Ah Hua Handmade Fishball Noodle (阿華手工鱼圆面), Redhill Food Centre

Was it my choice or an illusion of choice that landed me with Ah Hua Handmade Fishball Noodle (#01-55, Redhill Food Centre, 85 Redhill Lane). A philosophical question which will not be dwelled on here. Serviceable bowl but I didn't think it memorable. Lots of saucing in this with the noodles. Chilli's not very spicy. Those prawns - they had really thin shells that weren't easy to remove. But the meat was sweet and quality better than I had initially misjudged. 

Dim summing at Kai Duck

It's actually a bit more than just dim sum from their menu at Kai Duck. Had a few other stuff a la carte.

Couldn't resist their cold tomato with passionfruit.

Tempura sweet corn was...quite forgettable. The corn didn't taste especially good.

Roast pork's fantastic. Crispy on the crackling and the meat was tender.

Char siew with peanuts was okay. Tender and quite tasty but there are better tasting ones around. Very little peanuts also.

That's luffa and sliced kurobuta stir fried preserved olive leaves. Meat's really tender and good flavour from the sauce, thanks to the preserved olive leaves. Will come back for this again.

Half roasted duck. Tenderer than what I remember of them from the last time.

The English name on the menu was something along the lines of fish shaped eggplant salt dumpling. I'm not sure of the intent but it tasted like wu kok/fried taro dumplings to me. It's not fish shaped but eggplant shaped. Skin's fried, a little chewy and there's minced stuff inside.

Fried yam and pumpkin. Decent.

Har gow's huge and pretty good tasting.

Pan fried teriyaki siew mai. The flavour from the teriyaki glaze was light - which was the way I liked it. Otherwise, competent siew mai. Would get this again if we come back.

Sheng jian bao (生煎包). No comments. Might not have been memorable.

Scrambled eggs with minced beef. Not bad.

Tofu stuffed with minced pork. There was a bunch of clams at the bottom of the claypot. Nice. Good for returns.

Fried noodles with soya sauce was nice. Great texture from the noodles. I'd come back for this too.

Steak Sukadu, Killiney Road

Been wanting to try Steak Sukadu (107 Killiney Road). If you're wondering what is their draw, it's Omi Gyu - one of three of the top wagyu "brand" alongside Kobe and Matsusaka. Also from what I've read, the oldest strain from the Shiga prefecture which dates back over four centuries. Lots of fluff out there regarding how premium it is. The icing on the cake, so to speak, is that Steak Sukadu makes theirs affordable.

Rice, soup and salad can be ordered individually or as a set of all three and they're refillable.

Personally, I don't think one would get much refills of the beef broth which is rich with beefy oils and adequately salted. It adds quite quickly to the surfeit that tends to accumulate from the already rich A5 omi gyu.

We had the hamburg. Tender, has a nice crust but lacks character in terms of texture and flavour. Meat's minced with onions. Not something I'd look forward to again.

The A5 omi gyu steak was tender, rich and delicious. Got ours with sauce on the side. The meat needed nothing else but salt. I don't understand the hot plate concept with this because it did little but burnt the potato wedges. This beef was really good with just rice.

Love their ketchup. Don't know how it's made but it's noice.

Song Gye Ok (송계옥), Telok Ayer Road

These guys (113 Telok Ayer Street, tel : +65 8088 3850) are a chicken specialty shop from Korea. According to them, they're really popular. And they're sister to the current samgyetang belle of the ball Modu, so we came here for samgyetang.

But first some sikhye. Flavour's sweet, malty and oat-y.

Middle's salt and pepper, not brown sugar. The cabbage on the right is baek kimchi with yuja/yuzu. Nice. The other green preserved vegetable thingy on the left...not so memorable.

We were here for samgyetang but I was also curious about their grilled chicken parts because that's what they were known for. We decided we'd try one part and went for the heart.

Those little hearts were grilled table side.

Mouthing silent squeals with mouths they don't have while they sizzled to our delights.

Came with some dips and salt. Though I like salt best because that's the condiment where the flavour of the heart and the char aroma came through, the others dips were not bad.

Truffle was shaven on serving for the truffle samgyetang.

The broth from it tasted like a tangy mushroom soup...not exactly what I imagined. No discernible ginseng flavour. It wasn't bad though. Chicken was slurp off the bone tender.

In retrospect, I liked the oat-y earthy flavour of the perilla samgyetang better. The collagen broth that they use for refills has that ginseng taste I was thinking of. Both banchan and soup are refillable.

Shi Le Yuan (實叻園), Redhill Food Centre

Have seen Shi Le Yuan (#01-82 Redhill Food Centre, 85 Redhill Lane) a number of times but have always been deterred by their queue. Decided to give them a go recently and in retrospect, this was a queue I understood. Their kuey chap was pretty good.

All the stewed/braised stuff were tender. Notable mention goes to the pork belly and pig's tongue. Yup, pig's tongue. A rarity for kuey chap stalls. Offhand, the only other stalls which I can recall having them were Bukit Merah View Kway Chap (this one is not at Bukit Merah View btw) and Tuan Yuan Pork Ribs Soup. I'm gonna have to say that She Le Yuan has the better rendition.

Bao Er Cafe, Holland Village

Haven't been to the original Bao Er Cafe at Balestier. This was the newly opened branch at Holland Village. The experience was mediocre.

For some context, the owners are also responsible for Prawnography and Treasure Toast. Based on both experiences, we avoided their Hokkien mee. Also because we've heard that this one has got nothing on Shiok Hokkien Mee.

I was of the impression that having had a few eateries under their belt, they'd be pretty familiar with running another branch. One would assume that they've gotten experienced from lessons learnt. There's a number panel for order collection notification placed in a position that's obviously not easy to see. 🤔

The digital menu has no indication of anything that was not available. This could likely mean 

i) Usability is not a priority or requirement when they paid for it. 

ii) Or perhaps, it just never crossed their mind that out of availability items need to be made known 

iii) Feature was there and they never thought it would be useful to enable it.

🤔

More than half of our add ons were not available and we only learnt of it after the order was processed and paid for. 🤔

Which led to how that was managed. We were informed of the missing items and then told that we could do another order while they would cancel the first order. We responded by replying that we've already paid for that first order. They then offered that the second order can be offset by what we paid for the first order which we were okay with. Then they offered again for us to just take the first order with refund. Then the first order arrived. And we were kinda "forced" to accept it without the missing add ons in which a refund was given. I felt like we were cornered and because they appeared to be busy. 🤔

This was within the first week of operation and things have already started running out? 🤔

Felt like an absence of planned error recovery for a system lacking error tolerance. 🤔

Which brings me back to the beginning. What happened with them and their wisdom gleaned from running the original Bao Er Cafe, Prawnography and Treasure Toast? 🤔

Coffee's drinkable but not something I'd look forward to.

Bee hoon's oily and bland-ish. I got this thinking it would be the smoky rendition they did for Treasure Toast but it wasn't the same. The chilli saved it.

Luncheon meat fried rice was bland. No idea what went into it but the tiny cubes of luncheon meat barely registered flavour.

It was a good thing that we didn't get their kaya butter toast because the menu clearly depicted pandan kaya. When I went into the shop, noticed and asked about the mustard-y colour, I was informed it's coconut kaya. 😓