无名海南鸡饭 (Wu Ming Hainanese Chicken Rice), Redhill

Have noticed this stall (#01-110, 75D Redhill Road) the past few times while we were in the vicinity. Interest was piqued because their name refers to them being nameless so they're a nameless chicken rice shop with a name. 🤔  Anyways, curious chap working behind the counter who either begins a sentence or punctuates them with 他妈的.

Chicken's decent but not exceptional. Meaning it's pretty edible if one is looking for something passable and frills free.

Rice was pretty good though. Beady and good flavour with discernible pandan. Pretty sure it was pandan. Their chilli sauce was also sweet and lime-y - there's too much sweetness that I prefer the rice without them.

Each order came with lotus root soup that has tender peanuts in them. Flavour's intense with sweetness and it wasn't unpleasant. But I couldn't help but feel that there's something in there not of unprocessed natural ingredients enhancing it.

The Chairman at Black Tap with a red beer

Back at Black Tap (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六).

The recent burger of the month was The Chairman. While it doesn't look apparent in the picture, beef patty's layered with Mortadella and melted Provolone and topped with crunchy pickled vegetables. It's not bad tasting but pretty salty.

Beer of the month's a rosella lager. Hibiscus flavoured so it's a little sour red beer. 

Pestle & Mortar Society, MacPherson Road

Pestle & Mortar Society (548 MacPherson Road, tel : +65 6814 8822) is a local Muslim western food eatery. Tried their squid ink pasta. I'm gonna describe what made the squid ink sauce as rempah because that's what it felt like to me - a dry spice paste which wasn't so much a sauce. What's prominent with the flavour was lemongrass with some heat and not squid ink despite appearances. Was reminded of both actual sotong masak hitam and the sotong hitam pasta from Charr'd. 

If anyone was wondering about those squids, the tentacles were chopped up and packed into the bodies.

Recently at Menya Kokoro

Been a while since we were last at Menya Kokoro (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九. 十, 十一).

Ordered shishamo. They were filled with eggs but kinda skinny.

The laksa mazesoba came back. Did not understand why they saw fit to change their previous bowl's setup which we thought did not need fixing. The prawns have been changed to something creepy, dried and stringy. The rest of the laksa was fortunately still good - especially mouthfuls with the strips of sweet abura age. Even though we were pretty sure it didn't taste the same as the one we had previously. This "rempah" for this one felt more intensely coconut-less. If you catch my drift.

Super cheese mazesoba - not bad. Quite cheesy. Aside from the mozzarella, it's mostly bonito/or some other fish powder flavour with minced meat. For some strange reasons today, both bowls of mazesoba were steaming when we tossed them but neither were actually piping hot. So the cheese for this bowl didn't get as melty.

Chao Yuan Noodle (潮源麵家), Chang Cheng Mee Wah Coffee Shop @ Redhill

Tried the signature mee sua from Chao Yuan Noodle from the branch at Redhill (75D Redhill Road). Somewhat disappointing. This was apparently the medium sized option. Noodles looked like they were the same quantity as the small sized ones. Not bad tasting though. Saucing with chilli was moderately spicy and vinegary.

The difference between the medium and small was apparently just bowl size. The quantity of the ingredients looked the same. There's just more soup. And soup wasn't spiked with fried garlic like the one we had at Lucky Plaza so it did not have a lot of flavour. I also thought it's dumb to have minced meat in a soup especially when the soup is not great and not worth drinking. Meatballs were nice though.

Their signature liver was just boiled liver with the sambal they use for their noodles. Decent tasting. Not getting a good vibe from this stall. For the amount they were charging for the noodles, I expected portions that were sufficient, not snack sized. Will not return.

Black sesame toast from Toast Box

Noticed this from Toast Box while getting coffee. Tasted like how I'd imagined with the nutty and slightly sweet black sesame and butter. Not complaining here but, I would have preferred that there were more of both black sesame paste and butter in those.