rice cake confessional

Look it rhymes. It never rhymes so that’s kind of  big deal.

You know what else is a big deal (in Singapore, anyway)? Chicken rice. Most everyone is a fan of chicken rice. My last few run ins have been just eh. I mean steamed/boiled chicken and some rice. How good could it be.

Apparently, pretty darn good if you get lucky.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the same vein as my Mosburger post (ie unique local chains) is Kono Pizza.

If you’re guessing based on the name you would be right. Pizza. In a cone.

I can appreciate the mobility of such a food but there are still some tweaks to be made if you ask me.

The result of putting pizza in a cone: a deep layer of oily cheese that will burn your lips off, a bready buttery cone of crust, mediocre sauciness with bits of pepperoni, and a pool of oil in the tip of the cone. This last bit is most disconcerting since in an ice cream cone that last bit is the best part. Not so with the pizza cone.

Judge for yourself.

Kono Pizza: the one above from B1 of Liang Court at Clarke Quay but other shops on the island

When you live in a certain place long enough you forget how interesting some of the everyday fast food chain restaurants are.

Case in point: Mosburger.

First of all I hate the name. It reminds me of Monster Burger which has these icky lookin’ stands all over the Philippines.

Second of all they have regular burgers and they have rice burgers.

See? Rice burgers. No bread to be found here. Instead, bread shaped rice buns. This one is with yakiniku beef. They also have unagi, shrimp, scallop, and other things you don’t normally find Stateside. I don’t get this that often since if I want rice I’ll go get an actual rice meal and if I want a burger I’ll just get a real freakin’ burger. But every once in awhile my craving will hit dead center and off to Mosburger I will go.

Mosburger: the one above from Plaza Singapura but chains all over the island

I’m supposed to be in Bangkok right now relaxing with some iberry after a long day of ziplining in the rainforests of Chonburi. Instead, I’m chillin on the couch watching the first season of The OC with the brothers. What are the odds that my brother would develop a 101F fever, sore throat, and nausea 8 hours before our flight? Sigh. Grounded.

This does mean I have lots of time on my hands and thus have fewer excuses to drag my feet on the ol’ blog. In truth I’ve been feeling wishy washy about it. To blog or not to blog? I’ve been taking the camera out less and less, feeling less impressed and less intrigued by the yum yums to be had all over the island. Too lazy to document any culinary magic happening in my humble kitchen. In short my friends I’m feeling all blogged out. I’m trying to get revved up about it again so let’s begin by a post that needs, nay aches, to see the light of day.

Nags and I with the leadership of some of our favorite true blue Singaporeans, Melina and Isaac, put together an office food tour to visit 4 of the island’s tastiest hawker stalls. Please make way for the gluttony of 1 rainy Saturday in Singapore, 17 hungry tummies, and 4 hours of num nums in the tum tum.

The fun started in Tiong Bahru which I have to say has a pretty nice, modern hawker center. Very spacious, adequately clean, and lots of variety.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the many mini mountains of crab shells left over from our bingefest tonight.

CrazyVinny (you’ll recall the one that goes left when we always go right) invited me, Steph, and Jay to join him, Rachel and his friend, Anand, at Uncle Leong’s Seafood. Uncle Leong’s is inside the vast Ang Mo Kio (AMK) estate in the northern part of the island (and I mean NORTH – check out the map to see how far this is from my usual haunts). The AMK HDB area is HUGE. Like, impressively gigantic but somehow still neighborhoody. I like to call it the ‘burbs. If you visit, I recommend taking the MRT to Ang Mo Kio and then taking a taxi to the restaurant. We taxied from Tangong Pagar and the trip cost almost SGD20.

Per the blogosphere there’s another well known seafood place in AMK called Melben which is apparently owned by Uncle Leong’s brother (and is just across the way). CrazyVinny’s friend Anand used to produce a food show on TV and he says Uncle’s is better. I’ve never tried Melben before but after our meal tonight, Uncle Leong’s is gonna be hard to beat.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had a great day of eating (and laser tagging) and am now at home making the familiar dent in my couch while I couch potato status and watch  American Idol. (PS Adam Lambert, you are totally overrated.)

My Makansutra guide has been gathering dust on my bookshelf for a few months but I pulled it down to do some research for an upcoming work event. The section on onde onde reminded me of some of the posts on EatingAsia that sing the praises of gula melaka. This prompted a lunch time hunt for these sweet treats which, I’m proud to say, was very successful.

Read the rest of this entry »

It took me 6 months to finally have popiah in Singapore.

That is pretty sad.

Popiah (pohp-ya) is un-fried egg roll wrapper holding together a savory, peanutty, vegetable and noodle filled mixture. See Exhibit A.

You can have it with or without chilis and they serve it sliced in pieces that can be stuffed in one bite or more politely taken out in two. The verdict? I like it. It tastes like Filipino fresh lumpia except instead of the peanut flavor being in the sauce, it’s put in the filling. There’s a lot more veggies in the Filipino version while the Singaporean roll has lots of noodles, some lettuce, and some carrots.

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you smell that? If you were in Singapore you would most definitely smell that. You would smell it in almost every single grocery store you stepped foot in. The strong, overpowering reek of overripe fruits mixed with sweat. That is the smell of the oft feared durian. 

True confession time. I’ve never had durian. I’ve been meaning to. I am was open to the idea. I just never really got around to it. For the record, the smell of durian doesn’t turn me off completely. Its pungent for sure but not gag worthy.

After running an errand into Chinatown we were momentarily distracted by the smell of crepes mixed with the never to be mistaken aroma of durian. Thoughts that ran through my head include: ‘ugh, durian’ ‘no time like the present’ ‘how bad could it be’ and ‘maybe the chances of me liking durian will be higher if I eat it wrapped in a yummy pancake.’

The ‘pancakes’ are super thin and are cooked long enough that they actually get quite crispy. It’s SGD1.20 for one crepe and they also have other flavors like peanut butter if you’re not willing to take the durian plunge.

The filling is actually durian ice cream with fresh durian bits. I took a bite. 

Blech. It tastes like kitchen cleaner. Cold, icy, kitchen cleaner. Very chemically and not at all fruity. I actually expected it to taste like overripe jackfruit for some reason but no, def not the case. 

The pancake part was good.

Chances of me eating fresh durian: very slim.

We rented rollerblades and bikes at East Coast Park today. I’ve wanted to do this since my first visit (I’m one of those weird people who still likes rollerblading even though the last time it was seen in cool pop culture was in the Mariah Carey video ‘Dreamlover’ about a millenia ago) so I was pretty excited to finally get the chance to strap ‘em on and rollerblade up and down the park. Imminent rain be damned.

Too bad that saying ‘imminent rain be damned’ doesn’t actually *stop* the rain. We got about an hour of rollerblading in before the rain came. We hid out at a pub type place before hoofing it to the black pepper crab place frequented by Pearl.

This place is about a 15 minute walk from the Marine Parade Library on Still Road next to the giant durian eatery. Poor Erika waited an hour in line to snag us a table.

The place was packed and while there were a few other stalls along the side that selled rojak and satay, most of the diners were feasting on the famed BPC. By all accounts, this scene makes it a promising meal.

if you’ve ever been to LA you’ll know that LA County grades restaurants on cleanliness. They do this in Singapore too. A’s are hard to come by unless you’re in a mall and B’s are pretty standard for most hawker stalls. This place has a C. You can see it in the picture above – on the right under the ‘Eng Seng Restaurant’ sign. There are generally 2 reactions when you are at C-grade restaurant.

Reaction 1: Oh shit, this is probably going to be good.

Reaction 2: I’m glad I have my hepatitis shots. Did I bring my antibacterial hand sanitizer?

Honestly though. Are you going to turn this down? Sorry, I’m skipping ahead. There were a few other dishes that made their way to the table first.

A giant plate (we’re talking bus steering wheel sized) of fried rice with overcooked egg and green onion. I prefer white rice but this was acceptable.

Remember you tiao? From the hypothetical Taiwanese breakfast that may or may not have happened? Take those, cut them up, fill them with squid paste, fry them again, and then drizzle them in mayo. Sounds kind of gross, tastes really good. The double frying is questionable but the result was not overly greasy. The squid paste has a balance of snap and softness and the mayo adds a little zing.

Veggies came too (kangkong with shrimp paste) but I’m not going to take a picture of kangkong everytime I have it. That would be overkill.

Yuuuuum, black pepper crab. I easily prefer this to its slightly messier chili crab cousin. There is hella pepper on this sucker. After you’re done it will be all up in your teeth like you’ve been chewing on charcoal. The sauce is oh my goodness good – slightly sweet and sticky with a dark soy sauce base. The pepper is tingly hot. Hits you hard at first and numbs a bit over time. It’s nicely tempered with rice and some of the extra sauce at the bottom of the dish. The claws come cracked but you’ll need extra strong teeth, clean fingers, and stealthy chopsticks to get to the goods.

We also had some fish. Pearl says it was grouper. It was gingery and tender but I only had a few bites. Obviously I was saving stomach space for the BPC. No room for this fish nonsense.

The meal was SGD340 for 8 people – 6 big crabs, fried rice, veggies, steamed fish, and veggies for all. We had about SGD10 worth of wet naps. Ha!

Lastly, I leave you with the aftermath. Hot mess.

Eng Seng Restaurant: somewhere on Still Road near the Four Seasons Durian place.

But it kinda looks like it.

I have been almost tricked by otah several times. They have buns here with otah filling and if you’re in a hurry the darn thing kinda looks like a piece of fried spam in a pandesal. Anyway.

I had my first taste of otah a few Fridays ago because Chandra was denied rice by the fried tofu stall he ordered from and then was denied rice again by the otah man unless, of course, he ordered otah to go with his rice. Since Chandra is a herbivore, fish-based otah was not gonna happen for him so he passed it off to me.

Otah is fish that has been mashed up and mixed with lots of spices, rolled in banana leaf, and then grilled. When you order it comes out lookin’ like this:

This is a pretty big slab of otah. I’ve seen much smaller versions at other stalls. Notice the little toothpicks holdin’ it together? Once you unwrap your present, you get this beauty…

This picture makes you think my spam comment earlier is totally out of line but I promise you that if cut properly it really does look like spam.

Back to the otah. The texture is pasty and it doesn’t hold up much on it’s own. You can definitely taste coconut milk and curryish spices mixed in with the flavor of banana leaf and fish. I think the taste is probably acquired. I didn’t hate it but I certainly didn’t love it and probably wouldn’t ask to try it again. In any case, something fun to try as it seems to be pretty popular with locals. Another local favorite crossed of my list.