Cheerless Chow

Pizza, Filipino AND Korean food from the same hawker stall? And in the weirdest of locations too? Well, that’s the story of @mommaspizza_sg, which is in a coffeeshop close to Aljunied MRT, and decided to be the Mr Worldwide of cuisine. While their pizzas were mighty tempting, Filipino food is much rarer and I settled on a plate of Toci-Silog at seven dollars.⠀
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Toci-Silog is a portmanteau of Pork Tocino, a sweet cured pork, and Silog, which is garlic fried rice and a sunny side up egg. I’ve never had pork tocino before, so it was a surprise to find out that this dish was sweet and savoury with emphasis on the sweet. Despite what you may think, the sweetness & saltiness were strong yet never forceful, and they made the pork incredibly scrumptious. It was rather oily from the stir frying though, so this is definitely not a diet dish.⠀
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Unfortunately the silog, which I was eagerly anticipating, was quite disheartening. The garlic flavours were mild and muted, and the rice was a touch too wet and cold. I have no idea how fried rice could be served cold, but it happened. As for the random corn kernels & diced tomatoes on the side, I reckon they could’ve tossed that and fried it up with the silog for a more cohesive dish.⠀
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Honestly I like how unique Momma’s Pizza & Rice Meal is, but unless they improve quickly, I’ll be getting my Filipino fix elsewhere.

(PARTIALLY SPONSORED) @britishhainan has been in business for over a decade now, and they’ve been serving up consistently decent Hainanese western food. Plus, they’re preserving a piece of Singapore’s culinary history that was created by Hainanese cooks working for the British during the colonial era.⠀
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Unfortunately, it wasn’t nothing but the hits that night, as the Onion Soup ($8 nett) was a disappointment. Initially we were quite keen on this soup seeing the abundance of caramelised onions in the soup, but the soup was woefully watery and possessed none of the expected robustness of a soup made from beef stock. And yes, it was super sweet, almost saccharine even.⠀
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Still, as long as you main British Hainan’s mains, you’ll be alright. Thanks for the invite, @britishhainan & @scalemicroinfluencers!

Thai food in hawker centres is fairly common, but Vietnamese food? Not so much. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see Viet food in Albert Food Centre, but Shoon Kou Cafe has made the very unorthodox choice to start hawking in this admittedly rundown food centre. For a one (wo)man show, their twenty eight item menu is impressive is scope, ranging from banh mi to rice noodles & rice dishes.⠀
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I got the BBQ Pork Banh Mi ($6 nett), which I will admit was not nearly as impressive as the size of their menu. I found it odd that the lady boss fried the pork chop in a pan usually reserved for making Japanese omelettes, but the pork chop turned out alright. It was heavily marinated with soy sauce & lemongrass, giving the pork an invigorating, strong scent that’s unmistakably lemongrass. The pork chop was just a little bit dry, but it wasn’t entirely the fault of the porcine.⠀
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The soft baguette roll is barely toasted, meaning the only crunch you’ll get here is from the julienned carrots & cucumbers. The less said about coriander the better, and there’s not quite enough pâté spread on the baguette, which does contribute to the pork chop feeling dry. The banh mi is also hellishly spicy, so you’ll do well to have something milky on standby.⠀
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Perhaps the noodles & rice dishes will make more of a lasting impression, but Shoon Kou’s banh mi is not great, not terrible. Not sure why I wrote this whole review about it, tbh.

There’s a new dim sum merchant on the block in Lazada One, and Dim Sum Xuan Hong Kong Dim Sim has some tough, firmly established competition just a five minute walk away. Both Dim Sum Xuan & Victor’s Kitchen have pretty similar menus, but Dim Sum Xuan definitely has some weird items on the menu like chicken nuggets with French fries and samosas.⠀
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The best item on their menu are the Har Gaos, which come in a quartet. The skin is delicately thin, and the plump prawn filling was flawlessly fresh. It’s salted pretty well, but at the end of the day the overall flavours are basic as it can get. At $7.80++ for a basket of four, it’s neither cheap nor exorbitantly expensive.⠀
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The Chicken & Sausage in Glutinous Rice (aka lotus leaf rice) saw two little glutinous rice parcels wrapped in lotus leaf. At $6.80++ the lotus leaf rice felt like a ripoff, as it was quite bland & the size of the lotus leaf rice was diminutive. The Beancurd Skin Roll in Oyster Sauce ($5++) was adequately tasty, but ultimately pretty pedestrian.⠀
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Dim Sum Xuan is adequate if you’ve got a dim sum craving that won’t go away if you’re in the Bras Basah area, but don’t expect to max out your bang for your buck here.

@changbeersg has always been an easy drinking beer, best suited to the sweltering heat of Thailand, and Chang has made it an even more appealing brew to beat the heat of Southeast Asia with the newly launched Chang Cold Brew Lager. The Cold Brew Lager can be best enjoyed on a hot afternoon on the beach, or paired with titillating Thai cuisine.⠀
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We had pretty high hopes for the Prawn Cakes ($8++ for 4 pieces), and while the texture was great & it was deep fried to perfection, Folks Collective added too much flour to the prawn paste. Every bite had a faint but distinct taste of flour, and I simply couldn’t ignore it. A shame as everything else was perfect with the prawn cakes, but at least I got to wash it down with gulps of crisp, malty ice cold lager. Fortunately, the mains were positively marvellous, and made the trip to Aperia Mall worthwhile.⠀
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Thank you for organising this tasting @accela.comms & @changbeersg, and thank you for hosting us @thaisupermarketsg & @folkscollective!

Due to the astronomical standards set by both noodle dishes, the Olive Fried Rice came up short. Each grain of rice was fluffy and well separated, and the entire plate of fried rice was excitingly eggy with accents of wok hei, but it just did not thrill us the same way the noodles did. Tuck Kee Son could definitely start by adding a lot more olives into the rice, and perhaps turning up the charm more. It certainly has promise, so I won’t rule it out just yet.⠀
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Thank you for having us @tuckkeeson, and thank you for organising this tasting @shiokafoodie!

As for the Mini Yaki Soba ($9++), I had high hopes for it, but it was so shockingly salty I had to abandon it halfway. ‘Twas a shame too, as the yakisoba was loaded with lots of crunchy cabbage & slices of fatty pork, and swaddled in a delicate omelette blanket. Well, hopefully Sakaba Igokichi will have tweaked the recipe the next time I drop by for another boozy night of fabulous food & stellar sake.

As for @flakyhaus butter croissant, it was a bit of a letdown. While the croissant was well layered, the flakiness was completely absent. It was kinda dense and stodgy, and for almost three bucks a croissant, I expected it to live up to the marketing hype. Oh well, maybe next time.

They had my curiosity when it was announced that @misstamchiak was opening @tamchiakkopitiam in partnership with @chewchormeng, but they got my attention when they announced that Ru Ji Kitchen was opening their first (?) outpost outside of Holland Drive Market. Ru Ji Kitchen has been a firm favourite for fishball noodles for both my dad and I, but we did notice that they seemed to be falling off in terms of the quality of their fishballs.⠀
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Ru Ji Kitchen are one of the few remaining hawkers who still make their own fishballs, and my dad has sworn by them for decades now. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, their fishballs seemed to have declined in quality, and that decline doesn’t seem to have been arrested since I last had their fishballs. Sure, Ru Ji’s fishballs are tastier than the average, but the texture has been changed for the worse. It’s probably a change in ingredients or recipe, bur we’ll never know.⠀
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The easiest way to tell a handmade fishball from a mass produced one from a factory has always been the texture. Good handmade ones tend to give after an initial resistance, and retain a bounciness akin to a pudding. Ru Ji’s fishballs used to be that way, but they’ve been constantly been getting more rubbery. Unfortunately, in 2023 at Tamchiak Kopitiam, Ru Ji’s fishballs were a bit on the rubbery side.

It ain’t all doom and gloom for Ru Ji though, as they still remember how to cook noodles perfectly, and their chili is as sweat provokingly violent as I remember it being. To be fair, at just $4.50 flat a bowl for fishballs, fish cake slices and noodles, I can’t pipe up all that much.

Fried Hokkien Mee is a hawker food classic that seems to be slowly going the way of dinosaurs. Sure, there are a lot of hokkien mee hawkers, but finding a really delicious plate is rather rare. So I was rather surprised when a fast casual restaurant like @tunxianghokkiendelights stepped up and made Hokkien mee their signature dish, and I finally tried their version one evening.⠀
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At $8.90++ a plate, it isn’t that much more expensive than the standard hawker version. The portion of noodles and fried lard on the plate are quite charitable, but the amount of chopped squid, pork slices and the three shrimp in the dish could be described as…slightly strict. It’s pretty laden with egg however, so you get a lot of fluffy scrambled egg bits here and there.⠀
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Unfortunately, the Hokkien mee was annoyingly bland. The gravy was devoid of most of the umami I was expecting from a prawn broth, and only showed glimpses of salinity here and there. This plate desperately required the intervention of a heaping helping of chili, and luckily enough Tun Xiang managed to bail themselves out on their self made sambal chili. The spicy, salty chili paste added everything that was sorely lacking from the base plate of Hokkien Mee.⠀
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When you make a dish your pride & your signature, you best make sure it’s one of the best around town. Otherwise you’re gonna end up with egg on your face.

The Crayfish Mentaiko Aglio Olio (also $34++ U.P.) sees a whole crayfish halved and blanketed in gently torched mentaiko mayo. It’s the crown of a bountiful bed of mushroom aglio olio pasta, and it does look quite promising. Even though the chef was a little heavy handed with the olive oil that day, the oil, mushrooms & garlic seasoned the soft spaghetti splendidly. The satisfyingly salty, garlicky & slick spag was a delight to slurp on between chews of mushroom. Unfortunately, the crayfish mentaiko fell embarrassingly flat. The crayfish seemed to be the runt of its school, and the mentaiko mayo was lacking in the umami of mentaiko and tasted a lot more like saltier mayo.⠀
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Despite the shortcomings of the Crayfish Mentaiko Aglio Olio, the Chili Crab Pasta is supremely scrumptious. And thanks to Burpple Beyond, you get two plates for the price of one! Thanks for having us, @yummochowsg & @burpple!

The penultimate dish in @newubinseafood Italian wine x zi char pairing was the Lime Leaf Chicken Rice, complemented by a Brigaldara Amarone della Valpolicella Case Vecie of the 2016 vintage. The rice of the chicken rice was quite addictive, as it had the richness & flavour of nasi lemak, but the added sourness from the lime kept the fluffy rice grains from tasting & feeling too rich. Unfortunately, the chicken was the least satisfying element of the entire experience, as it was dry to the point where I was eating shards of chicken.⠀
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Fortunately, the Case Vecie was there to wash away the sad taste of disappointment. It clocks in at a mammoth 17.5% alcohol by volume, and has equally mammoth flavours to match. The body of the wine is heavier than that of a Syrah, and it’s sensually smooth & silky. The deeply ruby red body carried alluring aromas of ripe cherries, dark chocolate, plums, oak and cinnamon. Despite what its whopping ABV might suggest, it’s actually pleasantly sweet with a dry and long, lingering finish that warms your throat.⠀
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Even though the chicken was a hard pass, I’m glad I got to savour the sensation that is Brigaldara’s Case Vecie. Thank you for the warm hospitality, @newubinseafood!