Peck Hoon Teng Eating House, River Valley Road

Haven't eaten here (219 River Valley Road) in years and decided to because we were in the vicinity.

Mee pok from Teochew Fishball Minced Meat Noodle was not bad. Nice portion of minced meat, sliced pork, a couple of factory meatballs and a fishball. I had initially thought they oversauced it but it turned out to be appropriately done. Nothing in particular was outstanding but it was assembled well with decent ingredients. Pretty enjoyable eat with the chilli.

Very edible roasts from this one. There's 油饭 to be had which I opted for. Duck breast was relatively tender while the sausages were sweet and quite generic. 

What was worth mentioning were the glistening char siew on display. I wanted to be sure of what I was getting and requested for 半瘦半肥 to which the proprietor responded with a "我尽量". In the end, the meat was all lean and pretty bland. 😓 I might not have recognized those slice meats as char siew if not for the sauce in a blind taste. That sauce literally made the char siew.

There's a prawn noodle stall at the end of the coffeeshop. The lean-ish slices of pork had more fat than the char siew from the roasted meat stall earlier. Prawns are decent quality and the broth's not bad tasting. Kuey teow was nice paired with the fried lard dipped in the spicy soya sauce.

Ordered an iced hor ka sai from the coffeeshop's drink stall. In Hokkien the name translates into tiger biting lion (虎咬狮) - it's just Milo and coffee. This one was bad. The drink was entirely made from a packet of 3-in-1 with that 3-in-1 flavour that I didn't like. For $2.60, I didn't think it was too much to expect them to mix coffee and Milo. But now we know. No more drinks from these cheap guys.

Happy Duck, Bukit Merah View Hawker Centre

Noticed Happy Duck (#01-38, Bukit Merah View Hawker Centre, 115 Bukit Merah View) previously. This braised duck stall is located right next door to Bukit Merah View Carrot Cake. Since we were in the hawker centre getting breakfast, duck kuey teow sounded good. 

Here's a bowl with added on liver and egg. Strips of duck meat were relatively tender, dark sauce savoury with herbal sweetness and the lime-y flavour from the chilli was unexpectedly pleasant. The herbal soup on the side wasn't bad as well. Will consider getting kuey chap from them someday.

Jeju Sanghoe (제주상회), Tras Street

Pretty new Korean restaurant (74 Tras Street, tel : +65 6977 7977) that's appeared almost half a year back. The menu indicates Jeju cuisine - which I wouldn't know if any of it was a good representative but there were things that looked like they were worth trying that weren't the run of the mill.

Makgeolli cocktail's not bad. It's fizzy and there's something floral in it which I couldn't identify/understand. 

Banchan's nicely made. Love those pickled onions and garlic infused strips of potatoes.

Tried a bowl of gogi guksu. I'm not big on their bone broth because of the flour-y taste which I'm guessing is from the noodles. Slice pork's decent and not as amazing as how some reviews have made them out to be. What made me inhale this was their fermented hairtail (galchi) paste. More on that in a bit.

Pan fried prawns on the side. These were pan fried in butter! 😬

That's the fermented hairtail paste - the flavour's kinda similar to saeujeot/chinchalok with gochujang I suppose. Which made it ideal pairing with the noodles and sliced pork.

The menu calls this moum guk - seaweed soup with rice.

Pretty good. Texture's gruel-y with the flavour of seaweed and a base which reminded of grains. Also kicked ass with the fermented hairtail paste.

Fermented fish and soybean stew. No idea what/how exactly but it sounded like it'll be delicious in its stinky manner.

It was. Stew needed to be cooled a bit to let the complexities of the flavour develop. Tasted much like fermented beans and sardines.

Generation Coffee Roasters, Hong Lim Food Centre

Nice, this shop (#01-59 Hong Lim Food Centre, 531A Upper Cross Street) also makes local kopi and covers tid lo (直下). Coffee's thick and pretty decent too. No reason to endure the Toast Box queue with this stall around when I'm in Hong Lim. If anyone needs a landmark to find them, they're just next door to Heng Kee Curry Chicken Noodles. 

The Johor styled bowl from Shu Heng Bi Tai Mak (數興老鼠粉)

Came back to Shu Heng Bi Tai Mak because I wanted to try the Johor styled bowl which featured a slightly starchy broth filled with stuff. Stuff like minced pork, tiny shrimps and finely diced mushrooms which was later topped chopped spring onions, fried shallots and bits of salted fish.

The dominant flavour was garlic and the salted fish which made it moreish. Think umami. After spiking it with some of the soya sauce and cut chilli, the additional heat upped the flavour ante with a noticeable level of oomph. Nice.  👍🏼

Kong Wai Cantonese Cuisines, Tiong Bahru Food Centre

I remember walking past Kong Wai Cantonese Cuisines (#02-52 Tiong Bahru Food Centre, 30 Seng Poh Road, tel : +65 9003 9117) on a number of occasions and haven't paid much attention to them mostly. For some reasons my interest was piqued recently. Must have been something on their menu that had subconsciously caught my attention and subtly taken root. Anyways, we came over for dinner. These guys open till 10.30pm.

By the way, portions aren't big. All the food in here fed two. For $49. We were still kinda peckish afterward. 😲

We ordered their butter cheese pork chop. With the name of the dish in mind, no one would be blamed for wondering what in the world this was supposed to be. 😂 

The proprietress did also mention beforehand that there's no cheese in it. This was as much as we knew from the vague "no cheese" description. While we were eating it, we didn't taste any butter as well. But damn this was delicious. What I could visually identify were slices of pork, eggs, onion and curry leaves.

Pretty decent rendition of nai bai (奶白) stir fried with fermented bean curd (腐乳). The nai bai which was coated in that fermented bean curd sauce, bits of garlic and a little bit of heat from sliced chilli padi was suitably crunchy. As we were going through them though, we felt that the sauce didn't pack the punch we experienced at Long Ji. Would have loved for more of that fermented bean flavour to come through. But it wasn't a bad dish.

We wanted sliced fish in black bean sauce. That's not on the menu but seeing that they have black bean sauce dishes and also sliced fish, we figured they could put the two together and they did. Not a bad rendition but not getting the nuances of fermented black bean in this. Couldn't find the actual whole beans in the sauce, just bits of them. The sauce was still delicious though.

Stir fried kailan with prawns. Competently done with loads of prawn-y flavour in the salty sauce which was made for pairing with rice. The Chinese name mentioned 虾球 so we weren't expecting shells but I guess that's their rendition. While I couldn't be sure, these prawns tasted like they had been deep fried before being stir fried.