Waffles & chicken from Clinton St. Baking Company

I've noticed quite a number of people ordering the waffle & chicken in the previous occasions at Clinton St. so curiosity got the better of me. I didn't think much of it. The chicken meat didn't taste brined like that last time I had their buttermilk fried chicken even though this was supposedly the same thing. Could hardly taste their honey Tabasco through all the maple honey. Here's a first and last for this.

East Treasure Chinese Restaurant (東寶之東方明珠), Clark Quay

I don't know how long this restaurant has been around but it looked relatively new. I was pretty surprised that East Treasure (Clarke Quay, Block B, #01-16, 3 River Valley Road, tel : +65 6252 4645) was managed by the folks behind Astons. Yeap, it's that Aston Group that has the Steak & Salad, Chic-a-boo and Javier's.

Hawthorn sweet and sour pork was not bad tasting. I liked that there was a mix of meat and fat in those pieces of pork. We also couldn't shake off the thought that we've had better done ones elsewhere. This one didn't hold the crisp well.

There's a herbal crocodile soup on menu. This was nice. It wasn't too heavy with the herbs and there was lots of pepper in the broth of savoury sweet. As well as slurpy tendon-y cartilage-y parts from the crocodile.

That's stir fried chive flowers. The dish was a little sweeter than I had imagined. Didn't like it.

Soy sauce chicken with Chinese rose wine was pretty good. This was expertly done with the flavours infused into the skin and the meat on the bird was tender.

Fried rice was not bad. The bits of pork in them didn't have any flavour though. For some reasons, eating this reminded me of Chinatown Special which I thought had better fried rice.

So the sambal helped. This sambal tasted like the ones that was used in the crystal dumpling stall from the old Tiong Bahru market.

There was a KL styled Hokkien mee. Pretty disappointing. Not much fragrance from the dark soy sauce and lard. Those tiny bits of lard that were in the noodles also didn't taste like they were deep fried.

More food from Victor's Kitchen

There are a few items that's worth the trip to Victor's Kitchen. First thing that comes to mind is their milk tea which is served iced in a bowl rather than ice in the tea. Like how they do it at Tai Hing.

Digressing from the topic of things worth coming for, we never realized that this place doesn't have char siew pau. We found that out today. They do have char siew bolo buns though so we ended up with these instead.

The fillings were not bad. Unfortunately, the buns weren't anything like those at Kam Wah though. Or even Tim Ho Wan. The crust here simply didn't taste very crusty at all.

We had a few other "regular" stuff like cheong fun with char siew.

Har gow. I still feel their skins were a little too thick.

Prawn and spinach dumplings which I thought weren't bad at all.

Back to those things worth coming for was their steamed radish cake with XO sauce. It's not going to be fair comparing this to the one at Wai Kee Congee so I won't. Hah!

Digressing from the things worth coming for again, Victor's has a bunch of modified items for this CNY. One of them were their abalone siew mai. The abalone on these were tinier than the ones we had at China Classic. They were chewy and without much flavour but the siew mai themselves tasted better than the last time.

Back again to the things worth coming for is their steamed chicken rice. This one was a CNY edition that featured lup cheong. The regular bowl doesn't. It's good because the rice and the chicken are both steamed together. The result was that both the rice and chicken were moist and tender with rendered fat and soy sauce flavouring the rice.

Chargrilled chunky prawn sandwich and flourless orange cake from PS. Cafe

I wouldn't say that it was their prawn noodles that encouraged me to try this chargrilled prawn sandwich but the description sounded like it might be good. In retrospect, it wasn't bad. Some of the grill on the sourdough should have been transferred to that prawn patty inside. What I didn't like were the bits of coriander in the prawn patty. It was never mentioned that there was coriander.

We ordered the flourless orange cake because we were curious how a flourless one would taste like. I was secretly hoping that it would pack the citrusy zest similar to the lemon cake we had from the defunct Lollapalooza. It didn't. But this wasn't half bad. The brown sauce was bitter caramel and there were enough orange rinds on the cake that it tasted almost like a marmalade. I don't mind eating this again.

The kamo abura soba from Tsuta revisited

I came back for their kamo abura soba because I remembered liking them. I'm not sure if I had missed out the options previously but it didn't seem like there were any for this particular noodles for more toppings. Anyways, this was still as delicious as I remembered it.

Re-revisiting Mustard on 初二

It used to be the case where we avoided Chinese food during the Chinese New Year because the restaurants are closed during the period but it doesn't seem to be the case nowadays. But old habits do die harder. It's a good excuse to head back down to Mustard anyway.

Today we ordered their saag gosht. That's right, it's not palak paneer there. We enjoyed it. However there was indeed a difference in the quality between this and the one we previously had at Punjab Grill which I felt was superior; because I could associate that lamb with words like smooth, moist and plump. This one wasn't as smooth, wasn't so moist and didn't feel plump. Now I'm more keenly aware of what I paid for.

We tried their mahi tikka and it turned out to be a good choice. The tender pieces of fish were tangy and smoky from the marinate. Good for returns.

What I had looking forward to was their Bengali prawn in coconut curry dish - or also known as chingri maacher malai. The creamy and rich cardamom/cinnamon/clove infused curry left an impression the first time I was here. Today was a moment reliving that experience. Still delicious. Today's prawns had much better texture than the last time. 

That's the churi naan, which according to the menu is layered and has coconut. This was sweet. Quite nice. For some reasons, it worked with both the saag and the chingri maacher malai.

Delicious curries begged to be paired with rice. We thought the buttery jeera basmati rice made good pairing

Definitely looking forward to the next time.