More food from Nirai Kanai

Another dinner at Nirai Kanai. We ended up here today because we had originally wanted to check out the dry aged steaks at The Ranch and they were out of dry aged beef.

We've had gyozas here before. Meaty juicy things.

Hamburg was peppery like I remembered it.

I got the cubic steak teishoku this time. Cubic steak = cubed steak. Meat's a little chewy and needs more flavour. I can only imagine that it was so lightly salted because they had wanted the accompanying dip to be used. I'd take salt over the dip. 

More roasts from Hong Kong Jin Tian (香港錦田)

Came by for a quick lunch. Got myself roasted duck breast and roasted pork with boiled egg and rice. The duck breast meat was unexpectedly tender. Roasted pork was good that we ordered seconds. Hong Kong Jin Tian's rendition of that roasted pork was old school like their other roasts - which meant a particular balance of meat to fat to crackling that is of a different ratio from what some of the contemporary roasts are trying to achieve. Fat was tender, none of the "melt in your mouth" shit that wannabe influencers love writing about.

Personally, the downside to Hong Kong Jin Tian's food was the rice. A little dry and beady which isn't much on its own. There's the gravy for that but I'm generally not a fan of their gravy.

Nusa & Tara, ABC Brickworks Food Centre

I heard the lontong was good so we came down to try it at Nusa & Tara (#01-22 ABC Brickworks Food Centre, 6 Jalan Bukit Merah).  What did I think of it? It was pretty damn good. Tender boiled sayur soaking in flavourful gravy spiced up with a splash of sambal. Savoury, a little sweet and pretty lemak. Yes, I did sneak in a couple of bergedil with the order. I rank this rendition in the same leagues as Kampong Korner,

The stall has both nasi sambal goreng and nasi lemak so I did a nasi lemak sambal goreng. Coconut rice with their creamy rendition of sambal goreng. And a fried egg, more serunding, some strips of fried tempeh and what appears to be achar. The dishes on the side may vary from day to day. Not bad but I'll pass on the nasi lemak for the nasi putih the next time. 

Idon'tknowwhattocallthisbutmasalachickenoffalricesoundedaboutright

I got this from the Indian Muslim stall at the Foodclique foodcourt (#01-132, 132 Jurong East Street 13). When I asked the proprietor what the greenish brown stuff (on the right) was, he merely replied that it was chicken liver. In retrospect, I'd call it masala chicken offal because I got two nicely tender and chewy hearts in there and some gizzards along with the livers. Not bad at all but I did wish that they'd chop up those gizzards in to smaller bites.

Still it made a comfortingly delicious and snooze inducing lunch with those beans, sambal boiled egg and fish curry over rice.

More food from Ting Heng Seafood Restaurant

Previously when we were here, we noticed that there was a frog bee hoon with bitter gourd on the menu. We came back today to try it. Not bad. The small portion came with two meaty frogs. Bee hoon tasted like it was braised in a stock similar to pork trotter bee hoon. This one was lightly flavoured with fermented black beans.

We had battered fried squids. The menu has two items for those. One was done with the body and the other, the tentacles. This plate was the latter. Pretty good munching they made.

This was a dish of minced fish paste with enoki mushrooms and fried bean curd skin. Can't say that I've come across a dish of such combinations before. Those skins were tasty but pretty oily. 

Revisiting Bakalaki

It's been almost a couple of years since we were last here.

One of the servers told us that were grilled sardines; not on the menu, so we got some. Fishes were served with some salt, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

Chicken souvlaki was not bad. I haven't had much experience with souvlaki and shouldn't be treated like any authority on it. Liked the grill flavour in the chunks of chicken. Today's fries were also much tastier than the last time. 

Moussaka was also not bad, I thought I detected something like goat's cheese in it. The dish was not as heavy as it appeared.

While we haven't had enough similar food (except grilled sardines and lamb chops) to make proper comparisons between, Blu Kouzina does have better variety at about the same price point.