Sultan Turkish Restaurant, Bussorah Street

While it may be that this vicinity is regarded as touristy, it is also the only enclave we have for Turkish/Middle Eastern food. That being said, most of the restaurants are clones of one another offering minor variations of the same dishes.

We ended up in the heart of it (30 Bussorah Street) because I came across something I wanted to try. While the usual modus operandi traversing this street is to put on a glass eye, weave and evade the touts that hawk "the best Turkish food in town", I today...acquiesced with the server at Sultan Turkish Restaurant. 

Started with a sweet chilled ayran to beat the evening humidity. Albeit not so successfully because humidity > chilled ayran. I liked the ayran though. If anyone was wondering, it's a yoghurt beverage very much like lassi.

A tabbouleh for my feeble efforts at including some fibre and greens into the meal which I was quite sure would otherwise include little to no fibre and greens. This one's a bit sour.

I've only gotten acquainted with mandi in recent years. I've either been not aware of their availability or the dish has only picked up steam locally in current times. They're an Arabic spiced rice dish often with meat - not dissimilar to briyani.

This one was with lamb shank. The rice was delicious. The first thing that came to mind was the ouzi we previously had at Kazbar. Pretty sure they tasted similar. Lamb was fall off the bone tender. Liked the soup on the side which had a pretty distinct flavour from the rendered fat of lamb. 

What was poorly done were the grilled chilli/tomato. They were raw under the skin. They weren't so much grilled as they were burnt.

I did mention liking the ayran. Here's another mug of gratification.

The dish I came for was their ciger sis/ciğer şiş - a kebab of lamb livers and beef fat. The latter interspersed between cubes lamb liver. Hell yeah this was delicious with the flatbread! 👍🏼 

Kunefe was also awesome. Crispy on the outside with the savoury cheese on the inside under the blanket of sweet creaminess. This one came with goat's milk ice cream.

Pepper Castle, Holland Village

Previously I had always assumed that Pepper Castle (33 Lorong Liput, tel : +65 9352 7742) was a typical regular sized stall in a coffee shop with a menu limited to.......well, what one could prepare in regular sized stalls. Until I stumbled upon their extensive menu on Grab delivery. We came down today and I realized that they did have a much bigger kitchen out in the back.

Pappadum. The accompanying lime/coriander dip tasted fresher than what I'm used to. Too coriander-y for me this one.

Sweet lassi was creamy and sweet.

These were one of the better Kashmiri naan I recall having. Apart from the cherries, these were also stuffed with chopped bits of nuts and I tasted something I'm pretty sure were dates. 

We had a dal palak - a savoury spinach and lentil curry. Not bad.

This paneer kali mirch was a first for me. The rich creamy gravy was savoury instead of what I had initially assumed to be sweet. Not as peppery as the menu led me to believe.

Egg briyani was not bad. The spices in the rice were delicious but I wished it had a bit more salt.

Saag chicken - also another first. I've had the mutton version of this dish a previously. The palak from the previous times were puréed but Pepper Castle's rendition was chopped. I like the flavours though. Buried in the chopped spinach were chunks of chicken thigh meat.  

Sin Thor Eunos Bak Kut Teh Kway Chap, ABC Brickworks Food Centre

We noticed Sin Thor Eunos Bak Kut Teh Kway Chap (#01-111 ABC Brickworks Food Centre, 6 Jalan Bukit Merah) the last time we were here. We got some today.

Landed ourselves a platter of mixed braise consisting of sweet intestines (粉肠), tau kwa, tau pok, pork belly, pig's skin and eggs. Liked it. Their red chilli sauce didn't taste like the regular variety with just fermented shrimp. This one also had the flavour of preserved plum (酸梅) in it. 👍🏼

Kueh/kway was tender and slurpalicious. Will come back.

米粉面 from Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle (來興香菇肉脞麵)

So I thought I'd try bee hoon with yellow noodles (米粉面) seeing that I've already had the other noodle types from Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle. I said yes to the extra noodles they offered. No charge for the extras noodles if anyone was wondering. In retrospect, that was possibly what happened the last time I had mee kia here. Huge bowl but I inhaled it steadily till the end without difficulty.

More stuff from Xing Hua (兴化) at Tiong Bahru Plaza

This pickled vegetable sea bass from Xing Hua wasn't very expensive so we ordered one to try. Fish was fried and ladled over with a pickled vegetable broth which was sour and spicy. It's not the awesomest or a very kickass rendition of 酸菜鱼 but it was also not bad. Had a home cooked feel to it.

That's their salted egg fried rice with shrimp. Pretty decent and there was a lot more salted egg yolk tossed into the rice than I expected.

Double chicken wings nasi lemak from Nusa & Tara

Got a nasi lemak with extra chicken wings from Nusa & Tara.😬 They didn't give me cucumbers today for some reason. I'm thinking of doing extra rice next time because there's just so much of that yummy sambal to go around.