Clos Pasoh, Bukit Pasoh

We've seen a lot of pictures of the food from Clos Pasoh (48A Bukit Pasoh Road, Level 2, tel : +65 6980 0672) and it looked good. That has in part set expectations.

The restaurant described themselves as "a chic reimagining of the French brasserie for today’s urbane food and wine lover". I find that noncommittal-ly vague. A simpler and more accurate description would be just Asian influenced French.

We were wrapping our heads around the Asian influenced French brasserie vibe. From the French-y setup amidst lush tropical plants to a sequence of music we noticed that included some rap tune I didn't identify, followed by some stereotypically Frenchie music and then 'Baby I'm Yours' by Breakbot & Irfane. Eclectic much?

Personally, I preferred the French aspect of their food.

Sourdough was charcoal grilled. Great smokey flavour.

Accompanied by some tangy Cervelle de canut.

And salted butter.

One of the pictures that comes up often on social media is their bisque coco-homard. Coconut lobster bisque with lobster dumpling. I tasted lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. Was unpleasantly surprised by julienned ginger. The broth was nice. One could describe it as lobster-y and reminiscent of laksa. 

Did not enjoy the dumplings. When it's described as lobster dumplings, expectations tend to be raised. I couldn't identify what I ate.

Can you believe this is tartare de beouf? Did not think sliced red chilli add to the experience but maybe that's just me. Loads of texture which I expected from bits of herbs, roughly chopped meat, onions and capers were not present. It's inside mantou instead of on bread. Texturally it's nothing like beef tatare.

There's also green curry in it. In my not so humble opinion, they tried too hard with those Asian elements.

The glass bowl contained cashew butter. With the garnish, I thought it was more of the beef tartare. 😂  The cashew butter was nice though.

Ris de veau was good. Like I mentioned earlier, the French stuff was nice. Chunks of well caramelized foie gras in it were nice also. Mopped the Vin Jaune sauce clean with additional bread we asked for.

That the additional bread. Sourdough but not charcoal toasted.

The lamb we had was part of the butcher's cut of the day. Shoulder braised in what the server described as Madras curry and drizzled with Greek honey. The latter was totally lost. That huge smudge of harissa was actually nice but unfortunately I like lamb tasting like lamb mostly and used that for my bread. Did not understand the obsession with capsicum here. 

The lamb itself was fantastic. Slip off the bone tender. If they were to tell me this was an African/Middle Eastern dish, I'd buy it. Don't see the French part in this.

Pistachio souffle was...not great. Could not taste the pistachio so calling it 'not great' was a kindness. Raspberry sorbet was delicious and robust.

Some Irish coffee with Jameson whiskey to end.

Shikar, Maxwell Reserve

I've been wanting to come to Shikar (Maxwell Reserve Singapore, 2 Cook Street, Whatsapp : +65 8866 0823) to try their thali lunch which is only available on weekdays which are non public holidays. Finally happened.

They say that their food is inspired by the grand old feasts of Indian Royals where members of high society socialised, ate and drank. Well, the food certainly came with a price tag to match those.

Place looks colonial swanky like the hotel it is housed in with a level of ostentation that zips past say, Raffles Hotel as a comparison. But it's all good. It was pretty, a pleasant sanctuary from the blazing heat and the staff was nice.

We started with some chaat. Not part of the thali sets. This one was purple sweet potato patties stuffed with goat's cheese and tempura kale on yoghurt and pomegranate. Not the kind of chaat that you get in the street obviously. Those sweet potato patties were spiced.

Their thali was served in a U shaped tray which was made to fit a plate as separated pieces. From the left, it's cucumber raita that's infused with cumin, aloo gobi, pureed palak, the main dish, dal makhani, steamed basmati rice and a salad. 

There're a couple of main dish options for the vegetarian and non-vegetarian thalis. That's mostly the difference and everyone gets pretty much the same variety of stuff with one exception.

Which is if you choose to top your palak with Italian morels and that comes with additional charge.

One of our thali came with what the menu described as pot roasted lamb. Most of us would have called it curry mutton. This was exceptional fork tender curry mutton in a delicious rich gravy

This was the tiger prawn option. Gravy is creamy and coconut-y with the flavour of saffron and prawns. Outstanding.

We're at the vegetarian curd cheese kufte thali. I read it as their rendition of their paneer makhani in the form of fried cottage cheese balls. That tomato butternut saffron gravy it came in was kickass awesome.

The thalis came with bread as well. Naans and roti.

Dessert was rava kesari. Love the moderated sweetness for this one.

Saffron masala chai which was an additional order not part of the thali lunch. Say what? I know right? Saffron-izing good old masala chai as well. But hell yeah it was good. For a lack of a more comprehensive description, the chai was well balanced. There weren't overbearing elements in its composition as far as I could tell. Masala mix was in harmonious proportions, tea wasn't overly milky and definitely not excessively sweet.

Revisiting Tuan Yuan Pork Ribs Soup (团缘肉骨茶)

It's been a while since the last time I ate at Tuan Yuan.

Tried their spare ribs today. Meat was fall off the bone tender and yet with that bit of bite to it in a peppery broth where one could specify the level of pepperiness. Not bad. Would have preferred if the chilli they had for their dark soya sauce to be the spicy type than the large and not spicy ones they use though.

Dough fritters to soak the peppery bak kut teh broth with.

A proper cai por omelette with cai por, nothing like the sub standard rendition we recently had at Lao You Ji.

Braised eggs.

That's their lu rou fan (卤肉饭). The lu rou is richer, sweeter and has a stronger star anise flavour. I prefer lu rou to be more savoury. 

Kuey was delicious with a discernible rice-y flavour. Gotta get more of this the next time we're here.

Da Paolo Pizza Bar in the August of 2023

It's been a while since we were last at Da Paolo Pizza Bar. Thought it would be a good time to revisit and also check out their limited time pizza for this National Day month.

Started with some lobster bisque fried croquettes. That creamy capsicum dip on the side - I tasted mostly just capsicum and olive oil and it was so good.

These guys were serious when they put 'lobster bisque' in the name. The those croquettes were literally deep fried lobster bisque flavoured mashed potatoes. Nice.

One of the mainstays at Da Paolo is their pasta with creamy crab meat sauce. I think the recipe might have changed a bit through the years but the difference is probably not big. Today it's the tagliatelle al granchio. At a point of time, it was spaghetti. Even further back, it might have been an alla Vodka. I used to think of it as an Italian butter chicken noodle but it doesn't feel as rich anymore so that's why I thought the recipe might have changed. Even if it was a little.

This month's pizza special is squid ink laksa. The squid ink base was dark and like rempah. Reminded me of a dry sotong hitam gravy. The pieces of squid were smokey. Together with the curry leaves and chilli, the flavour was very Asian. There's no cheese. Could taste lemongrass. Those bubbly stuff were supposed to be laksa foam but I couldn't discern anything laksa-y about it. I wouldn't have minded this with some cheese.

First time having affogato with dark chocolate ice cream. I'm not sure how I feel about them here because the espresso tasted bitter and quite strong on its own.

With vanilla ice cream it's kinda like regular affogato. Which is understandable. Decent but not one of the better ones.

With the dark chocolate, a lot of the espresso is subdued. So it's not so affogato-y.

Long Ji Zi Char (龍記), Outram Road

We've eaten at Long Ji Zi Char (253 Outram Road, tel : +65 9790 5682) once previously and tried the crab bee hoon. It was superb. Did not order that this time round but what we had today were definitely mention worthy.

They have buah long long juice with preserved plum (酸梅) which was astringently refreshing for both before and after the meal. The before whetted appetite while the after allowed you to make believe that you've succeeded in cleansing some of that grease from the food off your system. 😂

This was a dish called golden corn. Appetizer of sorts. They're fried sweet corn battered in flour with salted egg yolk. So they're both sweet and salty. Initially I thought it was a little greasy but I couldn't stop after that. It's still greasy but it was also addictive.

Stir fried romaine lettuce with fermented bean curd sauce. The sauce was awesome because of both the fermented bean curd flavour and that they've also spruced that up with some fragrant sesame oil. Will have to remember to ask them to omit the ginger the next time.

We had the deep fried tofu with pumpkin sauce and cereal previously and liked it enough to get them again. Nicely fried tofu there. The star was the sweet creamy pumpkin sauce.

Very competent dish of braised fish head with black bean sauce and bitter gourd. I don't know if it's because the kitchen is skilled at chopping up the fish head but we didn't get small bone fragments which meant it was relatively easy to eat. I had expected the black bean sauce to taste like....well, black bean sauce. It didn't. There were dried black beans in it though and if you're looking for that flavour, you gotta get some of the beans in the bite. Otherwise this was delicious and a potential repeat order.

Love their kong bao chicken (宫保鸡丁). The flavour reminded me of those from the distant past. For now, I'm ranking this no. 2 just behind Claypot & Cooked Food Kitchen until I've discovered enough good ones to be confused by my own rankings. 😂

Dessert was orh nee. Not bad tasting. Their rendition is...unusual. Lots of thinner coconut milk which made me think of bubur cha cha.

60 days dry aged USDA prime ribeye from Wolfgang's Steakhouse

We're back at Wolfgang's Steakhouse to try the what we didn't get to the last time round - 60 days dry aged USDA prime ribeye.

Bread's refillable but that made me miss the large onion loaves we used to get at Morton's. There's no need to ask for refills at Morton's because we would never have been able to finish that onion loaf and we'd happily doggy bag the remainder back.

But oh well. This is what we have here.

We were looking forward to this - the intensity or funk coalesced by 60 days worth of dry aging. I don't remember being arrested by the aroma when they plated this.

Gonna make comparisons with their porterhouse. Meat's dryer with more obvious grains but I'm not sure if it's because of the additional dry aging or it's just because this didn't arrive in a butter bath. Crust appeared to be less developed. The intensity for this 60 days dry aged ribeye wasn't much more than the 28 days dry aged porterhouse - which was disappointing. We expected significantly more.

That being said, it was still delicious. The underwhelming part was when it didn't turn out to be as intense as we had expected. We will stick to their porterhouses in the future.

I've heard poor remarks about their lobster mac & cheese and didn't think they were warranted based on what we had. It's not super but it's creamy and deliciously cheesy with bits of lobster meat.

What I also didn't expect was how much I enjoyed the onion rings in spite of the grease. Light crunch on the better with sweet rings of onion inside. These were unexpectedly delicious with the sweet Wolfgang's steak sauce.

Of the three desserts we have had here so far (this being the 3rd), I rank this chocolate mousse cake at the bottom. It's not a bad per se. The chocolate mousse just became two dimensional after a while. A lot of what determines how good a chocolate mousse to one would also the sweet spot ratio of ingredients or sweet/bitter and this one was just not the optimal for me.

A hot bitter black is a great way to end.