The grilled aubergine and hummus sandwich from Sarnies

There...... trying out a meatless sandwich from Sarnies for the first time. I was thinking that those aubergines might have been freshly grilled but it turned out to be chilled instead, making the sandwich oddly refreshing? Especially when everything else including the roasted capsicum were chilled as well. The only gripe I suppose was while I could see the hummus that was spread onto the bread, I couldn't quite taste it in the midst of all the flavours. Still I thought this was pretty enjoyable. Would have been even better if there was more of that feta cheese to go around though.

Update on 18/10/2015

So we sat near the kitchen today so everything looked a lot more blue. The sandwich today had extra feta cheese which was requested for. There was indeed more feta than the last time, but they were lumped together in the centre that the flavours concentrated in the middle while the edges of the sandwich didn't have any. Speaking of more, there was a lot more hummus as well. Each bite was oozing hummus around the edges of the bread. The greens were totally different from the last round.

The verdict was, it's been inconsistently made. There appears to be more people at the sandwich counter these days, but they gave me the impression weren't too serious about what they were doing. I hope this doesn't signify a downfall in their standards.

Casse Croûte, Park West Condominium

Nice little outpost cloistered within a private residential estate (8 Jalan Lempeng, Park West Condominium, #02-02 The Club House, tel : +65 9630 4526) by Patrick Heuberger, formerly of Au Petit Salut and Le Bistrot Du Sommelier. I had never really gotten familiar with his former bistro but the latter, I liked so we made the trip down to have some of his food.

Waiting time was spent on some charcuterie. Most of them - like the duck rillette and the pig head terrine were made in house. Which was the point because as much as they have been derived from traditional recipes, it was unique to this place.

We tried their house made andouillette, pan fried and served with mustard.

The spiced pig intestine and tripe stuffed sausage was delicious. People tend to classify these items as an acquired taste. We've acquired such a taste a long time ago and thus enjoyed all of it. The grind of the stuffings were more fine than those served at L'Angelus.

Their ribeye au poivre was delicious. The meat was a nice shade of medium rare as requested for, crusted with a salted peppercorn crust and paired with an outstanding brandy cream sauce. The sauce was so good that we simply had to help monsieur Heuberger wipe down his cocotte with an extra order of baguette. I'd order this again in a heartbeat.

With all the meat, we needed to balance off the dinner with some vegetables.

And some profiteroles to end. By the way, Le Loups dans la Bergerie was a pretty decent bottle. Enough body to be paired with steak, not too tannic and relatively inexpensive.

Kanda Wadatsumi, Tras Street

Here's a barachirashi lunch with an additional side of a grilled ayu from Kanda Wadatsumi (50 Tras Street, tel : +65 6221 6264). The rice bowl was rather small and honestly not very impressive at all if not for the uni. We also didn't quite understand not having vinegared rice with the barachirashi. Apparently, they provide a small pot of bonito broth which one could use on the rice like a sort of chazuke. But really, with such a small bowl, how much rice did they honestly expect us to have left for that purpose. 

While it could be argued that one could top up the lunch with an option for zensai/dessert which comes with unlimited refills of rice, I'm not sure the correct idea is to expect everyone to do so. Fortunately, one could easily find a similar and more satisfying option down at Sakari Sushi which was also more straight forward; and in my not so humble opinion, tastier as well just a few literal minutes walk away.

The grilled ayu was quite good. Loved the bitter sweet innards. But it is a little difficult to convince ourselves to come back on the merit of a pricey small grilled fish.

Boca, Bukit Pasoh Road

Don't remember having had Portuguese food before. Not even when I was in Malacca ages ago or at Macau so Boca (6 Bukit Pasoh Rd., tel : +65 6221 0132) sounded interesting for something a little different. Well, maybe it's not all so different.

We started off with some of their bread. The basket came with three types - a regular one, one with pine nuts and the shadowy looking pieces are squid ink with sweet potato. The latter two were good. The former of the latter was fragrant with the nut (that good) and the latter of the latter tasted slightly crustacean. Not what I expected of squid ink, but it was quite nice. Especially with their very fruity EVOO. 

This was their bacalao fritters. I'm not sure if there are good representatives of Portuguese bacalao but they're quite different from the Italian ones. I'm not talking about the fried part. The mixture in the cod was probably just of different ingredients. If you wanted to know, I didn't think these were impressive. 

What got our attentions was their bife à café, or coffee steak. A seared medium rare tenderloin in cognac and espresso cream sauce. The experience of each mouthful felt like a teaser of a strong latte just before it reaches the lip before it transforms into a savoury velvet sauce in the mouth. We liked it. Wiped the plate clean with bread. A little expensive though.

The coffee steak came with almond rice. This was nicely done with the flavours of the nut infused into the rice. With a little bit of salt, it would have been awesome. The rice did have the aroma of almond.

The other interesting looking item on menu was their bread porridge. Made with bread obviously - doused in olive oil and seafood stock and folded in with bits of shrimp as far as we could tell. Quite nice, should be eaten hot or warm. Don't wait for it to cool.

On hindsight, what we ordered were a little too heavy on the carbs. But now we know.

The Hainanese chicken rice stall at Tangs Market

As ordinary as this might have looked, this chicken rice was pretty good (Tangs Plaza Basement 1, 310 Orchard Road). Rice was flavourful enough that one could simply eat them on their own or with the chilli sauce which was pretty competent too. Their roasted chicken drumstick had meat that was smooth and delicious while the soup that they had provided on the side was real chicken soup rather than the sorry excuse for cabbage broth that many stalls try to pass off as soup. I'm definitely coming back again.

The large butadon from Butahage

Here's the large butadon from Butahage featuring what turned out to be a chewier US beef in comparison to the more tender Premier Japanese option. I'm definitely sticking to the Japanese one in the future since that was noticeably much more tender, fat laced and flavourful. There was so much contrast in the flavour that I had even suspected that the glaze that they used for both meats were different.