Ebisu-tei Japanese Restaurant

We're always curious about new lunch places. So when this Japanese restaurant popped up at Kampong Bahru Road, we were very curious and dropped in one day for lunch. They had lunch menu sets that were pretty affordable. There were set meals at two different pricing, and add-ons were at special prices too.

It took us awhile to decide, and then a very long while for the food to be served. It was apparently a one-chef restaurant. A single Japanese old chef preparing all the food. So we were chatting a very long time before we finally ate.

All the sets come with chawanmushi, miso soup and fresh fruit. Most of us got the full sets served up, but XP's set, which came last, had a missing chawanmushi. We were told that the kitchen ran out and his will be served later as soon as the next batch is cooked. Turned out his was the better one. Both batches had the same low volume (I guess they were trying to cut cost for set meals), which was roughly only about a quarter the cup full. Ours were not smooth, pathetic looking chawanmushi that had uneven surface and rough texture, and the mushrooms looked shrivelled. His turned out beautifully smooth and silky. Even the mushrooms looked brighter! Could it be ours were leftovers from the day before?

First batch chawanmushi

Batch two chawanmushi - so much better!

We ordered a set each and some random stuff to share. Teriyaki chicken set was a chicken chop served with teriyaki sauce, some lettuce on the side, and a bowl of white Japanese rice. The Bara Chirashi don was fresh assorted sashimi atop Japanese rice. Their sashimi were quite fresh and E totally enjoyed his lunch.

Teriyaki Chicken set

Close up of the chicken

Bara Chirashi set

I ordered Maguro and salmon belly negitoro. I was somewhat surprised because negitoro was supposed to be chopped up tuna belly. The bowl turned out to be tuna sliced sashimi, with chopped up salmon belly. For a moment I thought was my own misinterpretation of negitoro. So I just googled, and yes, toro is generally referred to tuna belly. And negi refers to spring onions! Which is sadly missing in this bowl! So the entire dish was named wrongly! It wasn't a big portion, but since salmon belly is quite fatty, this was a nice portion. I would really have loved some spring onions in the chopped up belly though. But still, I liked this dish in general.

Maguro and salmon belly negitoro don

Although we came away very happy with our lunch, the long wait is a huge deterrence for future visits. We saw many bottles of sake with customers names tagged to them, and a lot of them are Japanese names, so I'm guessing this place is quite popular for some drinking in the evening.


Ebisu-tei Japanese Restaurant
59 Kampong Bahru Road
#01-01
Singapore 169367
Tel: 68361039

Foong Kee Coffeeshop

We have coined this the Legendary Char Siew place. This was discovered by our student, A. He found out about this online, and had been there on several occasions with his friends, and sometimes alone. Comfort food to him when experiment failed, he said. It was quite a walk for us, and by the time we reached, I was grumbling. It better be good I said. But after the food came, I shut up and ate.

It's a roast specialty shop. They only have four kinds of meats. Soy sauce chicken, roasted duck, roasted pork belly (sio bak) and bbq pork (char siew). Then you can opt for white rice, oil rice, or noodles. I love noodles, so noodles it is. Some of the rest took rice, but I forgot the pictures. E loved loved loved the oil rice. He always go for a noodle and a oil rice. The birds are nice but not out of the world. The chicken was tender, and well flavored. The duck was roasted very nicely, with the skin nicely crisp. Duck wise, I think I prefer Yee Kee Roasted Duck. But overall, I prefer here, and I'll tell you why.

The porks. We call it Legendary Char Siew place for a reason. The star of the place is really the porks. The sio bak is beautifully roasted to crispy perfection, yet the meat remains moist and oily and sinfully good. The char siew. Oh my. Perfect balance of sweet and savory. Good mix of lean and fatty bits. I could pick out my lean ones for health reasons, while the boys could attack the fatty ones for yummy reasons. But even the lean ones were tender. The fatty ones, they were to-die-for. Melts in the mouth. Drool. I miss this place.

The the other reason for preference to this place. The chilli. Yee Kee have a half-hearted sub-standard chilli. The one here is chopped chilli and garlic and coriander in vinegar. That's the best dip for roasted meat I'm telling you. Then the springy noodles. I love. They offer wanton noodles too, for those who just want a plate of noodles to enjoy the char siew with.

Soy sauce chicken and roasted duck

Noodles

Sio bak and char siew

We've been there several times now. And still love it. And Lynn had been nagging me for telling her all about it but not bringing her there. In fact I think she's going to nag me again after this post.

Foong Kee Coffeeshop

6 Keong Saik Rd, 089114

Open Door Policy

We came across this place totally by chance. I had suggested going to Forty Hands because I hadn't tried it before. But to our disappointment, it was closed on Mondays. So we roam the area abit and found Open Door Policy opened and interesting. So we decided to try it out. Boy oh boy, were we impressed.

First thing that caught my attention upon being seated was the specials menu. Black truffle menu!! But it was quite pricey, and I didn't really want to subject my colleagues to my level of expenditure on food. So I tempted Lynn by sending her the menu instead.

Browsing the regular dinner menu, quite a few items caught my attention. So here goes... Broccoli and Stilton soup. I love blue cheese remember? So stilton is soo tempting. It came as a not too thick cream-based broccoli soup, with bits of stilton cheese in it. So you have to scrap the bottom of the bowl to fish out the cheese pieces, and that mouthful of creamy broccoli and pungent blue cheese had me sighing with pleasure.

Broccoli and Stilton soup

We decided on a red meat feast that day. Two beef one lamb. And all met and exceeded our expectations. The 48 hours braised beef cheek was tender and flavorful. Even J, who actually doesn't like beef, managed a small portion. We loved the sweet radish too. The slow braised short ribs was also very tender. J really loved the mango salad. It was very refreshing, in the midst of our otherwise carnivorous meal.

48 hours braised beef cheek with master stock quinoa and organic black radish

Slow braised short rib and red curry jus and green mango salad

What I really loved was the lamb cutlet. Three pieces! Just nice one for each of us. It was done perfectly. The lambiness wasn't overpowering, very nicely balanced by its sauce. The potato and pea stew was more of a mashed potato with peas, but worked very well. It was so good that I texted Lynn and said they were to-die-for.

Roast lamb cutlet with potato and pea stew, and fresh mint

When it came to dessert, we couldn't really decide but settled for the apple crumble and a souffle. The apple crumble was oh-so-good. So good that we actually ordered a second one after the first. J really really really loved it. It was hot, and the crumble crunchy. Beneath that crunch was a apple stew that wasn't overpoweringly sweet. With the vanilla sauce provided, it was divine. For the world of me, I cannot remember the flavor of the souffle. On their website's menu, the only souffle is a mango souffle with a bitter chocolate centre. I don't remember ours being mango so I'm not sure if the menu had changed. I remember it to be a nice souffle, but didn't make as huge an impression as the apple crumble.

Apple crumble with vanilla custard

Souffle

Open Door Policy is a nice cosy restaurant with attentive staff. The prices are a little steep, but worth the dollar for the quality of food given. I still wanted to bring Lynn back for the truffle menu. Upon checking with our helpful waiter, I was told it was a while-stocks-last menu. So guess what? I had already planned for a second exactly one week after. The place gets quite crowded later part of the evening so reservations recommended.

Update

As mentioned above, we had a second visit planned. J and X enjoyed the first so much that they decided to join Lynn and I for our truffle mania. CW came along too because he happened to be in town and wanted to meet us for dinner. He had never met us again since. I wonder whether I scared him off with the price of dinner? Lol...

Because there's more of us, we decided we could order more variety. For starters, we had the Jamon Iberico ham. It was served with a nice little salsa on the side. The ham wasn't too salty, and the crusty bread contrasted very nicely with the thinly sliced ham. 

Jamon Iberico ham

For mains, I ordered what I've been eyeing since the last visit. The wagyu burger with foie gras, truffle mayo and fresh black truffle. My three favorite items packaged into one single ginormous burger. I was hopping with anticipation. Upon its arrival, I carefully dissected it into 5. It was a huge effort but I did it. Sadly, the wagyu didn't have the classic wagyu aroma. The foie gras was blissful, but after dissection, each of us only got a small piece. The truffle flavor wasn't strong. We could smell traces of it, but it wasn't very obvious when we were eating the burger. Still, we were happy to see black pieces of shaved truffle on the fries. It was a decent burger, but we were definitely disappointed as we expected more 'wow'.

Wagyu foie gras truffle burger with a mountain of fries

The burger was huge!

Cut out view of the meaty burger

We ordered the same lamb and one of the beef, but somehow, they weren't as good as last week. Whether it was due to our initial disappointment from the burger, or did the standard really deviate, I can't tell. We also got a roast salmon, which was tender but not dry. A pretty good fish dish, I must say.

Roast Akaroa salmon with crushed potatoes, grilled baby leeks and brown butter jus

Maybe we were fuller from all the food we consumed. Or maybe the sense of novelty is gone. The apple crumble didn't impress us as much as the first visit. But bear in mind it WAS the first visit for Lynn, and she wasn't as wow'ed as we were with the lamb and the apple crumble. She did love the blue cheese soup. So I guess the restaurant doesn't hold up too well on standardisation. Which was really disappointing, making us unsure about a third visit.


Open Door Policy
19 Yong Siak Street
Singapore 168650
Tel: 62219307
Fax: 62219032

A&I Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice

This is another of those food I ate growing up. No, they aren't my relatives. They did, however, operate at my void deck for a good number of years, maybe about 10, before they were forced to move to their current location when the old place stopped being a coffeeshop. So you can imagine how often we patronise them as teens, because it was so convenient to buy. But convenience aside, we love it so much that even after they moved away, we still drive there to eat their chicken rice. I can proudly say this is the best chicken rice I've ever eaten.  In fact, we love it so much that my cousins can finish one whole chicken between the two of them... If I didn't remember wrongly.

I missed it terribly after I moved away from my mum's. Because they operate mainly for lunch, I rarely get the chance to eat it as I'm rarely in the area during lunchtime. So this post was made possible only because I happened to be on leave, and dragged my family there for lunch.

Their rice is a generous heaping bowl of rice, not the measly small plate that you often get nowadays. Not that this helps my diet, but you do feel happier knowing that the seller didn't scrimp on your lunch. The rice is fragrant, but not overly greasy. I like. 

The rice

Their chicken is none of those fancy kampong chicken. No coloring to make it artificially yellow. Just plain, tender, well-seasoned chicken. The breast meat is sooooo tender, which is a rarity in itself as most places serves dry breast meat. And they drench it in a great soya sauce cum sesame oil mixture. My favourite part is actually picking those small detached pieces of meat left behind in the sauce after all the big pieces are gone. They soak up the flavor so well. The chicken skin is very 'Q' (best translation I can give is bouncy?', so chicken skin lovers, rejoice! I'm not a drumstick lover, but I do know of someone who love their drumstick so much he used to request for an unchopped drumstick so that he can bite it off the bone. Just looking at the chicken breast meat now is making me hungry.

Juicy and tender chicken

Zoom in on the chicken. Look at that tender looking breast meat!

The star of their stall is actually not really the chicken. It's their chilli. Fiery hot, well flavored. It compliments the chicken and rice so well. We are such frequent customers (at least my family is. I'm a rare customer.) that they gave us extra chilli and sauce on the side.

The extra chilli and sauce

But do be warned. They do overdo either the MSG or the vinegar. You get very thirsty after the meal. But I'm willing to suffer that for that delicious chicken. And chilli. And rice. Occasionally. Their soup is pretty blah so forget about it. And their pricing remains reasonable too. How I miss this place.


A&I Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice
Blk 907  
Jurong West St 91Singapore 640907