Ah Fatt Handmade Fishball Noodle (亚肥), Hong Lim Food Centre

Noticed Ah Fatt Handmade Fishball Noodle (#02-10 Hong Lim Food Center, 531A Upper Cross Street) the last time we were here and came back for breakfast because these guys have the grace to be open on Sundays. This was the bowl with fishcake, mushroom, minced meat and the balls - or what's listed as 1 on their menu. Not a bad bowl though I need to disclaim that their soya sauce marinated chilli helped with injecting extra heat which made everything easier to inhale. The fried fishcake was delicious - pretty similar tasting to the one from Khin Kee at Havelock. Will return.

One week later...

This was expensive. Ordered the shrimp dumpling minced meat noodle (虾饺肉脞面) and there was only one shrimp dumpling. It was delicious, packed with minced pork and a shrimp but for $8, didn't represent value for money. Getting a bowl of regular mince meat noodle with an additional bowl of shrimp dumpling soup would cost a few dollars more and net you more dumplings. Gotta remember that.

Bacon fried rice from King of Fried Rice

There's streaky bacon fried rice at King of Fried Rice. After having them for nth amount of times, I've come to the conclusion that these guys which have gotten popular from their Din Tai Fung styled fried rice, isn't as good as Din Tai Fung. Also, those bacon weren't as browned as the pictures led me to believe and were kinda limp. Pretty bland plate for something that has bacon. What's with the fear of salt with so many stalls these days?

Burning Melanzana, Moussaka and what intimate plate at Miznon

Back at Mizon.

The complimentary pita with chilli and tahini is always welcomed. Great to load up with if not for the fact that we were already ordering more pitas. 

Got a couple of eggplant pitas today.

• Burning Melanzana - eggplant with a slab of toasty fried mozzarella. I couldn't taste much of the eggplant. It was mostly the mozzarella and yeah, I liked it.
• Moussaka - beef ragout, eggplant, tahini, chilli and pickles. Also not getting the eggplant but the rest of it was delicious. Loved how the meatiness from the ragout came through. Wouldn't have known there was eggplant in it if not for the menu.

Ironic how we had gotten eggplant pitas and it was the other stuffings that shone because......eggplant. 😅

Their Intimate Plate was not memorable. I've seen it on the menu for a while now and it was basically the short rib that intrigued. In retrospect, the slightly stringy short rib was right at the bottom of the list on the plate. Not the fatty flavourful beefy short rib I imagined. Will not be getting this again.

A lunar fish salad of our times

Just some thoughts on yu sheng (鱼生). For a long time, I never connected with it. It was just an annual ritual from a tradition stemming from......childhood I suppose. Never fully understood its origins. Never liked the bits of ginger it it.

Aside from short rambunctious spurts of "huat ah!", I didn't feel much for lou hei. After all, most of us were just going through a motion because everyone else did with everyone else. But as the years went by, we took things into our own hands. Got rid of what we did not like about it and made it our own. 

There's been a few variants of it. This year, we ventured into Donki's platter. In this one, we added hamachi and tai (also courtesy of Donki), canned mandarin oranges and fresh pomelo along with an extra splash of Korean sesame oil. No ginger of course. A lunar fish salad of our times that's closer to my heart with people that are closer to my heart as well..

Back at Hillman 99

Has been a really long time since I've stepped into Hillman 99 (99 Pasir Panjang Road, tel : +65 6474 6835). The place is old school just like how their food is.

It's also one of few places where one can get chrysanthemum tea served in beer mugs. Each order of these is bottomless.

I almost, subconsciously, described this order of their paper wrapped chicken  (纸包鸡) as obligatory. But it wasn't obligatory. I ordered it because I enjoyed it from what I remembered from their restaurant at Kitchener Road.

Sweet and savoury caramelized exterior on chunks of chicken thigh meat.

Claypot pig liver was impressive. That sauce was intense with a lot going on from the gritty texture, the sweetness and garlic infusion. Not to mention those caramelized sweet cloves of tender garlic in there. I regretted not getting white rice with this but, there'll be another time. Livers were tender and not overly cooked.

Stir fried Chinese mustard (芥菜). Sauce was pretty salty. Pretty sure that there's sugar in it as well. But I enjoyed the vegetable. A little bit of crunch in them still.

Old school tasting yang zhou fried rice (扬州炒饭) - it's greasy, has real char siew and also little shrimps. This hit of nostalgic flavour was so complete an experience that I will probably never want to order it from them again because it was a little greasy for my liking. The one unique experience was that we could even get the subtle crunch of the salt granules/crystals in the dry beady rice. Some mouthfuls were pretty salty and some a little bland.

This was noodles with omelette and prawns - pretty similar to the wong po lou meen at Quan Ji because they are just different renditions of the same dish. I like Quan Ji's rendition better. This one was more saucy and that sauce was pretty salty.

Sandakan Food (山打根美食), Chinatown Food Centre

Noticed this stall (Green Zone, #02-053 Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre, 335 Smith Street) recently and was intrigued by their fried pork hor fun. While their offerings by virtue of the stall's name indicates Sadakan food, the variety was very small, discounting stuff like chicken wings and nuggets which were generic.

Anyways I ended up with an enjoyable hor fun. It came with a sweet brown sauce and the plate reminded me of chee cheong fun. Not so much crunch on the fried pork with the dominant flavour being five spice powder - a difference from the also Sandakan Ah Yen Traditional Fried Pork which was crispier and flavoured by the fermented red bean curd marinate. That chilli on the side was salty and packed considerable heat which made everything deliciously feisty.