Revisiting Ginza Tendon Itsuki

Been some years since we first and last ate at Keisuke's Ginza Tendon Itsuki.

I don't know if any improvements have been made to the ventilation but the shop still leaves the smell from the fryer all over you when you leave.

It's a good place to load up on their lightly pickled vegetables though. A couple of servings before the tendons are served and a couple more during to cut through all the greasy fried food.

Each order of their tendon comes with a miso soup and a small chawanmushi.

Seafood tendon's pretty decent. There's a surprisingly moist chunk of salmon in there which I thought was a better eat than the white fish piece which had the taste/texture of cheap dory. Prawn's nice and so were the scallops. It's all pretty good as long as one doesn't make unrealistic comparisons.

We picked the spicy tendon sauce for the chicken & mushroom tendon. There's a piece of fillet, thigh and breast meat. Mushrooms included eringi, maitake and a shitake cap. That spicy sauce had a prickling heat which paired nicely with the sweetness of the base tendon sauce. 👍🏼

Who could begrudge the molten yolk over rice?

Dragon ramen from Nantsuttei

Haven't eaten at Nantsuttei for a long time. This branch at Orchard Central is the only surviving shop as far as I know.

I wanted to try the Dragon ramen which I've been wondering about for years. It's just spicy minced meat added into their regular black garlic oil tonkotsu bowl. Not very spicy as far as spicy ramen went. I added some shichimi and the chilli oil for a little boost. There're other spicier looking kara miso bowls which I may come back for.

Their fuufu enman gyoza don't seem to be on the menu anymore. We got the sui gyoza instead. Pretty regular tasting boiled rendition.

Alphonso mango tart from Tarte by Cheryl Koh

From Tarte. In season. Nice. Bottom of the tart was filled with coconut-y pulut hitam cream.

Picolino, Shaw Centre

Picolino is formerly Lino Pizza and Pasta Bar which was in its previous incarnation Lino Pasta Bar. Casual-er counterpart to Lino of Binjai Park and Forum The Shopping Mall.

These are fried sprats - they look like sardines but they're smaller and taste similar. The dip on the side tasted of tomatoes and smoke and some other things I couldn't identify. Menu mentioned capers. I couldn't tell but it was good.

This was their longanisa Hawaiian. The meat component is longanisa instead of ham and there's suppose to be pineapple and apple chutney according to the menu which was kinda what interested me. Couldn't taste much of the apple. There's a little bit of sweetness but there's not enough characteristics to tell where or what. Also not enough of the sausages to make a difference for the meat so this was just a poorly designed pizza which might have sounded good on paper.

Which was probably what the Tabasco on the table was for. Food that was boring that you didn't need to worry about upsetting the guy who cooked it by hot saucing it. Shame on Les Amis for such standards.

If anyone's wondering, that's a red wine risoni with a leg of duck. There's Pecorino cheese, drizzle marks of sweet balsamic vinegar and some hazelnuts. Not bad this one.

Milo dinosaur panna cotta - sounded nice on the menu. Tasted cheap. Chocolate sauce was thin and sweet just like those from Hershey's squeeze bottles. I saw them can spray the cream. Coco Crunch was Coco Crunch. Milo powder was Milo powder. Ingredients were pretty much bought off the shelf for assembly. Except the Milo panna cotta. The flavour was so weak, I wouldn't have guessed that it was Milo if I hadn't ordered it.

Sundae guk and al tang from Ko Ryo Jeong (고려정)

Another revisit to Ko Ryo Jeong. They're not crowded on a Friday night. For some reasons, we managed to order a sundae guk today when they had previously told us it was illegal. What gives? Anywaaayys...

Not bad tasting sundae guk. The casing of the sausage was snappy and made from intestines. Soup had a pretty robust porcine quality to its flavour.

What we didn't expect and also couldn't be seen from the picture was the extra pig parts that was in the stew. Like pig's ears, thin pork belly slices, some meat parts that looked like brisket and some things that looked like tongue. Pretty generous portions of them hidden in the broth along with 4 chunky pieces of cut up sundae.

Al tang was also delicious - spicy with the flavour of fish in the broth. Loads of those squiggly pieces of milt and chunks of boiled pollack roe were it it; along with a couple of prawns (forgettable powdery ones) and by my count, 7 plump mussels. I will come back for this.

$5.50 nasi padang at Oxley Bizhub

While it may not have looked so from the picture, this take out box of nasi padang was loaded. Both with the sayur lodeh and the paru goreng. Very generous portions of paru goreng which were sufficiently tender that one could work them with flimsy plastic utensils but still with enough bite to be satisfying. They topped those with extra of those salty spicy fried coconut bits that I was forced inhale all the rice with the gravy and sambal belachan so as not to waste all those flavours. I'm not sure if this stall was the same as the one the last time I was here though.