Zhang Liang Mala Tang (张亮麻辣), Bugis Junction

This was my first mala tang (麻辣烫) and Zhang Liang (#01-90/91 Bugis Junction, 200 Victoria Street, tel : +65 6970 6658) had the honour of being my first experience. 😬 I was sold by the variety of items you could pick and most if not all of them looked pretty good to the point that we were spoilt for choice and ended up getting more than we initially thought we would. Noob!

And if you happened to be wondering why it's two bowls featured here, it was because like I said earlier, we piled on more food than we thought we would. I had the idea that all of it would go into a large bowl but apparently their bowls aren't that large so we ended up getting two.

Loved it. This was their mala soup on 小辣...the broth kinda reminded me of the mala milk from Haidilao with a bit less heat. Very manageable but it's still something you won't want to choke on. There's better fish than the standard dory, sotong balls with real bits of squid, fragrant chunks of pig skin and basically too much things for me to list so I won't. Will come back.

Hai Yan Fried Kway Teow Mee (海燕潮州炒粿条麵), Telok Blangah Rise Food Centre

Breakfast at Hai Yan Fried Kway Teow Mee (#01-38 Telok Blangah Rise Food Centre, 36 Telok Blangah Rise). Look at those beautifully fried eggs (荷包蛋) with molten yolk inside.

Hai Yan does char kuey teow. It's available in bee hoon apart from the regular noodle/kuey teow option. Noodles were a little greasy and a little smoky. Fried eggs are add ons. Pretty tasty especially when they are broken with the molten yolks all over the noodles. This stall does not do cockles.

BBQ Master (烧烤王), Geylang Road

Here's some food we had at 烧烤王 (455 Geylang Road, tel : +65 8499 7999). They're one of numerous restaurants around that does dong bei food along the lines of Dong Bei Xiao Chu (东北小厨), Dong Bei Ren Jia (东北人家) or Manchurian Lamb Hot Pot (满族全羊铺).

We had some skewers - mushrooms, chicken hearts, beef, shishamo, sliced potatoes and chicken mid wings. Not bad tasting. Except for the skinny shishamo which didn't seem to even have roe. Surprisingly, we didn't get anything with lamb today......but we'll come back for those another time.

Love the stir fried cauliflower (干锅菜花). For some reasons those cauliflowers had a flavour that reminded me of potatoes. The slices of pork belly in the dish were thicker and less dried out than many other renditions of this dish we've tried. Good one. 👍🏼

Suan cai yu (酸菜鱼) with pretty generous portions of fish and loads of pickled mustard greens. The latter were all in the broth beneath the slices of fish.

Stir fried you mai cai (油麦菜) stir fried with garlic - the vegetable had a flavour that I could have sworn tasted like pandan.

Grilled bread with sprinkles of fine sugar - this was nice too. Bread was light and airy. I don't know what oil was it they used that had that yellow hue but it wasn't butter.

Paru Power! cow lungs chips

Paru chips? Why not?! 😋

Never realized such a thing even existed. They're spiced, crispy like fish crackers and has a beefy flavour like paru. Not bad at all if you like paru.

Found them at this shop (#01-42 Golden Landmark Shopping Complex, 390 Victoria Street).

Mutton dum briyani from Victory Restaurant

The last time we were here at Victory for their deer murtabak, we noticed the sign advertising their mutton dum briyani which is only available on Fridays. We also learnt that those are not available for the whole day because there's a limited quantity that's prepared on that day and by the time the Muslim prayer crowd is done sometime in the afternoon, it'll probably be sold out.

The official word from them is that they start selling the mutton dum briyani at 11am. We arrived a bit earlier and by the time we were finished with it, it was just about 11am.

Not bad tasting. There were lots of flavour in the rice that includes flavour from fried shallots, toasty cashews and raisins. Would be nice if there were more cashews and raisins methinks. Meat was tender but not fork tender that it was easily removed from the bone. Still needed some work to scrape them off. Definitely worth trying if one is in the vicinity around that time but I won't go out of the way for it again.

Had an order of their telur bawang which we also stumbled upon previously. I've had it another time since then before today. The prata looked a little different each time but it's still a good tasting prata with egg and onion. Bits of crispy browned parts and a lot of chew in the dough. Personally, the gravy to get for this is the fish curry.

Iekei styled ramen from Ramen Dining Keisuke Tokyo

Iekei ramen has been popping up in recent times. I had one at Kamoshita earlier in the year and a few months after, at Brothers Ramen. It's not a new style - from what I read, this style of ramen originated in 70s by a former truck driver Yoshimura Minoru in Yokohama so it's been around. We just haven't been getting them until recent years.

This is Keisuke's rendition. Chewy yellow noodles with a shoyu tonkotsu broth, spinach, seaweed and a slice of charshu. I thought the broth was nicely done with a mellow savoury of shoyu paired with the richness from the tonkotsu. It got better after crushing a few cloves of garlic into them. There was also a container of sunomono (pickled cucumbers) that came with the order which you could have with the accompanied bowl of rice. I did half the rice with it and the other half with the leftover broth.