Pandan pancakes from Tolido’s Espresso Nook – fragrant pandan pancakes topped with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with gula melaka sauce. The sweet, gloriously scented and earnestly fluffy pancakes had the salesmanship of a coconut-shampooed, blazer-donning Isetan cosmetics agent – you aren’t just being sold pancakes but also pandan-induced nostalgia,…
Club Nasi Lemak from The Tiong Bahru Club Singapura – fragrant coconut rice served with chilli sambal accompanied with 2 pieces of Truck Stop Fried Chicken, seafood otah, sunny-side-up egg with fried anchovies and peanuts on the side. Unlike the travesty that was the Hainanese Chicken Rice Balls, this nasi…
Hainanese Chicken Rice Balls from The Tiong Bahru Club Singapura. The dark rage that this $16.80 dish ignites is equivalent to the feeling you get when you realise that obnoxious, Phua Chu Kang mole-above-her-lip, banshee-esque secretary from the other department who once stomped on your shoes while queuing ahead of…
Laksa linguine pasta with prawns from The Fickle Mussel. Essentially the now classic French concept’s laksa linguine pasta version 2.0 after some saviour of the souls of great food used Revive, Life Shrooms, Phoenix Down or similar revival item. This is by no means as good as the original – aside from…
The Great Red Ocean – Drambuie, Southern Comfort, Smirnoff Vodka, lime juice, cranberry juice, cinnamon, mint. The first thing I realised is that Capri by Fraser doesn’t stinge or pussyfoot when it comes to alcohol. Disappointingly, the lobster cocktail does not consist of murdered crustacean mush, merely a chunkful of…
Singapore chicken rice salad from Epicurious – poached chicken breast, herbs, cucumber, mesclun greens, crisped rice, chilli vinaigrette. Essentially cold white chicken (白斬雞) made lightly spicy, ever so slightly sweet and intriguingly addictive by the refreshing chilli vinaigrette…but outside the window, ginger patiently knocks. 4/5 This was a hosted meal,…
Laksa Fisherman’s Pie from Epicurious – prawn, fish, crabmeat, taupok, carrot and zucchini in spicy laksa broth with a puff pastry top. Essentially roti prata served with distilled laksa concentrate, so powerfully flavoured that you must savour it by way of dipping the pastry and only sucking the soak in order…
Chendol Cheesecake from Bloomsbury Bakers. The fusion of gula melaka and cheesecake here (in particular with reference to the cheesecake body itself) comes across as a well-conceptualised and consensual marriage instead of gula melaka’s forceful invasion of cheesecake’s purity and virtues, with the chendol elements – crunchy attap chee, corn,…
Pulut Hitam Tart from Bloomsbury Bakers. Whilst the combination of coconut cream and a sweet liquid, ricey middle satisfies, I can’t say the same for the crust, so stubborn and hard-headed that he best watch out as somebody confirm tekan and charge him SOL or even DB someday. 3.6/5 Bloomsbury Bakers…