Chef Goo Red Sea Prawns Fried Hokkien Mee, Alexandra Village Food Centre

So I read that the proprietor of Red Sea Prawns Fried Hokkien Mee (#01-13 Alexandra Village Food Centre, 120 Bukit Merah Lane 1) used to be a limousine driver and had in mid life taken a sharp off the road turn into a kitchen - cooking Hokkien mee, pao fan and fried rice. Cool. The Hokkien mee was not bad but I'm not an expert here. I thought the flavour from this stock struck more balance between the pork and the crustacean taste. I'm guessing that most people in general go for a stronger crustacean flavour. But it works. Especially with a squeeze of lime and their sambal.

There's a crab meat fried rice on their menu. Pretty competent local fried rice and as testimony of the level of skill used, the rice was lightly scorched and had very little residual oil left on the plate. No much smokiness though but quite tasty with the chunks of crab meat and again, their sambal added to it. Speaking of sambal, theirs had a flavour profile that was quite similar to Chinatown Fried Rice.

Bread

Two eggs and 梅菜 at Hong Seng Curry Rice (鴻森咖喱飯)

So I've just started getting 梅菜 (stewed preserved mustard greens) with curry from Hong Seng Curry Rice. I think I like this combination, at least from them, than the one with chap chye even though I'm stacking two punchy flavours together. Great with those fried eggs. That's curry chicken on top if anyone was wondering. A less than one thigh portion of thigh meat that came with potatoes. 

Fragrant Sauce Chicken & Noodles, Chinatown Food Centre

I came to know of this stall (#02-85 Chinatown Food Centre, 335 Smith Street) by the way of Greg's Big Eats. Had to google for the English name of the stall since the Chinese words on the signage don't exactly translate to the name. Something about 'fragrance', 'soya sauce chicken noodle rice' and 'nam yu pork trotters' were what the larger words said. What had me were the nam yu (bean curd fermented in red yeast rice) pork trotters and the char siew.

Nam yu as a fermented bean curd has a pungent and cheesy flavour profile. That's the best I can manage to describe it. Like many of such flavours, it can be an acquired taste. Got a plate of the nam yu pork trotter noodles. I've heard that there is an alkaline taste to the noodles but I didn't taste it. Better for me anyway. I found that the nam yu flavour was more concentrated on the skin of the trotters where the marinade had permeated well. The noodles with the sauce tasted weak.

Because we liked the stewed trotters better than the noodles and the portion of that in the noodles were relatively small, we ordered another plate. The sauce here was more intense. Meat was pretty tender but not the kind that disintegrated in your mouth.

The stall has char siew which is available in limited quantities daily. This was an unusual char siew - I detected five spice in the meat and it was char-less. So would that make it just a siew? Kidding. The meat was tender. Left side slices were fattier than the ones on the right side. This was the second char-less char siew after the one (largely) at Lao Ren Jia Roasted. Not bad tasting but I'm still undecided as to how I feel about them. I liked the moist tender rice though.

Xiang Jiang Soya Sauce Chicken (香江豉油鸡), Alexandra Village Food Centre

Was recommended this stall (#01-77 Alexandra Village Food Centre, 120 Bukit Merah Lane 1) by my dad for their soya sauce chicken and sui kao (水饺). The last time we were here, it was slightly past noon and they had already closed for the day. I came earlier this time round.

And got myself a chicken thigh/drumstick/leg (that's their 鸡腿) mee pok. Pretty good. The sauce was nice and I thought I detected some herbal notes in the skin of the soya sauce chicken which were really tender. Noticed that there was a light roasted flavour from their chilli paste.

What left me a deeper impression were their sui gao. These were huge - three mouthfuls by my measure. Enfolded within the smooth skin were minced pork, bits of black fungus and little chunks of water chestnut. The type of sui gao I had been searching for. Packed yet not densely stuffed that they were still tender to the bite. I'll be back for these.

Burger, pasta and Ryan's Kitchen

This was their three cheese burger - Cheddar, Parmigiano Reggiano and Mozzarella. There was an option to add cheese on their order tablet and I was wondering if all the three cheese would be added in that option. After clarifying, they said that only the Cheddar would be but one could choose to add any one of the other two instead. 

Liked their beef patty. Could have done without the onions since they added little to the burger. Didn't mind the tomato relish at all. But if you asked me, the burger didn't feel very integrated as much as a bunch of ingredients that were piled on.

There's truffle pasta where they've added white wine vinegar - something which I haven't had in truffled pasta. That made the noodles pretty refreshing. Oh, it was chilled too.