Specialty Jumbo Noodle from The Noodle Memories (古月麵)

I was thinking of getting the dry chilli ee mian for breakfast and the idea of adding some fried chicken cutlet sounded good. The proprietress informed me that the configuration would essentially be their Specialty Jumbo Noodle. That was how I ended up with that. I've previously said my piece on the noodle but I'll add on a little more today - the textures were so nicely put together from noodle, boiled vegetables, minced pork and the generous portions of wood ear fungus strips. Chicken cutlet tasted freshly fried and crisp. Satisfying.

Even more food from Pastaria Abate

We're back at Pastaria Abate sooner than I thought. In my not so humble opinion, them opening a little later than most definitely helped keep them an option especially when we needed to get dinner past the usual hours.

We were recommended their portobello fries. I knew what they were, just haven't had them before. These were really good. I think part of the trick was a nice flavour to the crisp batter that wasn't excessively crunchy. Mushroom wasn't dripping with juices and that was a good thing.

Tried their truffle carbonara. It's a little wetter than I imagined. Their rendition uses pancetta affumicata which is in English, bacon 😂. What I thought to be worth mentioning was the truffle. It's from the truffle salsa they usually use so the flavour is more similar to how truffle might taste (can also be read as gentler) as opposed to the oil which is usually more in your face.

The restaurant recommended their spinach ravioli with blue cheese the last time we were here and we couldn't because we couldn't fit more food into our stomach. So we came back for them and hell yeah it was good. Tasted very homely and I meant that in a good way. Without that cheesy sauce and blue cheese stuffings, I could actually taste some of that spinach in the pasta. Pretty sure I did not imagine that.

Cioppino. Just found out that these things are American Italian and not Italian. This one has no fish. Noticed that their broth has an underlying flavour from mollusks, rather than crustaceans which I was expecting. There's cephalopods, clams, mussels and some prawns. Not bad but I was hoping for more punch from the seafood. Not sure what's the stuff slathered on top of the bread...tasted like garlic mayo?

Our tiramisu came with a splash of Baileys tonight. 😬 Other than that, I think it tasted pretty much like how it did the last time we had it.

Himalayan salt latte. Today's brew was a little saltier than the last.

Waker Chicken, Holland Drive

I've heard of Waker Chicken for a while and have been wanting to try them out. This was from the branch at Holland Drive (40 Holland Drive, #01-39). Fried chicken was not bad tasting but I also didn't think it was impressive or memorable. Crunchy, moist on the inside and all but that was all they were. Something was lacking in the department of flavour. The Original Crispy was kinda bland.

Hakka Signature rice bowl and more pancakes from Ah Lock & Co.

Have been wanting to get the Hakka rice bowl from Ah Lock & Co. for a long time. This bowl was actually as tasty as I imagined it to be. The savoury soft boiled long beans and mani cai were delicious and so were the salted tau kwa and hefty meatballs.

What we had been buying from them over the past few years were their min chiang kueh / ban chang kueh. The fillings of the pancakes appear to be less generous these days and the current crew manning it was obviously not well informed of how to heat up those pancakes because they were just lukewarm instead of hot like how they previously did.

Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King Four Seasons, Bugis Village

Our first visit to Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King Four Seasons (Bugis Village, 158 Rochor Road) was years ago. That was back in the day when this was just their fourth ramen shop. It was a Mother's Day special where they featured their ise ebi tonkotsu ramen for $8.50. Which I always suspected was a pre-cursor for their now defunct Lobster King shop.

Have always wanted to come back to try their Four Seasons bowls and that's never happened until now.

After 3 eggs and a heap of bean sprouts came the Summer bowl. Got this with hard noodles and strong taste for the broth. The bowl, red splashed, was topped with a ball of spicy minced meat and a thin slice of charshu. Also one kikurage (wood ear fungus) on the side. I liked it. Great balance from the savoury tonkotsu broth pairing with...whatever was red that made it spicy. It's a different heat profile from their Red Spicy.

The Skewer Bar, Havelock Road

I found it very difficult to slap the Japanese label onto this post. The food from The Skewer Bar (727 Havelock Road, tel : +65 8933 5992) appears Japanese izakaya inspired with local influences. I wouldn't say that their standards are great. They're not mostly. Food's edible.

But according to some local Japanese guy who got sponsored to do a YouTube video on them, they're delicious and innovative. The lesson learnt to be gleaned here is a) not all Japanese are discerning and b) The Skewer Bar has sub standard quality control as this was not the main outpost that was featured in the video. The two need not necessarily be mutually exclusive.

Major gripe...everything's lukewarm. Most of the food do not feel/taste like they are freshly made.

There's Mandarin Wheat by Beijing's Jing-A Brewing Co. on tap. This was nice - easy drinking brew with some citrus. Like a less complex Hoegaarden. 

There's a four ton chawanmushi. 4 蛋...get it? Aside from the steamed egg custard, there's half a quail's egg, bits of century egg and a smidgeon of salted egg. It's lukewarm.

Scallops with garlic butter. Also strangely lukewarm. Flavours pretty good but the garlic and butter combination has always been an easy score.

I thought the otah tamagoyaki was not bad. The otah inside the egg tasted like Muar otah. Don't think they made them. Don't think the tamagoyaki were made on order as well. I get they feeling that these were pre-made and heated when they needed to serve.

What was unexpectedly nice was their ngoh hiong maki. These tasted much like a regular ngoh hiong with a solid chunk of prawn inside. I could even taste the water chestnuts. Toppings were fried tempura bits and tobiko which they were stingy with. Nicely done this one.

I need to run through these skewers. They don't taste fresh off the grill and sizzling like how I expected them to. I've had enough kushiyaki to know.

• unagi - wouldn't get those again.
• lamb - dry and a little stringy. Meat no fat. Not difficult to find Chinese shops doing 羊肉串儿 that outclasses these.
• hatsu - not bad. Don't know why it has been teriyaki-ed when salt will suffice.
• bacon wrapped quail eggs - okay pretty decent.
• bacon wrapped lychee - not bad, wouldn't mind more of them. Smaller than I imagined though.

Bacon's not very salty or smokey.

Grilled pineapples - barely luke warm. Barely crossed into the threshold of balance between sweet and citrus. It was on the verge of being more overbearing with the acid for their level of sweetness. I can't imagine how sour these might have been before they grilled it.

I was initially curious about their bbq stingray but after a show of their standards, decided against it.