tofu. There's salted fish according to the menu but I couldn't taste any. A little oily but not bad tasting.