They are not marshmallows....

They're are actually some kind of freeze dried strawberries coated with white chocolate which a friend got from Muji in Hong Kong. They taste pretty good if you don't eat too many of them at a time. What one gets from these were a tart interior of the dried strawberry which have somehow gotten a texture like meringue that's mixed with the creamy sweet white chocolate shell. Pity I can't find them here.

   

Edit 19/07/08 I found these at Muji at Paragon.

Akashi, Orchard Parade Hotel

I've been to Akashi a few times, but this is the first visit to the new outlet (1 Tanglin Road, #01-01A Orchard Parade Hotel, tel: 6732 4438) located just next door to their Inakaya Robatayaki place at Orchard Parade Hotel.

I noticed that there is this strange relationship that I have with my visits to Akashi. It was always an impromptu decision. I have never really planned to visit them and still ended up here on last minute decisions.

After some moments of back and forth with the menu, we finally managed to decide on what we wanted and sushis were something that I decided were a must have. Though this time round, we pushed it a little bit more for some of the premium items which served as a gauge for the standards in this outlet.

uni gunkan

otoro

aburi toro

botan ebi

anago

ura maki

There is something about raw slices of seafood that is appealing. Their chilled creamy uni with its earthy sweetness and subtly buttery otoro left nothing in the way of gripes except for the fact that more would have been great. That was further met by the explosion of butteriness in the aburi-ed version of the tuna belly. Oil from the melted fats seeped into the rice and onto the plate. This stuff is amazing.

The botan ebi was plump, sweet and firm. I'm having anago for the first time as I can remember. These salt water eels wasn't as oily as unagi but they were tender and tasty the same. And quite a mouthful as well.

crispy grilled heads from the botan ebi

fried prawn ball

mategai in some mayo miso

fish noodles

sweet potatoes

pumpkin ice cream

The rest of the items were a bunch of this and thats from the menu. Of note were the fish noodles which actually had texture akin to fish cake rather than noodles. That wasn't bad at all but I wished the portions could have been bigger for what they were charging. The bamboo clams were the usual, but the miso mayo made a whole lot of difference to it by adding an aromatic sweet and savory creaminess. That being said, the miso mayo made up pretty much most of the flavor. Unfortunately for the prawn ball, it wasn't very spectacular. It's simply as you see it, a ball of minced prawn.

I was thinking that the sweet potato would be grilled, but they arrived steamed. It wasn't a bad thing but I feel that Kazu's method of grilling them and serving with butter is the better way to go. If you like pumpkin, the ice cream here was a creamy one with bits of pumpkin in it.

Circular Sumptuous Square, Circular Road

This eatery has a pretty interesting name if one were to disregard the fact that it's located at Circular Road (14 Circular Road). Haha....certainly has nothing to do with circling any squares and such. It's actually about roast duck. And talking about roast ducks, there's a very short story on how this dinner here came about. We were actually locating for the newly opened Ohsho outlet in the vicinity and didn't see it despite making a couple of passes down the road. And we had only managed to find it after dinner. I could have sworn that we did not see....... so chance was pretty much what made roast duck dinner tonight.


The place does serve a small variety of cooked food (tze char) but we didn't go for any of that. We ordered a half roast duck ($18) which turned out to be quite good in spite of the slightly messy appearances. I suppose it might have been the fact that they had to debone the bird. The duck came with slightly crisp skin and just a little bit of fat under that skin was about just right. Meaning that enough of that fat was present for a nice greasy flavour without being too excessive. An order of the roast pork turned out pretty good as well as unexpected. It was deep fried. Crispy deep fried roasted pork belly. Circular sumptuous square. And nothing but lime juice and a few strips of cucumber to save us from all that cholesterol.

La Strada, Shaw Centre

I'm slowly but surely getting to appreciate how the Les Amis group position themselves as one of the best restaurants in their business here. I walked out of La Strada (1 Scotts Road, Shaw Centre, #02-10, tel : 6737 2622) after a leisurely lunch feeling good about the place, pretty much the same good feel I had from Aoki a couple of doors down the same pavement. Thanks ice, for making the lunch arrangements. The quality of the food and the unobtrusively attentive service did merit justification of their heftier price tags. This place was quite close to stellar. Anything more comprehensive would have been fine dining or my personal butler. I can't begin to describe how good a thing it was for the server to actually know what was on menu instead of the usual "please hold on, let me check" or the baffled mask/sheepish grin.

The starters for lunch were a smoky pan fried scamorza cheese, wagyu carpaccio in truffled mayo and foie gras.

No complains with the starters. The lightly fried scamorza was delicious, clad in simplicity. I could just almost call it juicy and I'm not talking just about grease. Wagyu carpaccio was wasted on me since the way they were done would never impart any of the additional flavours associated with that breed of cattle. The saving grace of the carppacio di manzo for me was the heady truffle mayonnaise with the thinly sliced Parmigiano Reggiano which made it memorable.

I haven't had a good piece of pan fried foie gras in a while and this definitely deserved a mention. You know, the tell tale shades of bronzed char that shading the edges thinning out onto the centers that forms part of the lightly crisp shell of the liver that is still slightly pinkish on the insides and quivery soft. My last recollection was simply disappointing. This was as I said, nice and on a crisp piece of toast with some excellent pear compote.

tagliolini al granchio

spaghetti alla chitarra con salsa carbonara tartufata

oven roasted french baby chicken

We had some idea of what we wanted and that was reinforced by the recommendation from the server. I wouldn't call it a blind leap of faith in this instance to make our choices by virtue of suggestion. Like I said, we already had some idea.

The tagliolini al granchio of shredded mud crab, garlic, chilli and white wine turned out to be remarkably Asian in flavours. To put it into a local context, this was mee pok in a sauce that tasted as unanimously agreed upon, like that of the three egg spinach/boxthorn. The better pasta I felt was definitely La Strada's rendition of the carbonara featuring truffle butter, shaven parmesan and a nicely done confit egg. I rank this rich rendition as one of the better pastas I've had

I generally don't do much chicken in a western dining and I know nothing about French baby chickens - however this roasted baby chicken was indeed as tasty as the server had recommended. I found the roasted crisp of the exterior well endowed with char fragrance and to our pleasant surprise, juicy and tender meat inside. With little excessive grease and condiments apart from its own roasting jus, this was definitely not your regular chicken chop.

Wouldn't say that the tiramisu was bad. It was far from being bad. It just lacked the edge from sufficient marsala wine and the mascarpone cream probably didn't have enough body to be served in anything else but a container. That's not necessarily a bad thing but I generally prefer mine with a bit more alcohol. The molten chocolate tart was also a little better that what I had imagined. Was good, but didn't quite wow. I actually enjoyed the accompanying bitter-ish orange sorbet better.

By the way, La Strada serves a mean brew of beans of a brand of roast which they claim exclusively for their own. If you're in town, love good strong coffee and are looking for a cuppa, forget Starbucks. Come here. It's only $5.

Baikohken, North Canal Road

If you're wondering about the amount of golden yellow at the top, this butter corn shoyu ramen from Baikohken (7 North Canal Road, tel: 6534 3808) normally doesn't come with so much butter. I had topped the bowl up with extra butter, corn and an egg. I did manage a couple of spoonfuls of the broth before everything was mixed up. Found it to be both less robust and salty in comparison with those at Ramen Santouka. The thick sliced braised pork was also rather lean. It was also soft that there were several occasions, I thought that it could have been tuna as ther meat crumbled rather easily. This was quite unexpected. As usual, I found the noodles to be too soft for my likings.

What I did like was their charshu don - a bowl of rice with generous chunks of the braised pork topped with scallions. Turned out to be simple yet tasty comfort food. Didn't see this rice bowl coming from a ramen shop becoming what I enjoyed the most. Am pretty sure I'd come back for this again. Even if the soft crumbly pork tasted like tuna.

Handlebar, Gillman Village

Some years back, I used to work around the vicinity of Alexandra and it was only today that I've visited Handle Bar (1 Lock Road, Gillman Village, tel: 6475 9571) for the first time. The affliction of looking far out ahead instead of just simply forward is a curse that plagues many, myself included. Now that this location is truly out of the way from any place that I may be in most circumstances, I've chosen to take notice and visit it. But it was a pretty decent place. At least for steaks and beers with friends it is.

The food was pretty decent I must say, if a little pricey in comparison for the ribeye which I had. At almost $40, one gets a decent 350g slab of fatty beef - but I didn't think they got medium rare right. It was definitely more cooked that I had wanted and I guess that the bright side was that it would have been worse for it to be undercooked than over. There was an amusingly named "Silence of the Lambs" rack that came thickly cut and in generous proportions, but was unfortunately lacking in the natural flavours of the meat and further drowned out by the wine sauce. Stuffed jalapenos were quite good actually. I'm not an expert in those since I don't eat them often at all, but I though those cream cheese stuffed chillis were rather tasty with a noticeable bit of spicy kick.

Coming back for the steaks and beer is definitely not out of the question.