Maggie goreng keema from Umar Ali Cafe

A recent breakfast of another permutation of fried noodles down at Umar Ali Cafe. Nicely done with some heat and bits of minced lamb. But I've noticed an inconsistency. The last time we ordered their rice/noodle goreng without stating any preferences, we were served the putih (white) ones which I had assumed to be the default unless merah (red) was requested for. This one was automatically enrolled as a red plate. 🤔

Last Christ-mas, I......

...we made some food. Mostly experimental without formal recipes. Like a ham we got from NTUC with a glaze made from a reduction of mulled wine spices & some Finnish honey (don't ask), cloves and jam. Turned out to be really good and was definitely less costly than ones we used to order from a place that sells ribs.

Onion and bacon soup.

These were highly experimental based off some recipe short in TikTok - eggwashed Vietnamese rice paper/bánh tráng with ham and cheese rolled into snails and oven baked. An alternate universe gỏi cuốn minus vegetables.

A second batch was made to include crab tomalley. 😬

Didn't make this obviously but the Vacherin Mont d'Or made it to table with breads and jams and honey. 👍🏼

Buttery baked mash with bacon and a awesome cheesy crust.

All these and bottles of mulled wine and durian.

Pithiviers and Wellingtons @ Gaston

Recent weekend lunch at Gaston.

Those above were Croquettes Bourguignonnes. The insides were smoked ham and Epoisse cheese. So what we had was a crunchy breading on the exterior and piping hot creaminess with stinky cheesiness inside. Nice!

Guinea fowl pithivier with foie gras, shaven black truffle & morels in vin jaune sauce. Nice, creamy and no kidding about the rich part. There were strips of bacon in the sauce as well and the puff pastry was buttery.

The venison wellington was an on board special. Like the pithivier, there was foie gras, shaven black truffle and also bacon with the sauce. Not forgetting buttery pastry as well. Sauce was a velvety richness...likely a reduction of sorts but fruity.

Re-visiting Surry Hills Grocer @ Raffles City

Getting some food at Surrey Hills Grocer at Raffles City.

Farm styled mushroom soup's not great. We've had more mushroomy ones at this price point. The sweet potato foam felt gimmicky because it's there, we're not sure how they work together and the flavour wasn't sufficiently intense that it left an impression. It felt like it was there because they wanted to be different.

Their Lao Gan Ma chee cheong fun did not look like much.

Turned out to be awesome. Those Lao Gan Ma roasted chilli added plenty of flavour, not to mention a measure of umami heat, into the creaminess of the sauce. 👍🏼

Mussels were okay. Garlicky broth was pretty decent too. Fell short of memorable and that's what we were looking/hoping for.

Dim Sum Club, Wheelock Place

Came across Dim Sum Club (B1-01 Wheelock Place, 501 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6263 9164) by chance. The spot they're at used to be a coffee place if I recall correctly.

Tea's nice. Smooth and creamy local rendition that's sweet but not excessively so.  

Pan fried yam cake (芋头糕). There's chunks of yam, lup cheong and mushrooms in it.

Curious pan fried kaya bao. They're okay I guess. The kaya fillings inside were not memorable and the skin wasn't the fresh and fluffy kind.

Truffle noodle with sunny side up. The one thing that bothered me some about it was the kee flavour in the noodles. While the saucing and the egg yolk help mask that, some still came through. Otherwise, pretty decent.

Steamed pork and salted egg yolk patty on rice. Nice. Rice was tender and moist. Kailan was tender and not fibrous.

Har gow had thick skin. Not the delicate wrapper we gravitate to. Wouldn't say that it's bad but also wouldn't be getting them if we ever came back.

Their red bean soup with tangerine peel had consistency like porridge and that tangerine peel flavour was adequate. There's some sago in it too. I like this.

'Kevin' in plain bagel from Two Men Bagel House

December special 'Kevin' from Two Men Bagel House ( 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十, 十一, 十二, 十三, 十四, 十五, 十六, 十七, 十八, 十九, 二十, 二十一, 二十二, 二十三, 二十四, 二十五, 二十六, 二十七, 二十八, 二十九). I know I mentioned MYOB the last time but the monthly special gave me a pass on that.

Their product shot looked a lot better though. Tasted the ham, roast beef, rockets, cranberry jelly, pistachio sage crumble. Pretty Christmas-y. I know the cheddar is buried in the melange of flavours and I'm not getting any of the whipped truffle butter at all.

Pretty sure I didn't get any truffle butter in there.