Revisiting Tuan Yuan Pork Ribs Soup (团缘肉骨茶)

It's been a while since the last time I ate at Tuan Yuan.

Tried their spare ribs today. Meat was fall off the bone tender and yet with that bit of bite to it in a peppery broth where one could specify the level of pepperiness. Not bad. Would have preferred if the chilli they had for their dark soya sauce to be the spicy type than the large and not spicy ones they use though.

Dough fritters to soak the peppery bak kut teh broth with.

A proper cai por omelette with cai por, nothing like the sub standard rendition we recently had at Lao You Ji.

Braised eggs.

That's their lu rou fan (卤肉饭). The lu rou is richer, sweeter and has a stronger star anise flavour. I prefer lu rou to be more savoury. 

Kuey was delicious with a discernible rice-y flavour. Gotta get more of this the next time we're here.

Da Paolo Pizza Bar in the August of 2023

It's been a while since we were last at Da Paolo Pizza Bar. Thought it would be a good time to revisit and also check out their limited time pizza for this National Day month.

Started with some lobster bisque fried croquettes. That creamy capsicum dip on the side - I tasted mostly just capsicum and olive oil and it was so good.

These guys were serious when they put 'lobster bisque' in the name. The those croquettes were literally deep fried lobster bisque flavoured mashed potatoes. Nice.

One of the mainstays at Da Paolo is their pasta with creamy crab meat sauce. I think the recipe might have changed a bit through the years but the difference is probably not big. Today it's the tagliatelle al granchio. At a point of time, it was spaghetti. Even further back, it might have been an alla Vodka. I used to think of it as an Italian butter chicken noodle but it doesn't feel as rich anymore so that's why I thought the recipe might have changed. Even if it was a little.

This month's pizza special is squid ink laksa. The squid ink base was dark and like rempah. Reminded me of a dry sotong hitam gravy. The pieces of squid were smokey. Together with the curry leaves and chilli, the flavour was very Asian. There's no cheese. Could taste lemongrass. Those bubbly stuff were supposed to be laksa foam but I couldn't discern anything laksa-y about it. I wouldn't have minded this with some cheese.

First time having affogato with dark chocolate ice cream. I'm not sure how I feel about them here because the espresso tasted bitter and quite strong on its own.

With vanilla ice cream it's kinda like regular affogato. Which is understandable. Decent but not one of the better ones.

With the dark chocolate, a lot of the espresso is subdued. So it's not so affogato-y.

Long Ji Zi Char (龍記), Outram Road

We've eaten at Long Ji Zi Char (253 Outram Road, tel : +65 9790 5682) once previously and tried the crab bee hoon. It was superb. Did not order that this time round but what we had today were definitely mention worthy.

They have buah long long juice with preserved plum (酸梅) which was astringently refreshing for both before and after the meal. The before whetted appetite while the after allowed you to make believe that you've succeeded in cleansing some of that grease from the food off your system. 😂

This was a dish called golden corn. Appetizer of sorts. They're fried sweet corn battered in flour with salted egg yolk. So they're both sweet and salty. Initially I thought it was a little greasy but I couldn't stop after that. It's still greasy but it was also addictive.

Stir fried romaine lettuce with fermented bean curd sauce. The sauce was awesome because of both the fermented bean curd flavour and that they've also spruced that up with some fragrant sesame oil. Will have to remember to ask them to omit the ginger the next time.

We had the deep fried tofu with pumpkin sauce and cereal previously and liked it enough to get them again. Nicely fried tofu there. The star was the sweet creamy pumpkin sauce.

Very competent dish of braised fish head with black bean sauce and bitter gourd. I don't know if it's because the kitchen is skilled at chopping up the fish head but we didn't get small bone fragments which meant it was relatively easy to eat. I had expected the black bean sauce to taste like....well, black bean sauce. It didn't. There were dried black beans in it though and if you're looking for that flavour, you gotta get some of the beans in the bite. Otherwise this was delicious and a potential repeat order.

Love their kong bao chicken (宫保鸡丁). The flavour reminded me of those from the distant past. For now, I'm ranking this no. 2 just behind Claypot & Cooked Food Kitchen until I've discovered enough good ones to be confused by my own rankings. 😂

Dessert was orh nee. Not bad tasting. Their rendition is...unusual. Lots of thinner coconut milk which made me think of bubur cha cha.

60 days dry aged USDA prime ribeye from Wolfgang's Steakhouse

We're back at Wolfgang's Steakhouse to try the what we didn't get to the last time round - 60 days dry aged USDA prime ribeye.

Bread's refillable but that made me miss the large onion loaves we used to get at Morton's. There's no need to ask for refills at Morton's because we would never have been able to finish that onion loaf and we'd happily doggy bag the remainder back.

But oh well. This is what we have here.

We were looking forward to this - the intensity or funk coalesced by 60 days worth of dry aging. I don't remember being arrested by the aroma when they plated this.

Gonna make comparisons with their porterhouse. Meat's dryer with more obvious grains but I'm not sure if it's because of the additional dry aging or it's just because this didn't arrive in a butter bath. Crust appeared to be less developed. The intensity for this 60 days dry aged ribeye wasn't much more than the 28 days dry aged porterhouse - which was disappointing. We expected significantly more.

That being said, it was still delicious. The underwhelming part was when it didn't turn out to be as intense as we had expected. We will stick to their porterhouses in the future.

I've heard poor remarks about their lobster mac & cheese and didn't think they were warranted based on what we had. It's not super but it's creamy and deliciously cheesy with bits of lobster meat.

What I also didn't expect was how much I enjoyed the onion rings in spite of the grease. Light crunch on the better with sweet rings of onion inside. These were unexpectedly delicious with the sweet Wolfgang's steak sauce.

Of the three desserts we have had here so far (this being the 3rd), I rank this chocolate mousse cake at the bottom. It's not a bad per se. The chocolate mousse just became two dimensional after a while. A lot of what determines how good a chocolate mousse to one would also the sweet spot ratio of ingredients or sweet/bitter and this one was just not the optimal for me.

A hot bitter black is a great way to end.

Curry chicken cutlet rice from Sergeant Hainanese Chicken Rice

I was wondering what was this one about from Sergeant Hainanese Chicken Rice. It's a thin but flavourful curry with cold chicken cutlet and chicken rice. Would have been game changing if that chicken cutlet were freshly fried/properly refried rather than cold but.....🙄.

Curry's not bad tasting but they're never great pairing with chicken rice because it's ultimately too greasy and you'll taste only curry. Won't be getting this again

My egg had a double yolk though. I wonder if that's portentous.

Uohama, Clarke Quay Central

New grilled fish stall which I've previously never noticed before at the Don Don Donki food court at Clark Quay Central (#B1 Clark Quay Central, 6 Eu Tong Sen Street). Yes, that's the one with Kanda Soba which doesn't seem to be in business anymore.

Got myself the "red fish" teishoku. Akauo if anyone was confused. Loved it. This was proper grilling done there with a good amount of salt to make it savoury, light smokiness from the browned surface and moist meat beneath.

The size was kinda puny compared to the one at Nakajima Suisan though. Noticed that they have tachiuo (beltfish) on the menu but the proprietor said it wasn't available yet. Will come back another time.