Khun-Yai is one of the stalls we always do not have the chance to eat whenever we are in Beauty World Food Center. Most of the time, its either they are sold out or they are already closed. 

The stall is managed by a team of 3, comprising of 2 ladies and a guy. The latter is seen mainly as the chef, cooking all the dishes while one of the ladies is managing the orders while the other lady in the kitchen is preparing the ingredients for the chef.Fluffy egg with crab sticks & sotong as seafood omelette, no "wow" factor but a good taste of home cook food.The yellow grains of pineapple rice was all ordinary to me until I saw slices of hot dog as part of the ingredient among the mix beans and pineapple chunks. Well, it's not a usual sight and I thought they do have their own style compared to other Thai Cuisine stalls we have in Singapore. Phad Thai is on a sweet side with hints of scrambled egg taste and as a whole, I'm quite happy with this dish for the prawns were fresh and not those processed ones. The portion was reasonable for the price that we are paying. The dish caught my sight as quite some customers ordered this. The Sotong was well battered and deep-fried to its crispy perfection and one thing to ponder about is that it doesn't look greasy.Dipped them into the given sweet and spicy sauce and its good to go!The green curry was creamy in its coconut milk and loaded with ingredients like chicken chunks, Thai Brinja, cut chilli and basil leaves. The spiciness level is mild for us Overall the taste of the food has nothing to shout about. However, if you are looking for a reasonable price Thai home cook food without much expectation, this will not be a bad choice. Base on my encounters, if you are heading down for their food, it will be better you can be earlier as once it gets sold out fast during peak hours.

Nyonya Taste Brew & Bar is a new restaurant located along Jalan Pari Burong just a few minutes away from Tanah Merah MRT Station, serving authentic Nyonya delights, together with a wide selection of craft beers.

I have never come across Nyonya Taste by brew & bar till I came across someone posting on Facebook about home delivery with no minimum order on Nyonya food. I was kind of craving for that particular cuisine, thus I decided to go all out and arrange my dinner in advance. Communication and arrangement of food was done via Whatsapp in a breeze. 

Here comes the rare dish which is also one of their recommended dishes, Sotong Masak Hitam, when translated from Malay Language, it literally means Sotong cooked in Squid Ink. The taste of the dish threw us a surprise with loads of slice onions, chilli added with hints of black pepper taste. We are not so much of black pepper lovers, however, the dish as a whole well cooked and the texture of the Sotong was right enough.Ayam Buah Keluak is not only on their recommended item on their food menu but also one of the staples that we will often order when it comes to Peranakan food as I simply cannot miss out the chance in having Buah Keluak Nut. This chicken dish in spicy gravy was served with 2 pieces of Buah Keluak and you have additional at $2 each. The chicken meat came in large chunks were flavourful and tasty especially when it comes to pairing the sauce with the rice.  However, it will be better if they are cut into smaller chunks. On a side note, the Buah Keluak paste has been already extracted out from the nut and tuck into our delivery boxes together with the dish.Next, here are the two other dishes that we had to complete our dinner.The recommended Braised Babi Chin is actually one of my favourite dishes ordered. The dish was pretty well executed with rich flavours from the mixture of Pork Belly with mushroom, eggs and potatoes. The taste gave me a good reminiscent of home cook food in which each and every item was tender and soft, well braised. I love having the gravy over my plate of rice.The classic Nyonya style dish that includes Chinese Cabbages, sliced mushrooms, carrots, rice vermicelli, beancurd skin, black fungus and dried shrimp stewed in a tasty sauce. It may seem a simple dish but there is a lot of work required from the kitchen in preparation of this dish.The 3 portions of rice we ordered were packed in a container and portion might seems a little than expected. It kind of lack the rice's fragrance as we pulled open the container cover. Base on the food portion given (excluding the rice), we find that the amount that we paid for was rather reasonable. The portion was big enough for 3 pax or perhaps good enough for 4-5 pax. Though the food we ordered might not be appealing in the colours, taste-wise it is still appealing.  There is always a saying that "tabao" food may not taste as good as having the food served up to us piping hot when dining in, it will be best to patronize Nyonya Taste by brew & bar again. When? I guess it when my stomach is calling for Nyonya Cuisine again.

https://www.umakemehungry.com/2019/08/mui-kee-congee.html

Chanced by Mui Kee Congee while we were around Shaw Centre area and decided to give it a try as there was no queue.To begin with, Mui Kee has its very first outlet in Mong Kok, Hong Kong. It had begun with a young 30 years old lady , Mak Mui. Her son then took over the reins by putting in his same amount of passion and efforts as his mum. Over the years, Mui Kee has steadily built up its reputation among locals as well as tourists. Three generations later, Mak Mui's grandson (known as Ah Tung) took over the business. He took over the recipes and heritage cooking techniques during the 2 years of training from his grandmother at the age of 22 before he was allowed to be in the kitchen.Congee is definitely the traditional Cantonese way of preparation. It was silky till no grains of rice can be seen. They were not watery and best was that each mouthful of it was permeated with so much of charred flavours in it.  While I expect the dace fish balls to smell abit fishy but I was thrown with some surprise here.There were about 6 dace fish balls in my bowl and we were quite comfortable with the taste. It was bouncy and tasted refreshing. Seems like that one of the ingredients included were orange zest.


Innard were cooked to the correct texture, not too tough. As for the intestines, they were well handled. We added some pork balls for another $4 and we were glad that it did not disappoint.


Steamed rice noodle was thin and smooth by itself. Adding on the sweet black sauce had boosted its moisture and lifting the plain rice noodle a delectable one with its ingredients. Besides the mixed mushrooms, it does come with a few variation like the chfe recommendations, Sakura Ebi or Roasted Duck with preserved vegetables.


The Chrysanthemum Red Dates tea is not your usual kind of sweet herbal tea. Instead it tasted bitter and may not be a liking for all.


Each Overall, Mui Kee had brought the culture from Hong Kong into the shop where service staff take order conversing in Cantonese. However you can get them to switch into Mandarin or English too if you prefer this way. Apart than that, service is quite efficient and luckily the atrocious Hong Kong Service culture was not being brought here.

https://www.umakemehungry.com/2019/08/mui-kee-congee.html

https://www.umakemehungry.com/2019/06/whampoa-keng-fish-head-steamboat.html

Friends were mentioning that we should try some Fish Steamboat for the evening and we went through a list of popular eating places and decided that we should explore the shop house in Balestier as its has been popular and long standing in that area.

It was nearing dinner time and for walk-in customers we had to join the snaky long queue as we did not make any reservations.


While waiting for our tables, we were told to look into the menu and decide what to order. There were seats outside the restaurant to let customers rest while waiting, however the number of seats could not accommodate all the people that were waiting. Some of them have to stand on the pavement which is just next to the road and we find it quite dangerous, also blocking the pedestrians who were passing by us.


We waited for quite sometimes and while watching both human and the traffic, we managed to catch the beautiful blue hour during that day.


About an hour of wait, we finally got our table. Order taking was fast and soon, our dishes were up on the table.

Spinach has a well balanced with depth of flavour coming from the mixture of normal, century and salted eggs. I'm the one who usually love to grab some of the vegetable gravy with my rice but not in this case as it is more of diluted and too much water content in the dish.


Har Cheong kai aka Prawn Paste Chicken's depth of flavour is there and it was marinated long enough with the fermented prawn paste. Wings were plump and crispy at its first bite, letting out its hot juicy flavours.


This was what we were attracted to Whampoa Keng. The steamboat stock was milky and tasted great. Ingredients include the chunks of fish, fried yam, cabbages, seaweed, herbs and hints of fried sole fish taste were spotted. Charcoal as left burning throughout the session in the middle of the pot.


The entire eating area was cramp and servers have to be extremely careful not to knock over the hot steamboat into others. Not only that, the entire place was smoky with steam rising up from each table's hot pot.


Their prices are on a steeper side if we were to compare the same meals to other Fish Head Steamboat. For that time taken for us to queue and grab a table, I would not mind exchange Whampoa Keng Fish Head Steamboat for other eating places. However, taking a look at the crowd, it seems like big families with elderly were enjoy such dinner sessions. Perhaps this traditional name of Fish Head Steamboat already have a group of their die hard fans who love Whampoa Keng's style of preparing the Steamboat.

https://www.umakemehungry.com/2019/06/whampoa-keng-fish-head-steamboat.html

https://www.umakemehungry.com/2018/09/unagiya-ichinoji.html

With the parent name as Miyagawa Honten that has a history spans of 125 years is now one of Tokyo's famous Unagi restaurants, operating about 20 outlets just alone in Japan. Not only that, recently they have clinched the Bib Gourmand by the Michelin Guide in 2018.

Finding the location of this Japanese Restaurants maybe a little tricky as it is located behind some Japanese restaurants or some back passage.

The concept is kind of similar to Man Man Japanese Unagi Restaurant where you get to see freshwater live eels in the tank and chef preparing the eels in an open concept kitchen separating the restaurant and kitchen with glass panels. To achieve the smoky taste with crispy texture, these eels were grilled over hot charcoal.

The restaurant has limited seating, about 30 plus seat as the restaurant is not big. If you want to have a greater view of how Unagi is prepared, you can sit by the kitchen counter and watch the process of grilling unagi.

One of the recommended dishes will be the Hitsumabushi. It comes with different sizes from Small to extra large, suitable for sharing. What you get in Hitsumabushi will be pieces of cut eel placed on a bed of Hokkaido Rice and served with 3 condiments.

Sometimes by looking at the delicious smoky grilled eels, I felt like ditching the carbohydrates (rice) away but these are not the usual Japanese rice, they are Hokkaido Rice.

How to eat it? Dont worry, there are instructions you can follow on the table in 3 simple steps.

If you want a more powerful taste, these sauces are yours to add. If you want to add a little more spice, you can topped your food with some spicy sauce as well as pepper. However when I compared the spicy and the original sauce, it was little or no difference to me.

 Adding on to their main menu, they have this seasonal Unagi Fair menu at discounted price.

With the special menu from the Unagi fair, I had order their Unagi Sushi double roll. It might not look filling to the stomach but this set itself can be as filling as those who is ordering the Hitsumabashi set.

One of the sushi roll in the set was cut into 6 pieces and topped with Tobiko. I would say it was quite flavourful. Besides the alluring flavours from the crispy eel coated in the sweet sauce, the marriage with sushi roll wrapped with cucumber, egg and crab stick elevated the dining experience. Definitely no regrets in ordering this set.

Unagi Box Set looked complete with sides and desserts. There are tempura, Gyoza in the Bento Box. Dessert are basically some konyaku stuff with half of it topped with peanut powder. Not too bad though.

Chawanmushi was included in both Unagi Fair set that we had ordered. It looked a little different here with ingredients like snow pea and unagi, apart from the usual mushroom and Japanese fish cake.

Comparing Unagiya Ichinoji to Man Man Japanese Unagi Restaurant, I would say that no queue is required here. However, I still prefer the latter as the taste was pretty stronger than Unagiya. Taste is rather subjective and if you prefer a lighter taste, you may like what they are serving here.

https://www.umakemehungry.com/2018/09/unagiya-ichinoji.html