Visit http://freshffm.blogspot.sg/2013/11/grasso-coffee-simeis-hidden-gem.html for a full review with photos!

Grasso serves typical cafe fare, with an assortment of drinks, sandwiches and pastries. My favourite drink here is the iced latté, which has a blend that is noticeably milder and less strong than other cafes. This isn’t to say that it’s flat however, because it’s very well-complemented with the milk used, creating a very smooth, clean taste, akin to a classic men’s dress watch. I feel that it’s a drink that fits into our coffee landscape very aptly, as most locals aren’t used to the strong-tasting brews of traditional espresso. In my book, I’d prefer a latté that’s a bit stronger while still retaining the same smooth quality, but this sits just fine with me.

Grasso also serves some very interesting ice blends, with beverages like English toffeenut and banana choccoffee amongst them, which cannot be found anywhere else. Generally speaking, I avoid ice blended coffees as I personally believe that their very nature –just a shot or two of espresso, masked by heavy flavourings –detract from the main gist of coffee. However, on the few occasions I’ve tried the ice blends, they taste pretty good. Whenever possible, they use fresh ingredients instead of simply using syrups as substitutes, which makes for natural-tasting ice blends (however natural a flavoured ice blended drink can taste). Grasso clearly takes a leaf out of the book of popular coffee chains by having these clearly youth-targeted menu options. I don’t like the idea of ice blended drinks masquerading as coffee sources (they are, but they aren’t true to the roots of coffee, which I take issue with), I won’t criticize them for it because here, they’re simply catering for the youth market segment. Furthermore, the ice blended drink options are creative and original, and add a nice dash of colour to the menu. I suppose as long as young people are introduced to coffee, it doesn’t matter what form it comes in, but they just shouldn’t mistakenly think that syrup-flavoured ice-blended drinks with a smidgen of coffee is coffee at all, and should gradually progress to more mature forms of coffee.

Visit http://freshffm.blogspot.sg/2013/11/quality-cafe-quality-hotel-marlow.html for full review with photos!

Quality Cafe serves a large variety of Asian dishes in a buffet format with a certain emphasis on their authentic Taiwanese porridge.

I started the buffet with a bowl of porridge and some side dishes. The porridge was not what I expected it to be. It did not carry that subtle sweetness that truly makes a bowl of porridge Taiwanese. It's texture was done right though, with a good ratio of rice and water that made it light easy to swallow.

There was a huge selection of condiments which included traditional favorites like the salted egg and pickled vegetables to very Singaporean choices like Ikan Bilis, these complemented the lightly flavored porridge well...

Visit http://freshffm.blogspot.sg/2013/10/tonkotsu-itto-undeserving-heir-to.html for full review with photos!

Upon receiving my bowl of ramen, I took a deep breath and immediately liked the heavy pork smell wafting from it –a harbinger of a thick, flavoursome broth. Never mind the shallow, concave bowl with its paltrier than usual serving size, I thought, it wouldn’t matter if the broth was as good as I hoped it’d be.

As per my ramen-eating routine, the egg was the first to go. To call it mediocre would be an insult to stalls with really mediocre eggs –this was worse than that. Just take a look at the yolk, which was almost venturing into Ajisen’s territory in providing hard-boiled egg yolks. While its somewhat adequate seasoning made it still some way from matching Ajisen’s eggs, I was still deeply disappointed in the clear lack of effort. The other stalls here may be degrading themselves and offering almost hard-boiled eggs, but the successor to the best stall to emerge from Ramen Champion shouldn’t follow suit! In any case, Tonkotsu Itto’s eggs are worse than the rest.

Although calling the noodles beehoon-thin would have been an exaggeration (albeit not a major one), I was tempted to label it as such. Its near strawlike width provided the broth with too little surface area to cling to, causing the unsurprising end result to be noodles that didn’t retain the broth’s taste. In addition, I felt that the noodles had too little bite to them and were slightly overcooked...

Go to http://freshffm.blogspot.sg/2013/09/buta-god-female-of-ramen-species-by-mark.html for our full review with photos of our trip!

Having written that about Buta God's uniqueness, what really gives it this attribute are its broth, egg and chashu. Starting with the former, the soup has a sweet taste to it, despite being Tonkotsu-based. This isn't in the diabetic sense of the word, but is more of a sweetness that hovers on top of the essential pork base of the soup, making it extremely refreshing, especially for someone as accustomed to thick, heavy broths as me. While it's sweet, don't mistake this broth for one that's light or weak -it holds its own as well as the heavyweights of the ramen world (ie Bario and Tonkotsu King), despite not being as overpowering. There're fatty bits floating in the soup, but not in Bario's heart-attack-inducing abundance. Personally, I feel that they didn't add much to the taste of the soup (the Collagen used is generally better for strong, salty bases), and especially with their rather meagre amount, didn't have much business being there at all. Either way, I don't think they played much of a role in affecting the soup. Towards the end, I felt that the soup's sweetness may have drowned out its porkiness, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that this makes the pork base irrelevant. Despite this minor shortcoming, Buta God's soup is less oily than other stalls, and this coupled with its sweetish taste definitely makes it a welcome addition to the local ramen scene...

Go to http://freshffm.blogspot.sg/2013/09/muso-ramen-burdensome-expectations.html for full review with photos of our trip!

Muso's broth is soy-based and made from pork bones, which is essentially the same genre as Buta God's. I admit to having felt rather skeptical at Ramen Champion's decision to bring in two stalls that bear so many similarities to each other (at least superficially). Having two shops that're so identical, thereby not adding much to the variation of Ramen Champion, this basically defeats the purpose of its main selling points -exposing Singaporeans to vastly differing styles of ramen (or so I felt).

Upon sampling the broth though, I was relieved that it didn't taste much like Buta God's. Their similar genres notwithstanding, Buta God's was predominantly sweet, while Muso's had a much clearer and heavier pork taste. It did have a hint of sweetness too, courtesy of the onions, but this had a sharp tinge to it, adding another dimension to the broth and resulting in one that had a nice mix of flavours. This coupled with the thinner broth bears another similarity to Buta God, as it doesn't try to overpower its eaters with one intense flavour alone, but instead coerces them into indulging with its subtler, lighter-tasting flavours. Unfortunately though, the broth lost some steam towards the end of the meal as it started tasting increasingly of its individual ingredients, and less a unified product of them. Consistency is an issue that many eateries struggle with, and a truly great bowl of ramen would be thoroughly enjoyable from the first sip right down to the last, instead of growing more subdued as it's consumed...