Nanyuan (南園), Beo Crescent Food Centre

I usually see a queue at Nanyuan (#01-68 Beo Cresecent Food Centre, 38A Beo Crescent) whenever I'm in the area and that had gotten me intrigued. Though I'm more of a bak chor mee person than a fishball noodle one, I don't mind the latter.

Got myself a bowl of mee pok dry with extra Teochew dumplings (潮州饺子). I'm not sure what's the accurate name for these type of noodles as they're basically fishball noodles with minced pork. The minced pork here are placed with the ingredients in the soup instead of the bowl of noodles.

Mee pok was generic. Not impressed with their chilli sauce. Lard was borderline expiring. Nothing about the noodles (texture or otherwise) nor saucing was special so that's that. 

What I enjoyed was the bowl of ingredients though. Fishballs, fish cakes, fish dumplings and the additional Teochew dumplings I mentioned earlier. The latter looked like wanton and have pork fillings flavoured with dried sole. Similar to the ones from Xing Heng Feng Guo Tiao Tan (新恆豐粿條攤) which I think are a little nicer. 

Spicy Chocolate Chicken from Mom's Touch

What do we have here? Halloween's treats from Mom's Touch with a Freaky Chicken set? What could the spicy chocolate chicken be? I needed to find out.

I had initially thought that they would ladle chocolate sauce onto the fried chicken. Instead, they dunked each piece of the fried chicken into a pot of chocolate sauce and coated them thoroughly. That chocolate sauce looked thick and rich. Could smell it before we even put our noses to the fried birds.

It was too much chocolate sauce. Besides the little heat that managed to push through from the spicy fried chicken beneath, it was mostly chocolate flavour. Which was the problem. 

While it wasn't crazily sweet, the minuscule heat didn't integrate well with the thick chocolate which was overwhelming by virtue of quantity. Couldn't get any of the savoury from the fried batter. Everything got cloy pretty fast. Would have worked out better if it were some sort of spicy chilli chocolate sauce in less excessive amounts. Chocolate flavoured chicken breast takes time getting used to and I'm not getting any more used to them after today.

Coleslaw was thankfully not sweet and served as a reprieve from all the thick gooey chocolate.

Ivan's Porridge's bee hoon has changed

The bee hoon from Ivan's seems to have lost their magic. No more smokiness that used to mark their flavour. Not that they're bad. They're not. But for some reasons the noodles doesn't taste as good these days. I still enjoy it though. Nowadays, it's that roasted chilli that's getting me through when the bee hoon alone in the past would have.

The double boiled black chicken coconut soup from Soup Restaurant (三盅两件)

This was our first time eating at Soup Restaurant at Paragon (#B1-07 Paragon, 290 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6333 6228).

I mentioned the black chicken coconut soup previously very briefly. Something about it being not bad. Let's do it a little more justice. The soup's clear and sweet from the juices of the coconut paired with light savoury and herbal taste from whatever else was put into it for the double boiling. Deliciously moreish if I had to superficially summarise. There's a thin layer of coconut meat which you could scrape off to eat after drinking. Maybe next time we'll try the one with black chicken and scallop.

Didn't just get soup. There was a bunch of their other stuff - like their chicken lettuce tacos, slightly fibrous grandfatherly sweet potato leaves in sambal and an oddly sweet claypot egg tofu. Nothing we haven't had before.

Kim Fa Fish Ball Minced Meat Noodle, Tiong Bahru Food Centre

This was a little different from the usual minced meat noodle because it looked like Kim Fa (#02-32 Tiong Bahru Food Centre, 30 Seng Poh Road) is essentially a fishball noodle shop. Notice that the toppings are the standard fishball noodle stuff - not those of minced pork noodles like stewed mushrooms, pork liver and whathaveyous. And then there's also minced pork.

Not a bad bowl of fishball minced meat noodle but like the neighbouring Yuan Ji, it didn't taste particularly outstanding. I liked that the noodles were well tossed with the sauces and chilli. The toppings were decent - almost run of the mill so. The fishballs though had a nice fishy salty taste and were tender.

 

Filet of salmon from Les Bouchons

It's been about 15 years since the first time I was here at the Ann Siang branch of Les Bouchons till today.

That had also been the only time that I've actually taken a picture of their salad.  Things have changed a little. The pictures are better now. 

Grain mustard, dijon mustard, mayo and Béarnaise. Not exactly the best selection for seafood which we were having tonight.

Tried their salmon for the first time today. The passionfruit butter that accompanied it sounded intriguing. There was option for medium doneness for the fish so I was willing to give it a go. There restaurant added that since it wasn't sashimi grade fish, they wouldn't go for any doneness less than medium. Hmmm...

The kitchen came through with medium doneness. I would have loved a little more char flavouring on the surface but I am not complaining. The passionfruit butter was unfortunately little to talk about. It was neither passionfruit-y nor buttery. But thankfully the salmon held its own with just salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon.

Affogato's not bad here with their creamy vanilla ice cream and bitter espresso.