Pasta Brava, The Scarlet

The last time we were at Pasta Brava, the restaurant was still located at Craig Road. This was possibly the one time we'll be here in their current location (#01-13 The Scarlet Singapore, 33 Erskine Road) because by the time this post is out, they would have been relocated to their new spot at Tras Street.

The menu appeared to be a mix of the old Pasta Brava items and those from Sofi. I was thinking of the former's blue cheese or chocolate red wine sauce steaks but we got totally distracted by their specials.

Specials like a spinach pappardelle in fresh oyster truffle cream sauce. Couldn't taste the truffle in it. The oddity here was the aroma of the oyster that came with the pasta. We could smell it, thinking that it came from the cream sauce. Couldn't taste it in said sauce which was mostly garlicky. While there were oysters in the pasta, we couldn't reconcile what we experienced.

Surfeit crept in partway through and what helped us finish was Tabasco sauce. 😬 The garlicky cream sauce was actually pretty damn good with some splashes of vinegary hot Tabasco.

Another special was grilled ox tongue and mushroom pizza. The tomato on the pie was sharp - reminded me of jarred tomato sauce and was almost overwhelming every other flavour, including the grilled ox tongue.

Dessert was a keto zucchini lime cake with whipped cream. Cake didn't have much sweetness. Couldn't identify the lime in it. Tasted underwhelming.

Lao Gai Mee (老街面), Beauty World Food Centre

Relatively new stall (#04-39 Beauty World Centre, 144 Upper Bukit Timah Road) selling Malaysian noodles. Got a bowl of their kolo mee which was pretty good tasting. Noodle texture was nicely done with a savoury lardiness from the saucing after they're tossed. Char siew was also better than the run of the mill dry cardboard variety. That being said, the quality one gets is pretty much the luck of the draw. Love the pickled green chilli that cut through the porcine grease of the bowl with it's sharpness. Will not mind coming back.

Bee tai bak or rat's tail noodles from Ah Seng Teo Chew Minced Meat Noodle (亞誠潮州肉脞面)

Here's a satisfying lard-y, vinegary and slurpalicious breakfast of minced meat bee tai bak from Ah Seng Teo Chew Minced Meat Noodle. Am I cycling through the noodle types from the stall? Perhaps so. This one and the mee pok are at the top of the list.

Revisiting Chatterbox

It's been some years since we were last at Chatterbox. Not that we were aching to come back but it was a suggestion that did not sound bad. Now that we have, we also realized that the entire place has been renovated. Place looks a lot more classy.

We ended up with chicken rice and ngoh hiong.

Half a chicken was huge. They're apparently free ranged from a farm in Malaysia which I hear provides only for Chatterbox. Bird's served boneless, was meaty, full of bite and tasted...retro. So that's what time honoured recipe means. In retrospect, there're a number of options out there which are more enjoyable in my books. With eyes closed and a rock tossed at random space, I think I might have hit Jew Kit. 

I thought their ngoh hiong looked disappointing. What with the fried skin and some meat paste protein matter suffings. Definitely not the type I envisioned in my head.

Fortunately, it did not taste half bad. Skin was crisp, pretty fragrant and the stuffings did not taste as paste-y or floury like it looked. But still we weren't exactly impressed and will probably never get it again. At the prices Chatterbox charges, I would love to be impressed.

Mini maple blueberrybon from Cinnabon

We came across this at Cinnabon by chance and decided to stop for one.

Not bad tasting. There's definitely blueberry flavour and something else which felt familiar yet I couldn't put a finger to. Not maple I'm sure.

Phoenix Garden (凰园), Ngee Ann City

Dim sum at Phoenix Garden (#05-30 Ngee Ann City, 91 Orchard Road, tel : +65 8058 7038) from a couple of visits. Don't know when they opened but I never even knew that they existed until recently. We stumbled upon a one-for-one dim sum deal going on which operated with a limited menu. By the time this post is published, they would have closed the current premise because the last visit was their last day of operation.

A little bird whispered that they had to relocated because of the increase in rent.

There's a drink on the menu call Black & Black which is described as Guinness + British Black Currents. I was wondering what the latter was until the wait staff mentioned Ribena. 😂 Anyways, the stout came in a can, was poured into a glass with the British Black Currents and we had to stir it ourselves. I kinda enjoyed it though.

Pan fried radish cake's pretty decent. There's strips of radish within and pork (or was it chicken?) floss without.

Pretty edible Yang Zhou fried rice. Needed more salt. Or perhaps fish sauce. 

Seafood fried rice we had on another occasion had better salting resulting in a moreish and savoury flavour. The only seafood in it were diced prawns and scallops.

Xiao long bao was also decent quality. While I couldn't tell how it fared against "the local benchmark" (😂), it wasn't far off from those standards.

Got an order of the fried 腐皮卷 after learning that there wasn't any coriander or Chinese parsley in them. The stuffing was prawn paste and this was much better tasting than I had imagined.

Competent siew mai with a good mix of flavour from both the pork and mushroom stuffings.

Some nicely done vegetable dumping which were mostly filled with chopped mushrooms with truffle oil.

Har gow stained with butterfly pea flower. Tasted just like regular competently done har gow. Skin was a little thicker than what we generally prefer but it's not a deal breaker.

No 红油 in their 红油抄手. These were more akin to 水饺. The heat was mild in the vinegar sauce. Not bad tasting but these weren't 红油抄手. 

Salted yolk lava buns quite nice. This was how they looked the first time we had them.

On the second occasion, the buns were of a different design, charcoal infused and grey.

I liked both versions we had. No flavour differences for sure.

Char siew bao with brown sugar skin. I could smell the brown sugar faintly but not taste them. But pretty good tasting bao though.

They also had this 寿桃 buns that were filled with yam paste.

Beneath the peachy surface, creamy grey sweetened yam paste.

Orh nee was thick with a creamy coconut milk over. Not very sweet. Not bad also.

Happy with their mango sago pomelo too. This place isn't fancy. The food shows. That being said, the quality was not bad at all.