A. Rashid Khan, Ayer Rajah Food Centre

I was recommended A. Rashid Khan (Stall #58 Ayer Rajah Food Centre, 503 West Coast Drive) which does kambing soup, roti john and mee siam. What was worth the recommendation about this particular mee siam you might wonder. There's tongue. 😜 Delicious tender muttony chunks of lamb tongue which are part of options for their mee siam - an "obvious but not obvious to many" combination since it's just part of what they're serving for the kambing soup. There's a lamb ribs option too which I'm keen on for a next time. Gravy's sweet, a little nutty and has a bit of heat from their sambal. Not bad.

O.BBa Jjajang Express, Clementi

These guys (450 Clementi Ave 3, #01-271) are by O.BBa Jjajang. No Koreans running the stall apparently.

Menu has a sacheun jjajangmyeon which looked interesting. Sacheun I'm guessing is Sichuan.

The real McCoy looked disappointingly like some sort of tomato noodles. The product photo was definitely deliberate misrepresentation by O.BBa Jjajang. Their social media picture communicated angry red and burning heat - a hue that entertained the possibility of a base of robust fermented bean in the sauce.

But no. The sauce was sweet and spicy. What jjajang? What fried sauce? In spite of that inherent flavour, it ultimately tasted thin and hadn't the depth from even the regular jjajangmyeon from their restaurant. Felt hollow and unsatisfying. Will not come back.

 Fortunately we could still get supplements from next door.

Madam Lim's Nasi Lemak, Holland Drive Food Centre

I think Madam Lim's Nasi Lemak (#02-1 Holland Drive Market & Food Centre, 44 Holland Drive) is new. Never noticed them before the last time. Rice needs a bit more salt so it's not good on its own. The sweet onion-y sambal was good pairing with it though. What got my attention was the ayam berampah - it appeared to be freshly fried on order and the flavouring on the crisp chicken was delicious. 

Revisiting Xing Long Food Stall (興隆菜社)

Chance brought us back for more zi char at Xing Long Food Stall. 😬

Definitely wanted another go at their steamed fish head in fermented bean sauce. Same opinion of it as before. Great stuff.

I was recommended to try their braised tofu (红烧豆腐). I wouldn't say I'm super familiar with this dish because we don't eat it that often and this did not look out of the ordinary. 

We found an egg lurking beneath the surface waiting to surprise us. What got my attention was the gravy which was rich tasting and filled with a savoury sweetness. Not the cheap starch filled crap that's generally rampant. There was even more sweetness from the cabbage and carrots. While it might not have looked apparent, the quality of the vegetables used was good.

This yang zhou fried rice came about because we saw one from the neighbouring table. While we understood that it might not have been the better pairing with the dishes we had, I wanted to know if it was good and it was. Straightforward with a light smokiness, real prawns, real char siew and without excessive grease. Competently done local rendition of fried rice. 

The Homme Baker, Margaret Market

The cakes from The Homme Baker (#01-08 Margaret Market, 38 Margaret Drive) caught our attention so here's a bunch we tried.

Nicely done auspicious mandarin orange cake. Why so? Judged it based on the vibrant orange citrus flavour from those layers in between the light orange flavoured chiffon cake. This wasn't just cosmetic parlour tricks. That's real orange infusion into a cake. Will come back for more. 👍🏼

Pineapple upside down cake also good. They heated it up on serving. Cake's moist while the texture was rough and crumbly which was the way I liked it. I'm not sure if the almond flavour was part of the ingredients or did it seep in from the maraschino cherries. Either ways, that was nice. 👍🏼

That's purple sweet potato, not yam. Cheesecake. It's not bad. I was hoping for a stronger sweet potato flavour but it's mostly in the background.

The Homme Baker is kinda known for their Swiss cheese shaped cheesecakes. The shells are chocolate and there's bunch of different flavours differentiated by their colours.

This was the T&J Bakwa - the insides are cream cheese, chilli and bak kwa. There were little strips of bak kwa in there. Sweet with savoury followed by an infusion of prickly heat at the back of the throat. Nice. 👍🏼

Mee pok at Jofa Grill

Jofa Grill at Bukit Merah Central also serves mee pok. From a search online, they're listed as Jofa Meepok. They fell into my radar recently because I discovered that they're open 7 days now when they previously didn't do Sundays.

That's a large bowl of their signature mee pok. It's not what I would consider a large bowl but it's loaded with toppings that one normally doesn't get in a humble bowl of mee pok - like prawn paste, clams, scallops, meatballs, fishballs, sliced pork, mock abalone and something they call fish sticks. The latter are fish paste in dried bean curd skin.

Love the firm noodle texture, lardy chilli saucing and generally good quality ingredients. Would have been great if the portions were bigger. 

The prawn paste soup's worth a go too. Definitely getting those gently sweet prawn flavours in the paste. Soup's delicious. I detected garlic and lotus root. Possibly infused with the flavour of all the toppings they use on their noodles as well. Will come back.