Beo Crescent Curry Rice

Beo Crescent serves this amazing Curry Rice with No Name - at a coffee shop in this humble HDB estate. Long queue - with lots of white-collared workers in the mix - for lunch one fine weekday, at about 12pm. I ordered the usual stuff that you order when eating Hainanese Curry Rice, namely Hainanese Pork Chops, cabbage, curry chicken - and I am happy to report that all the dishes really passed muster!
The Hainanese Pork Chops were very good - very crispy, tasty, and full of crisp batter (admittedly not that much meat); the cabbage was really really good, very tasty and comforting home-styled cooking - it just was so flavourful and went so well with the curry - and the chicken was alright - and all this was sloshed, along with thick flavourful curry onto plain white rice, everything just ended up in a messyyy gruel-like mess. But it was really so good.

(7.5/10)

Blanco Court Kway Chap

Mamma Mia! Blanco Court Kway Chap is really quite awesome! and the thing is, it's so near my place. hehs.
apparently they are the brother in laws of the garden street kway chap people. and were formerly from blanco court as well - probably spin off from the original shop or something. but no matter - the food was very good. the innards were stewed very well, relatively tender - while retaining their porky aroma - and the kway was very smooth. I especially liked the black herbal soup that the kway came in, it was very herbal and full-bodied and robust - very good - compared to the others where it just seems to be soy sauce and water. i could literally slurp down the kway just with the soup alone. it was great.

(8/10)

not sure how this would fare compare with guan kee (toa payoh though). whch is awesome too.

Come Daily Fried Hokkien Mee

Went for dinner today with Jerry, and we went to this HKM place (hokkien mee) that J has always been talking about - it's called 'come daily fried hokkien mee', located at Blk 127 Lor 1 Toa Payoh. Heard alot of reviews about it - how it's excellent, and stuff - and alot of celebrities have patronised the stall before - heck, even an ang moh has eaten it - so i had to see how good it was.

It wasn't bad - it was the wet type, the type where the noodles are soaked in gravy - instead of having the gravy fried into the noodles , which is called the 'dry type' - (this is J's classification) - it was very good, the gravy was very flavourful and savoury of prawns, and the noodles were well fried, soaked in the gooey gravy - overall very tasty. nice stuff.

However, it was a bit oily - i felt a bit Jelak after that. But go try

(7.5/10)

Economic Mixed Vegetables Rice

I have so many posts to update - it's impossible to begin. But one place you ABSOLUTELY have to try is this Teochew Porridge stall in Ang Mo Kio, Blk 341, #01-13, Teck Ghee Market. The stall simply says 'Economic mixed vegetable rice', and judging from the queue, you'd know how popular it is. The first time I went, the whole food centre (and this is a proper food centre, not just a coffee shop) was eating bowls and bowls of that Teochew porridge with a myriad of dishes. And the queue, I counted, was about 13 persons long. that's how long i waited. Patiently, For my food.

A foodie must wait.

And so the food came; I was alone, and I ordered the Braised Duck, Sotong, Tau-Hu, and their Cabbage; and I must tell you, all were very good! The porridge was just the right consistency, very smooth, a bit "milky", still firm to the bite but soft enough, and with very clean flavours - no broken grains, all that;

The dishes were all good:
The duck was, in my humble opinion, better than alot of braised duck stalls even - it was very robust, flavourful, musky - went very well with the porridge. (Note, I went to the stall again today, it wasn't that good - a bit tough this time, but I have to give it the benefit of the doubt).
The Cabbage was outstanding - very savoury, clean flavours - a bit sweet as well - very tasty. great.
Tauhu was lovely - just the right texture, smothered in a savoury-sweet bean sauce that tasted really like my grandma's cooking. In fact all the dishes tasted like my grandma's cooking, typical traditional Teochew way - just the way it was done before.

You must try.
(8.5/10)

Tom's Palette Again + Frutta La Viva (Ultimate Ice-cream post)

Went down to Tom's Palette again to taste their delectable ice-creams. In fact, I went two times last week (Saturday, Monday (yesterday)) to savour morsels of icy heaven - creamy, delectable morsels of ice-cream. As usual Eunice and Chronos (the owners/makers of the ice cream) gave me a warm welcome (I've graduated to becoming a 'regular') and asked what I would like - the first time on Saturday I had my usual 'Chocolate' + 'Salted Caramel Cheesecake' which are my ultimate 2 flavours every time I'm there - If you haven't already noticed, those flavours really take the cake out of all the flavours in Singapore , where ice-cream is concerned. The Chocolate was very rich and creamy and chocolatey, with the right notes of bitterness and sweet from the dark chocolate used in the ice-cream. It is very dark and very unctuous - go try. I told my friend C to try it and she was like - wow - now i shoudl have listened to you (she got another flavour instead) - one dip in my cup and she was sold. Chocolate from Tom's Palette: 9/10

The salty caramel cheesecake was also exceptional - just the right amount of saltiness to lift the flavours of the cheesecake (with just enough cheese) and balanced by a slight hint of caramel to round off the flavours. Lovely. Rich, salty, sweet, creamy, all at the same time. Amazing. 9/10

On Monday, I tried Eunice's "special" flavour, which is a Strawberry Sorbet. One mouthful and I was hooked, even J my skeptical ice-cream friend said it was probably the best he has ever tried. It was so so fruity, with a very 'strong' strawberry taste, and just tart enough so that it is refreshing and not too cloying - very very light and fruity. Apparently balsamic vinegar is added for flavour - i couldn't tell. Ultimately it is one special scoop of ice cream. Apparently she's not going to make anymore of this so plese go down and try if they still have it - because it is too epxensvie to make. Haha. this was really a 9.5/10



Today I made my way to Frutta La Viva which is a gelato shop located at Upp Bukit Timah - Lorong Kilat. It had garnered 6 chopsticks (the highest rating) in Makansutra, so I went in with high expectations. The lady was very nice and very motherly and explained to us that they just recently shifted here, since I told her that I always wanted to visit them since they were in Novena. They said that yeah alot of people cannot find the place since they are on the 4th floor there but now there's only one shop so can't go wrong - hurhur. She was really very nice and helpful, and allowed us to try all the flavours. So here is the rundown:

Bocio - chocolate + hazelnut - not bad
Chocolate+hazelnut (diferent from above) - very good* had a very nice rich chocolate flavour to it.
Hazelnut - very nice, roasted rich hazelnut and fragrantly nutty.
Mango - this was a revelation, very fruity with real mango taste, obviously made with fresh mango fruit.
Lychee - also one of their best flavours, very rich and sweet and fragrant and not too cloying. - full of fruit.
Rum and Raisin - wasn't too impressed.
Strawberry - very nice, alot of fruit.
Durian - very very very good - almost like eating the fruit itself - alot of fruit is used, bitter, sweet, and full of durian flavour, D24 (if I'm not wrong) - very rich and creamy. lovely. and it's the right durian flavour, not some that comes from lower quality fruit.


Anyway I had the lychee + durian, while J got the chocolatehazelnut and the strawberry. We left the place very happy people. Amazing gelato, probably the best in Singapore. Save your calories for Frutta La Viva, forget about Venezia! (oops).
Frutta La Viva: 9/10

Siang Hee Restaurant

Today I visited this Cze Char which apparently sells Fusion dishes - I got the link from ieat's blog and so went there looking for some good grub- it weas recently listed in Makanstura too. The place was in this dingy coffee shop with old ah-peks eating economy rice/ bee hoon from brown paper - very surreal, almost like in the 80s, perhaps. But this cze char stall apparently sells fusion dishes, aka innovative ones.

So we ordered the Prawns in Pumpkin Sauce, Marmite pork ribs, and a tofu to go along with it. The tofu came first - nothing spectacular, just good old tofu in sauce with a bit of spinach underneath - the innovative element. However, the deep-fried tempura prawns in pumpkin sauce was a revelation - juicy succulent prawns were deep-fried in batter and covered in this pumpkin sauce that had a really sweet "pumpkin" taste that came from mashed pumpkins similar to pumpkin soup, it was rich, sweet, and had the "starchy" aftertaste that characterises a pumpkin (okay this is probably a bad description). Yeah, it was good that just adding that to the rice made it a treat to eat.
The marmite pork ribs were not bad - the marmite taste was very subtle though - perhpas it is good that way. nice and savoury.

Ultimately a good place to go to.
(7.5/10)