Black radish cake from 忘不了萝卜糕 (Unforgettable Carrot Cake)

Breakfast with a black plate from 忘不了萝卜糕. Let's define what I described as a nice taste the last time a little bit more. It's that same yeasty flavour that we were also getting from Bukit Merah View Carrot Cake. This $5 黑的 was equally eggy but had more sweet caramelization.

Marché in March

Recent trip to Marché. Is it me or have the prices gone up?

The beer battered fish was one of the current specials at the seafood counter. They're using sea bass for it.

Actually pretty good. Fish was very moist and tasted like it was steamed in the batter.

Four cheese ravioli au gratin. Also a current special at the pasta counter.

The recommended way of eating the ravioli is with the toasted cheese and ham in each bite for the salt and cheesiness. The ravioli alone was just creamy with little saltiness and didn't taste like it had four cheeses.

Mango and mascarpone crepe was not bad tasting. They have gotten pretty citrus-y mangoes which paired nicely with the mascarpone cream. 

Anwar's Kitchen, Bukit Merah View Hawker Centre

Anwar's Kitchen (#01-72, Bukit Merah View Hawker Centre, 115 Bukit Merah View) was emanating old school good vibes and had a queue going on so we decided that we wanted some.

Here's a telur (egg) and a kosong (plain). The latter was fluffed up with light bits of crisp - the rest was mostly doughy with a slight chewiness. Which is how I generally like them. The egg prata was totally crispless and was more like an egg pancake. Me no problems with that either. Mutton curry's good. Managed to get some bits of muttony fat which I ate with the kosong.

A couple of weeks later......

Egg onion prata...pretty decent.

Cheese prata. There's a short tale to how this happened. The menu listed a cheese murtabak which I tried to order. The stall asked if I wanted fish, chicken or mutton which made me wonder...did I stutter? I repeated that I wanted the cheese murtabak on their menu. They then explained that the cheese murtabak doesn't exist and is a mistake on their sign and that they can do a regular cheese prata instead. And that's how I ended up with a cheese prata....

Anyways, while it's probably not very visible, it's a whole square of the cheese smack in the middle. Not crispy which I did not mind at all. Not bad tasting. 😬

Will come back again.

More thoughts on No. 25 Minced Meat Noodle

It's been a little over a year since we were first/last at No. 25 Minced Meat Noodle. The stall looked updated with an expanded menu. Their most expensive item on the menu used to be $7.

Today I can get a $13 signature bowl. That's pricing in the same leagues as Tai Hwa. There won't be any comparisons between the two because they're very different bowls.

For $13, the amount of ba chor/minced pork was kinda measly ☝🏻. I don't remember the details of the first time we had it but this one had a solid sambal flavour in the saucing which packed some heat and was deeply savoury. The fried lard (猪油渣) and ti poh definitely added to it. 

Delicious soup with pretty generous amount of ingredients but I didn't expect anything less with what they were charging. Not big on the fish dumpling which I was hoping would be good. They were just a little too chewy. I'm pretty sure we've had generic factory ones that we liked better. Fish maw pieces were kinda small so a lot of mouthfeel was lost. But still good bowl of soup as a whole.

Jiakali, Chinatown Food Centre

Noticed Jiakali (Green Zone, #02-051 Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre, 335 Smith Street) in our recent trips down to Chinatown's food centre. The stall is a coin's toss from Sandakan Food. I was curious about at least a couple of their options.

Ended up with the pork curry because it wasn't something that you'll find every day. Or week. Or month. Curry's viscous and packed some heat with a sweet undertone. Creamy texture and no coconut milk. I identified something that might have been star anise or cardamom or both. Flavour was definitely intense.

Pork rib was really tender and moist. How tender was that? Some parts of them didn't even require teeth and you could definitely manage them with plastic cutlery. Or simply slurp them off the soft bone. Don't mind coming back.

Alice Boulangerie, Icon Village

Alice Boulangerie (#01-05/11 Icon Village, 12 Gopeng Street, tel : +65 8874 3300) opened a little over a couple of years back. Have been wanting to try the food for a while. We've finally transcended the of sight and out of mind symptom that's been behind us for this. 

Pleasantly surprised by their Orange Americano.

There was abundant orange flavour from...whatever it was that they put into the coffee. Stirring well gets one creamy orangey coffee. I do mean orangey here. 👍🏼

Impressed by their tiger prawn capellini. The stock for the pasta sauce was what one would term legit - a crustacean umami sweetness paired with savoury on al dente noodles. Also good quality prawns with mentaiko there. Gonna be hard to pass on this one when/if we come back.

Beef Royal was a cheese burger between their croissant rolls. I thought the "buns" were a little too crispy.

No complains for everything else - not even on the barbecue sauce in the pastry which I normally prefer not to have. I liked the rocket salad on the side more than I thought I would.

Not so impressed by the banana caramel latte. Was looking forward to more banana flavour in the coffee. Wasn't a bad coffee though.