More food from Al Tasneem

Back at Al Tasneem. Could I be just trying to stay away from Zam Zam and Victory for the current time while exploring the food here? 🤔 Perhaps. Then again, there were some things that I've been meaning to get as well.

Love their chicken dum briyani which has a deliciously savoury spice infusion in the rice that belied its mundane appearance. Great flavouring in there. It's not apparent in the photo but there's raisins and cashew nuts in the rice. The chicken we got today was breast meat, arguably tender for such a part but a little dry-ish. Nothing that their spicy assam curry couldn't fix or improve on.

There's a bunch of Turkish noodle gorengs on Al Tasneem's menu. The proprietor explained that they contain meat from the doner kebab stalls. Specifically A-Mor down at the junction which they also own. So here's a Turkish beef kuey teow goreng. Rice noodles were a little greasier than I like but these usually are. Meat was unexpectedly beefy with a nice chew to the texture. Not bad. 

An order of fried chicken liver which also happened to contain many pieces of gizzards which I don't care so much about.

Paru goreng was delicious and actually pretty tender except for the parts with bronchioles of the lungs.

The mediocrity that was the masala tea from the last time echoed still. In spite of that, we tried our luck with the teh tarik and we're glad we did. This was not the run of the mill sweet milky tea. The flavour from this one had character. Pleasantly surprised here.

Soon Soon (顺顺古早味), C&L Cafe @ UB. One

Chicken rice from Soon Soon (#01-07 UB. One, 81 Ubi Avenue 4). It's an unusual name for a chicken rice stall. But I guess that makes it easy should they decide not to sell chicken rice anymore and do something else someday. 😂

This was 烧鸡尾 + tau kwa + egg and those two brown tubes are shrivelled up fried sausages. Why were there fried sausages in a chicken rice stall? Beats me. But I got them because I can. Meat's not that smooth so on hindsight, any part of the 烧鸡 would be about the same. No sense paying more for the thigh. The eggs look mutated. The verdict? Pretty decent eating.

Competent, not outstanding rice. Pretty good with their garlicky chilli sauce. The soup is worth mentioning. It's real chicken soup and I thought I detected lotus root in it.

Louisa Coffee, Guoco Midtown

We stumbled into Louisa Coffee (#01-13 & 14 Guoco Midtown, 130 Beach Road) without knowing anything about them. Apparently they're a prominent coffee chain from Taiwan and they're known for something called Boston Cream Pie. More on that below. First, their coffee mojito - fizzy, lime-y and a hint of mint. Nice. This appears to be deepening our recent forays into citrus coffees.

Boston Cream Pie. Louisa Coffee's rendition is a cake with fillings in the middle and a layer of mochi skin over. This was the Citrus Sunshine flavour which featured diced fruits and cream. Not impressed by the fruits because I couldn't even tell what they were from taste.

Sardine murtabak from Prata Saga Sambal Berlada

Previously when I had their sardine prata, I was guessing that the difference between that and their sardine murtabak was just onions. I was correct. There were onions in this. And also......

• sardine prata $3.50
• egg onion prata $1.70
• this sardine murtabak $6.00

I'm happy doing this without the onions because it didn't add much for me.

Casa Vostra, Raffles City

We've been waiting for Casa Vostra (#01-49/50/51 Raffles City, 252 North Bridge Road) to open for a while. Have read about the accolades of Antonio Miscellaneo and being ranked 57th in the world for best pizza didn't sound like a mean feat. Sounded like it was worth taking a look into. Since we have never had the chance to try his food at La Bottega Enoteca, we were looking forward to this one.

First, espresso tonic. Nicely done with double shots of an aromatic brew they use and Fever Tree tonic.

Porchetta - more thinly sliced than I imagined. Each of those slices with a bit of chew along the edges with the rest of it mostly tender and infused with the liquorice accents from fennel; and I think sage. By my estimates, this was possibly 2 slices of Marutama's charshu worth of porchetta. For $18.

Not bad tasting tagliatelle with crab. Noodle texture's nice and portions were a little small. Could taste olive oil and butter in it but the pasta wasn't exactly buttery nor was the olive oil fruity. Crab meat had passable flavour. Nothing in the ingredients stood out in particular except for one; the sweetness of the tomato confit was nice.

Tagliatelle Bolognese was delicious. The ragù was meaty, beefy and not drowned in tomato flavouring. Would not mind coming back for this. 

We were looking for a place that might be the equal to Zazz for Neapolitan style pizzas and Casta Vostra's Newpolitan sounded like it could be that. Turned out that this was a different thing entirely. The airiness of the puffy cornicion surpassed what we've had at Zazz. Our pizza crust was the lightest we've ever had; that and on some pretty delicious tartufo and funghi toppings on a creamy rich Taleggio. Nice.

That panna cotta was small. Could have been just a two biter for me. The olive oil and basil was brilliant with the strawberry + sauce and creaminess of the panna cotta though. Yummy.

Pongal and idiyappam from S.P. Vilas

I've noticed idiyappam the previous times I've walked past S.P. Vilas. They're unlike the usual variety which are disc shaped. These from the stall look torn up, mixed with curry leaves, dried chilli and mustard seeds. The noodles were also extra fine. What deterred me from getting them was coriander. Yup, those were mixed in too. Until today. I noticed that the batch they had in the stall did not have coriander so I got a serving with some pongal on the side. I like how it was savoury and spiced up. Not bad tasting the both of them.