Tong Kee Chicken Rice (東記雞飯), Margaret Drive Hawker Centre

Tong Kee Chicken Rice has relocated from their previous premise at Tanglin Halt to the new Margaret Drive Hawker Centre (#01-36, 38A Margaret Drive). I guess it's their coming to the full circle, at least for location, since they started off at the old Margaret Drive Hawker Centre originally. Notice that they have poached chicken these days.

Queue was pretty long, was in line for about 25 minutes or so.

I was curious about the poached chicken since they've never had it. Not bad, pretty tender but it's not the poached chicken standards that Sin Kee has. The dark meat portions were tender and slurp off the bone tender but the breast meat while respectably moist wasn't as impressive.

We ordered a portion of roast pork. These guys don't do the rendition with crunchy skin and melty fat layers. These are hardier and more chewy. Best to be eaten with the brown sauce that they serve with their eggs.

This brown sauce.

A light cabbage soup which accompanies each order that is better than many.

Guess it was good enough that I got a second bowl of rice.

Christmas season stuff at Ma Maison Kitchen

It's not so much traditional Christmas food. More like dishes Ma Maison Kitchen has for the season that's outside of their regular menu.

There's a CRUST X Ma Maison beer. This Breaking Bad Ale was hoppy brew which was both floral and citrusy. Not bad tasting. CRUST Group makes beer from surplus bread (and other ingredients they claim) if anyone was wondering who they were.

We've been wondering about a bunch of stuff from their smoked meat menu for a while. Finally decided to try their smoked beef fillet. It's not much smoky. Kinda disappointing actually because we were expecting more.

This Mizayaki tonketi was delicious and a large part of that was due to the butterscotch-y whiskey butter sauce. Nice.

That's stewed duck with peach sauce. Said sauce was made with veal stock and it was not as peachy as I had imagined. While those red peppercorns had a nice flavour, they kinda felt "detached" from the duck. The meat had a nice natural flavour and was slurp off the bone tender though.

Han's, Guoco Tower

Haven't eaten at Han's for a long time. I used to like their fried rice. Looking back, those felt like another place and time. Anyways this was from the outlet at Guoco Tower (#B2-25, 1 Wallich Street). What landed us here could be a few reasons. 

I would like to think it was mostly curiosity after all these years. Perhaps also lurking quietly and subconsciously, there was a looking forward to a bit of nostalgia. There's also the duck confit we saw on their menu for the Xmas season. Someone had recently also mentioned their chicken chop looked good. Reasons coalesced into intent.

So here's that duck confit in orange sauce. Nicely salted and pretty tender. Certainly wasn't the best one around but I'd eat it again. The orange sauce......wasn't great but I could tell that it was made with oranges for sure. Even thought I tasted duck fat in the mash. What I didn't see coming was that I enjoyed this more than the one at Joji's Diner.

This was likely my first chicken chop at Han's. Pretty tasty actually. There's some nice browning on the skin and the meat was moist for sure. Too bad the retro flavoured black pepper sauce was mediocre since that could have seriously elevated the plate. Fortunately the chicken's good on its own. 

Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐), Great World

Our first visit to this branch of 鼎泰豐 (#01-138 Great World, 1 Kim Seng Promenade, tel  : +65 6737 1366).

Stuck to a couple of our favourite drinks from them - the roselle one and their lemon Earl Grey tea which have always been reliably good. Today wasn't any different.

Maybe I haven't noticed but their hot and sour soup (酸辣汤) is packed with ingredients. Black fungus, strips of tau kwa, bamboo shoots and shredded pork if my memory serves and it rocks with their tabletop chilli and vinegar.

The other item that also rocks with their vinegar is their dan dan mian (担担面). A little flat on its own in that nutty sauce after a few mouthfuls but a splash of vinegar invigorates with a tanginess that makes inhaling this a breeze.

I took a picture of their shrimp fried rice (虾仁蛋饭) years ago. I like it. Nice meaty prawns and deliciously savoury with a splash of light soya sauce. Din Tai Fung's fried rice has been established as somewhat of a standard that can be construed as fairly consistent for a restaurant across many branches. Tasted pretty much like their other fried rice which has for reasons become a benchmark for many.

These green vegetable dumplings (素菜蒸饺) have also become a pretty regular order over the recent years. Looking at the menu again, I've just realized that these things contain black fungus, mushrooms, vermicelli, beancurd cubes, xiao bai cai and turnip.

Prawn paste chicken mid wings have popped up on their menu.....I don't know when. Might be recent years. These are very competently done. There's sufficient saltiness and flavour from the fermented shrimp paste coupled with proper frying that doesn't see them grease logged.

These 菜肉包 are also great with a bit of vinegar.

Yam xiao long bao - idea sounded good.

Smooth and creamy were their stuffings. Having these invariably reminds me of orh nee which as puréed yam went are different and more delicious because the latter tends to be aromatized while these aren't.

Chocolate lava bun's on the menu at this end of year season. Pretty well done with that piping hot melted chocolate core.

Dumpling (水饺) noodle from Lee Hong Kee Cantonese Roasted

Was curious about the sui gao/shui jiao/水饺 from Lee Hong Kee Cantonese Roasted. They're not bad tasting, filled with minced pork, shrimp and water chestnuts. Those however aren't at the level of Xiang Jiang or Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Noodle Rice at Beauty World for sure. Chilli's great and noodles are decent. Speaking of which. I do like the texture of the noodles at Zhong Yu Yuan Wei better. 

I wouldn't have gotten away without at least getting at least one of their roasts since I've invested time in the queue. Duck drumstick and some tau kwa on the side. I'll come back for their roast pork another day.

Lucca's Trattoria, Tiong Bahru

We ate at Lucca's Trattoria once years ago back when they were located at Robertson Quay. Wasn't impressed. They've shifted to Tiong Bahru (Lvl 1 Nostalgia Hotel, 77 Tiong Bahru Road, tel : +65 6223 2301) a while ago and we wanted to see if how the food has changed, or hopefully improved over those years we decided to forget about them.

We ordered their fritto misto because there were fried mussels. It was okay - not the most promising seafood quality there but it wasn't bad. Batter needed more salt so they weren't that good on their own. I suppose a lot more of that shaven cheese would have helped too. Most of what kept us going was the Calabrian chilli sauce.

Was looking towards their chicken liver crostinis. Not bad also. I shouldn't compare but I couldn't help but to reminisce.

Cacio e pepe was kinda disappointing. It was more creamy than cheesy and it didn't look or taste like it had that much pepper.

Fortunately the rabbit pappardelle fared better. Dried pasta and al dente with a bite like fresh ones cannot achieve. Not complaining here. Broth tasted nothing like the red wine sauce they mentioned on the menu at all but it did taste pretty good. Also very Asian. Specifically quite similar to lor bak so I'm guessing the spices used were similar. Even the borlotti bean reminded me of braised peanuts. Hmmm......

Tiramisu was nicely done and moist like I enjoy it. My only gripe - there was a lot more cream than mascarpone in it. While that made the dessert airier, it also tasted noticeably less mascarpone-y. I also gave them a few points for having Maraschino cherry.