Bonta Bonta, Japan Food Town @ Wisma Atria

I gather that Bonta Bonta (#04-39 Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Road, tel : +65 62623207) is a rice specialist that uses kinme mai - a rice from Japan that is processed with a patented buffing technique that helps preserves the nutrients by retaining the nutritious sub-aleurone layer. It is supposed to taste better too but I couldn't detect anything special from the rice which they served with their kaisen dons. In fact, it tasted ordinary.

The seafood for their rice bowls were pretty decent quality but not top notch if you catch my drift. These guys are rice guys anyway so I guess pretty good was good enough. That botan ebi had some deliciously sweet head fat and the uni they served turned out much better than what I had imagined in my apprehension. I may just come back another time.

White asparaguses and purple potato at 2it & drink

We returned to 2it & drink must faster than I thought we would. This would be largely because of the white asparagus season and we were pretty impressed with their white asparagus pizza the last time.

Today we had those asparaguses with tagliatelle in a butter sauce. This was amazing. The sauce even had the aroma of the asparagus. Pasta had great texture while the vegetable was tender and sweet with its asparagus-y flavour. Something not to be missed as long as they are in season.

That's their lamb shank with purple potato mash. Another good call here. The shank was tender but not fork tender. There was a nice flavour on the meat flavoured by the jus and some bits of fat. The mash was pretty tasty. I wished it were bigger though.

Profiteroles for dessert. Cream inside, not ice cream. Enjoyed this.

Timbre+, Ayer Rajah Crescent

Dinnering at Timbre+ (73A Ayer Rajah Crescent). I'm seeing that the hawker centre style of their setup resonates well with a lot of people. Myself included. Did anyone notice that in spite of the big ass fans and additional ventilation, this place isn't particularly better ventilated than many hawker centres?

We got some salted yolk wings from Two Wings. These deep fried wings were dunked in their salted yolk sauce before they were served. These were not bad. A little greasy though.

Here's a shrimp po boy from Dancing Crab Shack. At least that's what they call it. 6 fried shrimps and some coleslaw between buttered brioche. I wished they gave more shrimp. That buttered brioche made it all good though. While we enjoyed this, I don't think I'm getting it again. 

Big Bern's American Grill (from the original owner of Botak Jones), has what they call a lamb cheese steak po boy. Something they're saying is a first of its kind. Which I thought was a cool idea conceptually. The sliced lamb appeared to be sautéed with onions and mushrooms. The sauce was cheesy, had a bit too much dried oregano and the lamb flavours were barely discernible. Still we enjoyed this more than a certain cheesesteak than we had recently.

2it & drink again

A revisit. These guys have a nice salumi board. Even though it's pretty much the usual stuff - salami, mortadella, speck, and prosciutto di Parma - it was delicious. Especially good with their bread that's been doused with some of the olive oil.

There was white asparagus pizza from the specials board and it was pretty damn good. The mild flavours of those asparaguses and its sweetness came through in spite of all the cheese. With a few twists from the pepper mill, this was easily one of the most enjoyable pizza I've had in a while. The restaurant even did their spaghetti carbonara upon request, without cream. It turned out a wetter than I had imagined but I thought the flavours were quite good. Just needed a bit more pepper. 

Mao shan wang pizza from Tino's

One would be very hard pressed to find something like this anywhere else in the world - not to mention the fact that it's made with the expensive mao shan wang varietal. Tino's might have gotten themselves a first around here. They have a D24 option as well but I thought I should just shoot for the better.

I suppose I was both anticipating and somewhat wary of a durian pizza. So part of me was hoping that it'll be amazing while the other, reminded me not to set too much of expectations.

How did this go? While it wasn't as robustly flavoured as the eating the actual fruit but the pie didn't taste bad at all. The durian topping was pretty generous but I wonder if it was purely mao shan wang. No, it wasn't really so weird together with cheese. This should be eaten while it's still hot though.

Re-visiting Spice Junction

What have we here? It looks like the usual chilled sweet lassi that I would normally order. Except that it is not. It's a ginger lassi. Sweet and a bit of aroma from the ginger with a lot of that yoghurt flavour that I enjoy. Even though I was hoping for a stronger ginger taste, I found myself liking this.

That's a kozhi porichathu, another KFC if you would. This one represents Keralan fried chicken that's marinated in a spice paste. The spice paste was a little gingery, a little garlic-y and had some heat. The meat from the bird was dry though. While we didn't dislike this, I don't think it's something that we would be coming back for especially when there's a lot of other interesting stuff on their menu.

We were thinking of a richer and creamier gravy when we ordered the vegetable korma. This was much less viscous in texture but had quite a bit of coconut and some tomato flavours.

What I was looking forward to was their Malabar styled mutton briyani. Briyani that is supposedly prepared in the style that they do in Thalassery, a town in the Malabar coast of Kerala. While I'm not really sure what's the difference between the this particular kind and the other styles of briyani, it appeared paler in colour than the ones we normally find here. Spice Junction uses basmati which I read isn't the usual type of rice for this particular type of briyani.

Like other dum briyani, the meat is layered into the rice and cooked with the rice. I'm out of adjectives at the moment so I'm going to stick to a 'this kicks ass'. I would come back just for this alone.

We finished up with their payasam of the day which had a lot of coconut flavour it as opposed to that milky saffron flavour that is usually the case. Because of that coconut flavour, this reminded me of bubur terigu infused with cardamom. Plus raisins and nuts.