Ya-Mahyuddin Al-Jailani, Kampong Bahru Road

Can't remember if we've ever eaten at Ya-Mahyuddin Al-Jailani (89 Kampong Bahru Road, tel : +65 6222 2754). We were here recently for breakfast and they were definitely worth a mention.

Teh halia was sweet and milky with a hit of that gingery flavour. Not bad methinks.

I got my plaster with molten yolk! 🙌🏼 What I also enjoyed about their prata was the chewiness of the dough. Nothing was crispy here. And I like it that way.

Their banana cheese prata was one of the more memorable banana pratas I've had in recent times. The bananas used tasted like the pisang raja varietal used for goreng pisang which has that tangy sweetness. Like goreng pisang, these had been put through heat and has their sugars released for a more pronounced sweetness and an intensified flavour. Quite a few pieces of those with some chewy bits of cheese in there. Will come back for this.

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.