The Sushi Bar, Far East Plaza

Good quality sushi at a good price - no reservations, and cash only. The chirashi below was $30-odd dollars and it was extremely enjoyable. 

Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thesushibar.sg

Jaan - Degustation dinner

I headed to Jaan for dinner with a bunch of foodie friends to try the degustation menu on a Monday evening, when up to 5 people can eat for 50% off with the FAR card. We had a great time, sharing a bottle of wine among 4 of us, and the eventual bill came up to $160-$180 per person (I cant recall exactly how much it was).

I cannot remember what this was, perched on top of a sardine tin. 

Croquette and smoked eel with pickled apple - definitely very interesting.

Chicken skin with spices, and hummus.

Hummus is (as hummus usually is) boring.

This was a mushroom tea+Sabayon+mushroom slices. Some visual showmanship here - the mushroom tea in the plunger was poured into the foamy Sabayon.

This was a pretty good mushroom tea, I thought. And I was so glad they didn't utilise the cheap trick of adding truffle oil.

The sabayon was very light, and the entire ensemble went down very easily. I could have had 2 of these.

Our table shared a bottle of red, which I think was a South Australian Cab Sav Merlot blend. It was very easy to drink, and went very well with the food. But then again, it's very hard to go wrong with a South Australian red, no matter how young it is. 

Pretty fancy-shaped butter there

To go with the black truffle brioche and olive roll

First course was Obsiblue Prawn and Avocado Canneloni, which came with bubbles of light jelly, ikura and caviar. A very very pretty dish, with all the flavours coming together very nicely. It was easy to taste the freshness of each ingredient.

It was served with seaweed butter on brioche on the side.

Jaan's Garden- basically a salad that was super colourful and pretty.

Mozambique langoustine - this was a pretty large langoustine that could have passed for a lobster. It came with peas, raspberry and mint.

A very decent dish. The langoustine was fresh (which should be the case), and the sauce wasn't terribly special but nothing to complain about.

Grilled foie gras with strawberries- very pretty, but I detected a ginger flavour that I didn't quite like.

Roasted Atlantic Brill - asparagus, crayfish and garlic cream. Also a very decent dish, but one wonders why a tasting menu would have both langoustine and crayfish.

The main meat dish was hay-roasted bresse pigeon confit leg with barley and morel mushrooms. It was sweet and tender, although I would have preferred it slightly more done.

I didn't have the guts to ask for it to be better cooked, for fear of looking suaku. So I ate it.

I thought the barley risotto with morels was pretty yummy. A good accompaniment.

Sorbet as a palate cleanser

Then came the choconuts 4 – different flavours of chocolate, including gianduja. 

And lastly,  petite 4s comprising marshmallows, nutty chocolate, a rock melon sorbet stick, and I have no idea what the last thing was.

But everything was SO PRETTY.

Compared to the other atas restaurant helmed by the chap who used to work at Jaan, I would most happily head to Jaan again for another degustation meal, but only with the FAR card. At 50% off, or around $140, this was much better value for money than the $400 per person I paid at the other place, especially since the food at Jaan was just as good.

Eating in Tangkak, Malacca and Johor Bahru

We recently made a trip up to Malacca with some university friends, and a large part of the weekend focused on food, with the itinerary planned around breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner with the time in between spent waiting for food to be digested so we could move on to our next meal. 

First stop was for beef noodles at Restoran Kuang Fei in Tangkak, although I would have been quite happy to have made it the second stop after Yong Peng :P. We first went there in Dec 2011 after a trip to Malacca, and found it to be really good quality. 

I started off with the first bowl of kuey teow having a mixture of various beef parts, including tripe and fatty brisket. The soup was brilliant, with an amazing beef stock flavour. This was a pretty small bowl, so....

I went for a second bowl of bee hoon with fresh sliced beef.  On the whole, I think the version with various beef parts was better, because the lean beef was rather hard.

The cooking area out in front. The beef noodle shop is located along a whole street of cookie shops. We went to Hua Bee to pick up some tau sa pia.

Next stop- Malacca. We headed straight for the Restoran Sin Yin Hoe oyster omelette for a tea time snack, and were most relieved to find the cook still frying away.

Heaven on a plate, with tiny plump juicy oysters on top.

Another shot of the oysters

We shared 2 large plates among the 7 of us - there was more food waiting to be eaten.

We headed to Jonker St for chendol after that.

Best chendol in Malacca, in our opinion, just opposite the Aik Cheong stall.

We tried the assam laksa but it was disappointing.

The chendol, however, was as good as we remembered. It was all about the gula melaka - I wish they had a liquid version. We bought some from the stall to bring home.

Chock full of beans

We went back to the hotel and waited until it was time to head out for dinner. One of our friends had heard that Amy's Heritage Nyonya Cuisine was reputable, so we went to check them out. When we got there, they said they were out of fish and squid, which was a good sign because it meant that it was popular (or a bad sign because they had really bad planning...we chose to believe the former!) 

We started with kueh pie ti - this was very yummy. It appeared that the shells were made manually since they were all shaped differently. The filling was delicious. 

We shared a hee peow soup - this was pretty tasty as well. No MSG, the shopowner declared to us.

 A pretty good bowl of soup.

These were some of the other things we ordered....

The udang masak nanas was one of the best I've ever eaten, except for what my dad used to cook. Super lemak and tasty, and excellent with white rice. The prawns were large and fresh. 

The ayam buah keluak was reasonable, considering there was no pork used. It was probably one of the better ones eaten in a restaurant. Nothing can compare to my dad's buah keluak. Except maybe my grandma's version.

Lady's fingers with a spicy salad/chutney mix. This was pleasant.

Can't go too far wrong with sambal kangkong.

The sambal udang petai was really tasty too, but too much udang and too little petai!

And at the end of the day, including drinks and dessert, the bill for 7 people came up to RM 222. We were absolutely flabbergasted. I still feel overwhelmed thinking about the amazing value for money and good quality food there. 

We were even talking about it during breakfast the next morning. We were recommended Donald and Lily, which was near our hotel.

Empty at 10.30am, packed shoulder-to-shoulder at 12.00pm.

We shared a plate of fruit and taukwa rojak - this was interesting but the sauce was not what we were expecting. It was like a combination of tomato and chilli sauce.

We tried various things - the mee siam was slightly less nutty than what we were used to in Sg.

And their curry laksa was really good.

Lemak, spicy, and tasty.

More like a dry mee siam version.

We tried the mee rebus too. Wasn't too impressed. I thought the gravy wasn't think enough.

But to each his own, I guess.

We stopped by Hua Mui, a Hainanese coffeeshop in Johor Bahru, for tea at 3pm on the way back to Singapore after leaving Melaka around 12 noon. Seriously old school, and we were very pleased with the find. It's located right at the junction of Jalan Trus and Jalan Dhoby in the old downtown part of the city.

We had to sit upstairs since the 1st floor was full. They use a pulley to bring up drinks and food from the 1st floor kitchen.

Kopi and bandung.

Kaya buns and butter buns. These were very very nice, with the buns slightly crisp on the outside and very soft and fluffy on the inside.

French toast-  didn't quite enjoy this as much.

But their chicken chop was brilliant - crispy skin, firm and juicy meat and really yummy gravy. Just steer clear of the fake green peas.

Addresses:

Tangkak Beef Noodles 东甲牛腩面

20 Jalan Solok, Tangkak, Johor

Amy Heritage Nyonya Cuisine

75, Jalan Melaka Raya 24, Taman Melaka Raya, Malaysia

Tel: +60 (06) 286 8819

Open Tuesday to Sunday 11.30am-2.30pm and 6pm-10pm (closed Mondays)

Donald and Lily's

No. 16 (Ground Floor),

Jalan KSB 1,

Taman Kota Shahbandar,

75200 Melaka.

Restoran Hua Mui 华美茶餐室

Address: 131 Jalan Trus 

80000 Johor Bahru