City Hot Pot (旺爐), Guoco Tower

Been wanting to try City Hot Pot (#B1-04/05 Guoco Tower, 7 Wallich Street, tel : +65 6721 9501) for some time after walking past them more times I can recall. How this place works is that everyone gets a little pot of their own broth. It's slightly less communal than regular hot pots.

Now that I have, I recommend against the booth seats against the walls. Ventilation was really bad 🥵. Judging from the gap between the seat and table, they also looked like they might be prejudiced against....people with wider girth?

We had sliced leg of lamb. Not bad.

Short rib was decent tasting but not great. 

Scallops were small. But they were also sweet.

Very decent sliced fish.

Frozen tofu was okay.

These tofu strips were also okay. I don't think there are much variations to these things.

I thought I managed to alchemy a concoction of flavour I normally prefer with sesame sauce, sesame seeds, crushed peanuts, garlic, spring onions and vinegar. The combination appeared sound.

I had obviously misjudged the wet to dry ingredient ratio here.

Tried a few broths. Laksa was okay-ish and the bak kut teh was very peppery. My favourite of the lot was fish soup with milk. Personal pick. Flavour's not super intense but it had enough savoury milkiness which was pretty good as a profile that didn't mess with the food's natural flavour. The broth kinda got a bit better after all the cooking. 

Note to self : They don't top up the broth with the flavour that you have picked. It's a generic 清汤 so if you don't want dilution, keep your broth from evaporating fast by controlling the heat.

Standards here are comparable to Shi Li Fang so they make a pretty decent casual hotpot.

Geylang Laksa Prawn Noodles, Ang Mo Kio Ave. 4

Heard about this stall (Blk 632 Ang Mo Kio Ave 4) which was apparently founded in 1964 which makes their branding more than half a century old.

We ordered their big prawns noodles. Those big prawns weren't really big and the tiny clams they used were in short, tasteless. Pretty disappointing considering that they seemed reputable and the bowl wasn't cheap at all ($13.30). There was also an excessive sweetness in the soup that didn't taste natural so I'm putting my money on sugar in there. We also got pretty thirsty after that. Hmmm....we expected better.

Will not come back.

Bismillah Biryani, Shenton Way

I hadn't any idea where exactly this branch of Bismillah (76 Shenton Way, #01-03) was located so I got led on around about by Google Maps which seemed not to work very well in the vicinity (for whatever reasons). Located it eventually. Place looked quiet during the weekend. It had the same dead vibes I got from their flagship at Dunlop Street.  

As preamble, I have a love hate relationship with Bismillah. I like the biryani. Not so much the entity. The people working there behave like they have 3/4 of their souls sucked out. Half the time, they never have what I want to order. I've settled for accepting that their online menu is a facade and that more than half of them do not exist anymore. We ended up with the chicken dum biryani today because....well, they didn't have something else I wanted. Again.

Tasted not bad. Breast portions of the meat was pretty dry. I enjoyed it but it's also not exactly the kind of food I would travel out of the way for because it's not that great and I'm honestly tired of them responding with 'it's not available'. So I take it that they have only just a regular mutton or chicken biryani mostly.

Wanted to get a portion of their chicken liver masala and guess what? They don't have it. That was almost kinda how we ended up with their mutton chapli kebab. It's s spiced mutton patty, pretty dense and meaty. Delicious in a spicy and savoury manner. That being said, it also felt like it came out of a microwave.

Zazz Pizza in their first Year of the Rabbit

Back to Zazz Pizza. Our favourite place for pizzas in recent times. If you haven't noticed, we've been getting our pies here more often than any other pizza joints. (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七)

Some saffron infused arancini with bits of mushrooms inside. 

First time trying their risotto. Liked that the seafood flavour was both robust yet mellowed out the same. Nice. The heads of the prawn were spilling head fat into the risotto. 😋

Today's pizza was bresaola which was topped with mushrooms to maximize the umami. Delicious.

Oh yeah, that too.

Malaysian Hup Kee Fishball Noodle (合計鱼丸), Ang Mo Kio Ave. 4

This was where we made the queue after about ten minutes at Malaysian Hup Kee Fishball Noodle (Blk 158 Ang Mo Kio Ave 4, #01-590). It was about 30-40 minutes we spent there. These guys start business early and end right about lunch time from what I hear. Kinda like Ah Hoe Mee Pok.

They've a few noodle options listed on the sign they displayed at the front of the stall. The mee pok and curly noodles weren't listed but we spied them as we reached the front.

Mee pok was decent. The other curly noodles reminded me a bit of kolo mee. Those cubes look like tau pok but they're actually lard - serviceable but not fantastic because they weren't particularly fragrant. As a whole, I thought the noodles were a little bland in spite of the flavourful looking toppings. Not as intense as I had imagined.

The large portion came with a soup on the side filled with fishball, sliced fish cakes and tofu puffs stuffed with what might have been meat. The former two are made in the premise. Not bad tasting at all.

But the individual order of the fish cakes were $3 and that's kinda pricey.

Their chilli sauce which was also made in house was awesome. Lime-y, refreshing and packed with heat at the same time. This was what got me through the noodles.

Jelebu Dry Laksa, VivoCity

Jelebu Dry Laksa (#02-48 VivoCity, 1 HarbourFront Walk, tel : +65 9721 6560) is by Tipsy Collective. If one were inclined to do a little investigative overview, the group creates manages restaurants that could be construed as contemporary local/Asian fusion. Booze is apparently a thing too. Jelebu Dry Laksa didn't feel so much to me about the passions of a particular Renee Tang who has a limited background/history with cooking than it is likely, just a convenient pretty face with a suitable story for the purposes of branding.

Just saying......I don't know the real story.

Tried their carrot cake omelette. The actual dish looked like an amateur's attempt to replicate the dish compared to the picture on their menu. It's not a bad tasting carrot cake wrapped in egg. Those red chunks were lup cheong. Orange sauce was sambal mayo which I thought wasn't bad. Flavours were intense from those two which was pretty much the majority of what could be tasted. What we did not expect was that the dish was served barely lukewarm. Hmmm..... 

That's their tiger prawn beancurd roll. Stuffings include the mentioned prawns and diced water chestnuts. This was like ngoh hiong minus the minced pork. I don't know about the truffle mayo on the side. Felt like it was put there because they didn't know what else to spruce those rolls with.

The Jelebu dry laksa was not bad tasting and also not very lemak. After mixing everything, the laksa leaf flavour also kinda got lost but I'm gonna chalk those up to the flavour profile they were going for. The one thing that bothered us were those crispy ebi that were exacting their revenge by stabbing the roof of our mouths.