Taste Of The Bay at Ming Fa (明發) @ Upper Thomson Road

Came across this at Ming Fa at Upper Thomson. Squid ink mee pok on a limited run.

Basically a 小碗面 with seafood and squid ink mee pok topped with onsen egg and tobiko.

For all the dark intensity, there didn't seem to be any squid ink flavour. Kinda disappointed there. This tasted like regular mee pok.

Soup has half a crayfish, a couple of prawns, clams, sliced pork and minced pork. Ingredient quality was pretty decent. There was a light sweetness from the prawns and crayfish.

They used to shell the prawn for their regular bowl of mee pok in the past. Now it's a slightly bigger prawn with shell still on. 

These fried sotong were part of the limited time menu. The lady at the stall insisted that they were good and that if it happened that they weren't, she'll help me eat them. 😂 She's right, squids were pretty tender under the batter. Came with some lime-y mayo which was not bad tasting.

I remember thinking little of their coffee the last time I was here. Today's kopi peng was actually decent-ish and tasted better than I remember of their coffee. 

Lucky Her Kiao (幸运鱼饺), Horne Road

Lunch at Lucky Her Kiao (88 Horne Road). From what I gathered, this place is run by the 3rd generation of the family that operates Song Kee Kway Teow Noodle Soup at Toa Payoh that has been apparently been in business over half a century.

Was curious about their fish noodles. To be clear, fish noodles are noodles made with fish paste. These were okay tasting - lots of chew and a nice fish-cake-like flavour in those irregularly squiggly noodles. It was mentioned that they were hand rolled so I guess this qualified as artisanal?

In retrospect, I should have gotten this without sambal so that I could better taste them. A little pricey at $18 a portion but I guess artisanal comes at a cost. Probably not fair to compare them to Li Bai so I won't. 😂 I do remember liking the ones from House of Fishball better though.

The bowl of soup accompanying the fish noodles was loaded with ingredients. Amongst them, I found one of their her kiao (fish dumplings) with chewy skin made from fish (paste?) and minced pork stuffings infused with ti poh (dried sole). Because this shop also sold yong tau fu, I was expecting that it's soy bean soup. It's not. Tasted like fishball soup flavoured with corn.

Had some sliced pig liver on the side. Not bad tasting but also not memorable.

Compose Coffee, One Raffles Place

Dropped by Compose Coffee (#01-02 One Raffles Place, 1 Raffles Place) for some flavoured caffeine alchemy.

The banana coffee above was just iced Americano with banana milk. Not bad tasting if you didn't mind artificial banana flavouring from banana milk. We didn't. The coffee's actually pretty drinkable stuff.

Amangchu - their rendition is peach tea with cubed mangoes and espresso. Wasn't expecting the peach component but turned out to be great for the sweltering heat.

Revisiting Diner's Shack

Back at Diner's Shack which we haven't eaten at in a while. Our only gripe at this place was the slow moving queue and the long wait for the food.

Today's fish was sea bream (a.k.a. ang goli). This bowl had added on minced pork and fish roe. The bowl was as good as I remember them from the last time.

Curry chicken's really good here. One can tell from the consistency and colour that it was pretty lemak and there's a bit of nuance to the other spices that were used in the curry.

Sodeng Korean Vintage BBQ (소댕), Telok Ayer Street

Sodeng (175 Telok Ayer Street, tel : +65 9787 4542) is by Um Yong Baek. They're another KBBQ shop and what's differentiates Sodeng is barbequed duck which is a first here. We came for lunch and didn't get anything on the grill. Just a couple of stuff from the lunch menu.

Banchan. Kimchi's fresh and actually enjoyable considering that I normally gravitate towards the more intense/fermented/sour ones.

Yuja dressing on the salad was nice.

What got our attention was the egg drop soup with dried pollack. Love how the flavour from the fish infused the eggy broth.

The one duck item we did get was their Gwangju styled oritang. Never had oritang before and I had the idea that there would be duck flavour in the broth. This Gwangju styled rendition was just nutty, full of perilla seeds. I liked it though. There's duck meat inside.

I remembered wondering once about where one could get yukhoe bibimbap previously.

This was was $17, has bits of sliced pears and came with a bottle self serve sesame oil which was deliciously nutty.

What's this pandan infused water that they provide? Nice.

36 Curry Rice, Bendemeer Market & Food Centre

I remember this stall (#01-36 Bendemeer Market & Food Centre, 29 Bendemeer Road) from the previous time I queued for noodles at Changi Village Cooked Food. Both stalls were directly facing each other with similar length queues. Got a plate of bee hoon with kuey teow today. I prefer Changi Village Cooked Food. The only item I had that was memorable was the kuey teow which had a nice rice-y taste to it. Nothing particularly worth mentioning for the other items.