Red Pig Korean Restaurant, Amoy Street

It was almost a full house slightly before 7pm on a Tuesday night. Food here's (93 Amoy St, tel : +65 6220 7176) not too bad. The service staff seemed to be overwhelmed and there weren't any refills of the banchan. I was wondering if it's because of the limited wait staff are constantly having to run from table to table.

To note - one should wait for the charcoal grill to be heated up before attempting to cook that galbisal as I doubted that the servers took enough notice when they assisted in the cooking. Having a grill that was still heating up only meant that there wasn't enough heat for you to get respectable grill marks onto the meat without them getting overcooked. Meat doesn't come salted, but that's easily rectifiable. Their signature Red Pig cuts of marinated pork were pretty tasty in a spicy, nutty and sweet sort of way. What was outstanding was their crispy seafood pancake which was a medley of textures from the exterior, the chewy insides, bite from generous portions of squid and crunchy spring onions.

The Burger Bar by Fat Boy's Concepts, Far East Plaza

The Burger Bar (14 Scotts Road, #01-16A/B Far East Plaza, tel : +65 6737 3315) is run by the people that came up with Fatboys. The idea here is for people to build their own burgers and the options are pretty much similar to what one gets at Fatboys. With some bits of upgrades (more options for toppings, sauces, orders taken through iPads and blah blah....). Back at Fatboys, I remember being put off by the beef patties that they were using. What I didn't like about them were the poor meat to fat ratio, blandness and that they were generally overdone and not delicious. I hoping for an upgrade to the patties that they had been using now that this place had happened but these guys here used exactly the same beef as they did then.

That was really the weakest link for my order of cheeseburger with cheddar, pickles and peanut butter. They even had the soft brioche freshly toasted and the only thing that hadn't worked for me was the very forgettable meat. Which made it such a pity. I'll happily top up the difference and head across the road for something real the next time I want proper beef in my burger when I'm in the vicinity.

KL Hokkien mee at Malaysia Boleh

This is from Ping Ge KL Hokkien Mee stall down at Malaysia Boleh (1 Jurong Point 2, #03-28), a little food court that specializes in Malaysian Chinese street food which opened October last year. I haven't had these dark soy sauced noodles in some years, the last time being in Kuala Lumpur where I really enjoyed them.

How does this one stack?  Not as smokey as I was hoping for and a little lacking of the fragrance from the dark soy sauce element. But it was still enjoyable, piping hot with crispy bits of fried lard from the fired wok of what looked to be a pretty competent stir frying cook. The chilli that they provided on self service was pretty good stuff going with those savory sweetish and greased up thick noodles. I certainly wouldn't mind having these again, but the other options there like prawn noodles and even chicken rice look pretty darned appealing too.

Another literal look at the lamb skewers from Jia Yan

For reasons I will not venture into, things have gotten a little slow lately and nothing new or interesting have come by in the way of eats. So this was just an updated (clearer) picture of the lamb skewers from Jia Yan. And more of them as well. This second visit made me realize that there were actually some sesame seeds sprinkled over the lamb which I could taste and I had somehow missed totally during the previous visit.

Yes, this made a relatively fuss free (no need to think) dinner. I promise that I will start looking elsewhere so that I can at least make some comparisons between shops.

A couple of favorites from Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐)

These above are known as xiao cai on the menu of Din Tai Fung. It's a bunch of julienned stuff and a bunch of other stuff that's not actually julienned, but looks that way too. There's seaweed and beansprouts, strips of bean curd with rice vermicelli that results in a medley of textures in the mouth. The flavours were savoury, a little spicy and a bunch of sour. And it's been so addictive that we've had them almost every single visit since.

And then there's their truffle xiao long bao. I may not be an expert in them, but I daresay that the ones here are consistently the best in this country. A two hit combo of a noticeably robust aroma of the truffle in the soup followed by the flavour of pork. Keep in mind that I'm rating these as the best because of the truffle flavour over something else like the ones from Paradise Dynasty which had a porkier punch, but suffered very poorly from the inexcusable lack of aroma from the truffle.

These two alone could keep me coming back. Or at least until I get a shot at their truffle chicken soup which I always seem to miss.

Chinese lamb skewers in Balestier

I've been having a bout of craving for some lamb skewers lately since the last time in Hong Kong. Coincidentally, a buddy of mine happened to have stumbled upon one in Balestier Road a while back and we ended up there one evening.

There're no addresses on this post because I forgot to ask for a business card but the place was a Chinese restaurant that strangely has Korean characters on their signboard and also serves a selection of Korean food. Hmmm, it's a few units away from the Loy Kee Chicken Rice place.

This was pretty good. In fact, much better tasting than the one I had previously. The flavours from the spices were bold and fortunately didn't mask too much of the natural flavour of the lamb. For a dollar per skewer, it wasn't tough on the pockets too. We managed a small wok of spicy beef tendon and potatoes along with spicy bean curd strips in chilli/sesame oil and we thought that it was honestly pretty good. I'm going to head back here again another time.

Edit 19/04/2013 :
The name of the place is Jia Yan Restaurant. Address is 336 Balestier Road.