Tenya, Orchard Central

Tenya from Asakusa set up stall more than a couple of years ago. They were marketed as the most successful tendon chain restaurants in Japan. What's new right? So many superlatives with the brands we bring in that there's no longer allure. Not to mention that many of them have diluted themselves. I never bothered previously because just another brand from Japan doesn't necessarily equate to quality anymore. 

Which was why this was my first visit. 😅  Took me a while also because I'm not a big tempura person in general. This was the shop at Orchard Central (#B1-01 Orchard Central, 181 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6509 6838)

Got their aonori tendon teishoku with the spicy cold udon. There's a prawn, piece of salmon and a Hiroshima oyster with some vegetables in the nori batter. The oyster was juicy and delicious. Definitely getting some seaweed flavour from the batter as well. Not bad tempura as a whole if I might say so.  

Pretty tasty spicy cold udon. The noodles were salty, spicy and shrimpy from the sakura ebi and chilli, paired with varied textures from the toppings. This might be the other tempura shop I don' mind coming back to aside from Ginza Tendon Itsuki or Tenjin. 

And Tenshin of course.

Revisiting Lao Huo Tang (老火汤)

Back at Lao Huo Tang trying more of their soups and dishes.

Pork tripe and ginko nut soup (养生腐竹猪肚汤) - for some reasons I had been expecting this to be very peppery until I re-read the menu. They did not mention pepper. Must have been because of the tripe which I normally associate with being cooked in a peppery broth or I've been thinking of the one at 藝 yì by Jereme Leung. No pepper for this one. Tripe was tender and chewy. Not a bad soup. 

What I did not anticipate and was pleasantly surprised by from the their lotus root soup with pork ribs and peanut (养颜莲藕花生排骨汤) were the dried cuttlefish that was used. This added plentiful umami. Tasted a lot better than I had imagined of what I thought would be a boring lotus root soup.

Decent fried egg with sliced bitter gourd there.

This was steamed chicken with mushrooms and lup cheong. I was thinking of this rendition when I ordered it. Not exactly in the same leagues but I don't mind eating this again. The main ingredients along with the goji berries and light soy sauce coalesced together nicely through the steaming.

Mr Batang Fish @96, Amoy Street Food Centre

Cool, this stall (#02-96 Amoy Street Food Centre, 7 Maxwell Road) is open on Sundays. While it's listed on Google that they open at 9.30am, the fish soup is only ready by 10.

Got mine with ee mian. This was the more expensive bowl which just has more fish. Those batang slices were deliciously thick. Soup's pretty decent with a sweetness and some flavour from fried shallots. 

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.