My Love For Squid Ink

Great for sharing, oceanic flavours are there and would have been perfect with alightly more acidity.

Creamy, rich, and lightly smokey, the al dente noodles are lightly tossed in this decadent squid ink sauce; then topped within bonito flakes and thick slices of fragrant garlic. I've loved squid ink anything since first tasting it 8 years or so ago, but it's not easy to find a great squid ink dish. This however surpassed my expectations. It was clean-tasting, simple, yet bursting with flavours. I especially love the slight Asian take on this traditionally European dish.

At last night's invited tasting session, we had a chance to sample quite a few of The Spiffy Dapper's new dinner menu. For main courses, there're only three choices but the small plates offer a wider selection. This "Stuffed Squid" was one of the latter. Looking like a fat bolster, the really tender squid was stuffed with inky "Mexican rice". For me, what really made the dish tasty was the fancifully named "chipotle aioli brûlée" sauce. I think it would have been a tad boring otherwise.

Rather serviceable and perfunctory. Apart from being as memorable as a secretary’s story told in the elevator about how her mother prefers Hockhua antelope’s horn to other vendors in the Toa Payoh area, the seafood was curiously cut up to small chunks almost as if you were of the age that required chair-stacking before sitting. Hmmmm. 3.4/5

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Special YUM CHA dim sum item. Black squid ink steamed dumplings with roe.

Still not quite up to par with my favourite squid ink paella over at FOC, but this rendition is a pretty good one anyway. The amount of seafood littered over the jet black rice is so abundant that you can hardly get a peek at the grains beneath. The slight dampener of this dish turned out to be the clams, which I know must be cooked because the shells are open, but also tasted raw and reeked of the sea – and not in a good way.

How divine a dish is this. Cloaking the delicately umami, fluffy-grained cuttlefish ink rice entirely was an omu (or omelette) of such lovely eggy lightness, I could have eaten it by itself. And over this glorious round mound were embellishments of seafood, as well as a truckload of rich creamy sauce. Mmmmm...

Meh.

With extra virgin olive oil and garlic. Yumz

Squid ink pasta, scallops, garlic, chilli, anchovies, wine & capers. Spaghetti is springy, for the sauce it has a tinge of spiciness due to the chili and if you ididn't look at the ingredients list you would not know there's wine for flavoring. Sauce balances w the pasta although both are heavy flavored, a couple of scallops thrown into this were huge and quite fresh. Priced at $16 for the small portion I think its worth the money to have a try, if you're feeling hungry do order a bigger portion. Service was really inadequate as the staffs were just bumming around and we waited a long time just to order and halfway through our meal our drinks were not on the table yet.

Squid ink rice with chewy rings of squid and a steaming blanket of creamy scrambled eggs.

One of the best squid ink pasta I have ever tried. It is well flavored and balanced, with yummy Shiro Boston lobster pieces. And the best part? It never stain your teeth ever. || Price: S$38