The Pelican Seafood Bar & Grill, One Fullerton

The seaweed sourdough that they served before meals was very hot and very good with butter!

the pelican chowder

seafood, brown butter, bacon

black peppered candied bacon

brown sugar, lime

the pelican platter

swordfish steak

fresh herb vinaigrette

sea brined baby chicken

gooseberry relish

lobster thermidor

Colorado lamb chops

peas, apricot, mint

Suprette, Jalan Besar

Suprette (383 Jalan Besar, Kam Leng Hotel, tel : +65 6298 8962) is located on the ground floor of a cosy boutique hotel nestled in Jalan Besar right across the main street from Lavender Food Square.

The place is basically a small restaurant with a bar and a small menu. And they serve a very unremarkable salad.

The only thing that I enjoyed about their Suprette Burger is the buns. Sesame studded, toasted and buttered. Well, maybe the Gruyère cheese too. The rest of it was rather ordinary and the heart of the burger, which was the patty, was sadly filled with too much herbs and did not possess a favorable fat to meat ratio. There were definitely flavors going on, but not those that I liked in a burger.

A deft hand with the salt and pepper really elevated their hanger steak which I liked. Even though it was poorly cooked to a medium well doness when I had requested for medium rare. The flavors of the meat shone through and quite a bit of tenderness remained in the grainy textures that tore into delicious slivers. Pity about the doneness. And the bone with too little marrow.

What I couldn't quite settle on was the red onion relish that threw me off by being licorice-ish and brought reminders of star anise. I couldn't help thinking of lor bah (Chinese dark soy sauce braised meat with spices). Didn't taste bad actually, just didn't quite meld into expectations.

Revisiting Ramen Champion

I pretty much had the same stuff from both Bario and Ikkousha the first time I came over to Ramen Champion. The building then was known as Iluma and is currently known as Bugis+. Then, it was suppose to be a championship competition that lasted over the duration of a year with the winner setting up a permanent shop. Ikkousha won. It's been more than one and a half years since and the challengers are all still here.

Which isn't a bad thing since both my favourites are located right next to each other. Having both bowls ramen on the same seating allowed me to taste with more clarity, the differences in the broth between the two. For some reasons, drinking one accentuated the flavour of the other. Ikkousha, my favourite Hakata styled ramen with thin wiry noodle in a porky creamy broth and Bario's garlicky one that I seem to detect flavours of shoyu now that I'm having both together.

If I had to choose a preferred broth, I'd still pick the tonkotsu. But Bario takes the cake for texture with their squiggly, firm and chewy noodles - married in equal portions with their crunchy boiled bean sprouts.

Kith Cafe, Park Mall

No match for this.

The first time I had visited Kith Cafe was at the outlet down at Rodyk Street just by the river. It was a nice spot, albeit a little out of the way. The location was small and it got crowded pretty fast. I remember that breakfast was ok, portions were a little small that I had to eat something else after.

The portions here seems a little larger because of the brioche. But not so satisfying. Marmalade was quite sweet and lacking in the flavours of the fruit. Caramelized onions were so sweet that I had to suspect that there was a lot of sugar used. Toasties with cheese and bacon needed more cheese and bacon. And man, did they destroyed some foie gras there.

Windowsill In The Woods, Horne Road

This establishment previously known as just Windowsill Pies as I know it used to sell just pies. Sweet dessert pies to be exact. Recently, they seem to have come up with a concept for their pie shop, interestingly named Windowsill in the Woods (78 Horne Road, tel : +65 9004 7827) with a Nordic decor, that does pop up themes in their kitchen for savory food with each theme lasting a fortnight.

This was basically the first run and I'm seeing that the current theme is poultry.

I think it wasn't too bad at all. I would've liked more sausage in those scotch eggs with curry mayo but I'm not complaining. Fried chicken with waffles was fairly crispy and definitely greasy (the bird!) with the sweet and savory thing going on. What I really liked was their arrabbiata styled spicy pasta with chicken hearts and baby octopus. Portions of those chicken hearts were a little measley for me, but the taste and chew was right up my alley. Gotta give those buffalo quails in sour cream dip on the side a try. I actually liked the spicy tangy morsels of bird much better than I had expected.

 scotch eggs three

scotch eggs de-brained

fried chicken and waffles

linguine with chicken hearts and octopus

buffalo quails

Ramen Bari-Uma, Tanglin Shopping Centre

I was wondering what the shoyu based tonkotsu broth by Ramen Bari-Uma (19 Tanglin Road, #B1-01/02 Tanglin Shopping Centre, tel : +65 68874484) from Hiroshima was about before stepping in today. Turned out that the brown, cloudy broth did taste like a robust mix of both flavours with a thick consistency.

I enjoyed this to some degree even though I'm not sure how I actually feel about it. Yes I'm strangely conflicted. While this might not replace the regular tonkotsu as my favourite soup base anytime soon, I did definitely dig the savoury depth. Not to mention that the bowl was served with aburied charshu. Those strong caramelized flavours made their slices a winner and I'll be sure to add on extras in my next visit. No molten yolk from their ajitama there.

We spied some yakitori and ordered some pork belly and gizzards in tare. Enjoyed the juicy belly, but gizzard was just ordinary and crunchily textured.