Under The Sea~ 🐠

Sumiya offers some really nice set lunches available till 2.30pm! I ordered the conger eel rice bowl set, which came with chawanmushi, miso soup, a salad, pickles and a really yummy matcha mochi! I loved all the sides! The eel on my rice bowl was also good. Look at that shine! I've had eel where the bones were still hard, but this one's been stewed till the bones were so soft I couldn't even detect them. 👍🏼 Not to mention, the amount of eel just overwhelms my rice hahaha. I think this was quite a steal at $21.80++

Tendon seems to be all the rage recently, and the queue at Kohaku was insane. I joined the queue at around 8pm but still had to wait for an hour 😭 At least the tendon I had was quite yummy! It's topped with a mountain of tempura (battered prawns, chicken, asparagus, mushroom and pumpkin) - what a great deal for $15! The sauce drizzled on the tempura is stickier and sweeter than the dipping sauce we usually see. If you can't get enough of fried food, you'll be very happy with this tendon! For me though, it got a little heavy after 3-4 pieces so I would have preferred to share this. I got myself some green tea which is free flow and that helped too.

Super yummy tendon set! I'm not much of a fan of fried food but I wouldn't mind having this again because the tempura batter was light and airy, and it wasn't greasy. I also prefer the tendon sauce here to kohaku's because it was less sweet, and was lighter tasting. I like the fact that the set comes with miso soup and chawanmushi, which made all the fried food less monotonous. OH and this tendon comes with a nice gooey egg that I mixed into my rice. It was soooo good eaten with the tendon sauce. There wasn't much of a queue when we got there at 5.30pm. :)

Finally dragged myself to Yuhua market to try the western food that many have raved about. Was a tiny bit disappointed when the grilled pork chop I wanted to try sold out. So I opted for this pasta. It was not bad! The pesto here is not the creamy sort, and it is quite a potent pesto with strong herby grassy flavours. I love it but if you don't like grassy aromatics like parsley/coriander, you might want to give this a miss. Salmon was wonderful - crisp skin and soft flesh. The portion seemed small at first but it was actually quite a lot.

This was a really balanced and filling meal! Protein & fatty acids ✔️️Carbs ✔️ Fibre ✔️ Vitamins ✔️ I loved how I got to create my own meal, from the choice of protein, to the sauce, and finally to the sides! The salmon is breadcrumbed and baked till crisp. Though it was fully cooked, it was still moist and soft. It may require a bit more salt for some, but I do relish the natural taste of salmon so I didn't mind the lightness of it one bit. I picked the pilaf and butter corn as my sides, while my salmon came with half a baked tomato. The pilaf deserves a special mention because it was super yummy, like chicken rice that's much less oily but just as delicious!

The fish was supposed to be Garoupa, but the server informed us that Garoupa is not in season now so the chef has replaced it with sea bass. I'm glad he did cause nothing tastes worse than stale fish! 😲 Though sea bass tends to have a muddy smell, this one was very very mild cause it was fresh. :) It was also rather huge, so it's quite value for money. That said, the flavours were quite ordinary - like any other good sweet and sour fish.

Breadcrumbed prawn cakes that were fried till crisp and golden brown on stalks of lemongrass. I did not detect a single whiff of lemongrass though. :( That said, deep fried food can never taste too bad ;) I still happily polished off these bouncy, well-seasoned "drumsticks".

This was a hot, fiery delicious mess. Robust broth, well-balanced flavours and a generous assortment of seafood. Don't underestimate it - just because it isn't flaming red doesn't mean it can't choke you, as all of us learned that night.

Da Mario used to have a really really awesome crab meat angel hair pasta that was cooked more like a vongole with shallots and wine, but they've changed it to this one, which is penne pasta in a pink (tomato-cream) sauce. This version is also very good, though the vongole version remains my favourite. Da Mario's pink sauce was both tangy and creamy, which is great because the tanginess of the tomato is often masked by the rich cream, and very flavourful without being overwhelming. I felt that the vodka in the sauce also gave it depth. The crab meat was fresh and sweet, and portions were generous in true Italian fashion. Do try!

Tomato broth with succulent shrimp and chicken chunks, topped with a variety of crunchy pickled veggies (reminiscent of "achar"), and fragrant spiced rice for carbs. This was indeed a warm and comforting dish, kinda like a soupy version of paella :) I found the pickles to be a little overpowering though.

This starter of pan-seared scallops on a bed of truffled cauliflower purée, served with squid ink crostini was a chef's special. I loved the cauliflower purée! The subtle sweetness and aroma of the cauliflower paired so well with the truffle oil. Well, there aren't many things that don't go well with truffle oil. 😉 I mopped up every bit of purée with Cicheti's signature smoky crostini - with a twist. Yum! While the scallops weren't super huge, they were fresh and cooked beautifully.

The chef really does know how to extract the goodness from seafood cause this pasta was just exploding with the sweetness of whatever swims! I'm not the biggest fan of seafood so this became a little heavy for me, but seafood lovers should rejoice at the freshness and generous amount of seafood in this pasta. And doesn't this look exotic? The seaweed lookalikes are deep fried vegetables that gave the pasta a refreshing crunch.