Common Man Night Shift, Stanley Street

This space used to be Drunken Farmer. 

Those guys haven't disappeared but have merged with Common Man Coffee Roaster into Common Man Night Shift (11-12 Stanley Street, tel : +65 6877 4855)?

There ya go, bean juice by day and grape juice by night. We came at grape juice hour.

Had a grilled vegetable salad. Let's see, there's courgette, romaine, avocado, boiled egg, Roma tomato, parmesan crisp, orange miso sauce and anchovy cream. The dressing didn't come through as I had imagined because I tasted something that did not remind me of orange or miso or anchovy. It was just...a dressing.

Since the tomato and the avocado are fruits, the only vegetable that was grilled in this grilled vegetable salad was the courgette. But I guess they were right. It was a 'grilled vegetable salad'. It's singular. If you did not notice dill in the picture, that's because there was so little of it that I didn't even understand if they were even meant to be decorative.

Duck & foe gras pie was delicious. Not a fan of their orange miso sauce on the side which again, didn't taste like orange or miso. The burnt apple puree was good though. I initially thought it was made of raisins or dates.

The minced duck had just the slightest gaminess and was mixed with chunks of melty buttery foie underneath the crispy puff pastry. I'm going to repeat that it was delicious. This plated pastry was richness that could be cut with the bite in the arugula and acid from the pickled fennel along with the burnt apple puree.

There was supposed to be black truffle in there. Couldn't taste it and it didn't even matter.

Pizza's called sweet dreams of stracciatella. Sounded intriguing like its toppings. As the menu describes - mortadella, mozzarella, stracciatella, pistachio paste, toasted pistachio, honey and parmesan.

More stracciatella than those blobs would have been nice and for that matter, why even bother listing the mozzarella? Mortadella's very thinly sliced. Too little of it to actually do anything but serve as a salt component to the pie. I was confused by the sweetness initially but realized later that there was honey. Obviously, it wasn't recognizeable as honey.

Charr'd The Hawker, Golden Mile Food Centre

My attention was drawn to the sotong hitam pasta from Charr'd The Hawker (B1-01 Golden Mile Food Centre, 505 Beach Road). This wasn't just cooked with regular squid ink sauce but instead, rempah from the sotong hitam dish. The flavour tasted like the lighter and less intense version of that gravy but still recognizeably so. Detected lemongrass in it as well. Squid was tender but pretty chewy. I liked this plate. Especially with the spikes of heat from the red chilli they threw in.

龍記XO魚頭米粉 (Long Ji XO Fish Head Bee Hoon), Jalan Membina

Beneath the fading patched signboard and the missing 'i' from their 'fish', 龍記XO魚頭米粉 (#01-01, 26 Jalan Membina) looked a little nondescript. It's a good thing we looked past first impressions...

...and got ourselves a couple of bowls of their XO fish noodles. I saw them splash a spoonful of that "XO" into the bowl. While I don't know what exactly it might have been, it added depth and intensity to the flavour in the broth which was just delicious with the toasty ee mian and tender slices of fish. 

This was undisputedly a much better experience with sliced fish and broth than what we had at Jia Li Seafood Soup.

More chicken rice from Da Po

Some more thoughts on the chicken rice from Da Po. Rice has a good flavour and the texture was quite beady. Did not seem to feel as greasy as I noticed the last time round.

Chicken thigh again. Meat was slurp off the bone tender. What got my attention this time round was the sauce. It was gentle yet filled with flavour unlike some which can be outright salty.

Mr Coconut's Mao Shan Wang shake

I admit that I like myself a Mr Coconut once in a while. What got me hyped up was their mao shan wang coconut shake for July/August. It turned out to be a beverage worthy of its name from that ball of durian pulp and coconut meat they put into the drink. Got me burping durian after that too so that's how I also know it's good. 👍🏼

Wei Wei Carrot Cake (威威菜頭粿 ), Tanjong Pagar Food Centre

I was recommend to give Wei Wei Carrot Cake (#02-52 Tanjong Pagar Food Centre, 6 Tanjong Pagar Plaza) a try after eating from the other carrot cake stall. It's been quite a while since then 😅. This tasted better but I felt that the black ones lacked caramelization and the white one tasted a little bland. I wasn't even sure I could taste fish sauce in this. This reminded me that I haven't visited Heng Heng in a while and that's in order.