I was flipping through the menu, wondering which of the usuals I should be settling on when something on the last page of the menu caught my eye.

Teriyaki sliced pork with poached egg on rice in hot stone served with miso soup and a small side salad for under $14.

Let's try it shall we?What a happy pop of colors from the cherry tomatoes, carrots and egg. And a generous serving of teriyaki sliced pork of course.

The side salad was sad though. random veggies with a dollop of mayonnaise. Hmm. Wafu dressing would've been much appreciated.

Be sure to stir the rice from time to time before it becomes burnt rice. Unless, of course you like it like that.

In a word? Flavourful. I didn't need to add any condiments to this in order to finish this bowl of yum.

That's a state of emergency and must be dealt with pronto. So for a quick fix, i headed to ichiban on a weeknight and made an order for their salmon sashimi don.This must be one of the few times where the actual order looked better than the picture in the menu.

Fresh slabs of salmon sashimi decorated my bowl of Japanese rice.
The slices of raw salmon were thick and those lines of fat just simply melted in your mouth. Take a small pinch of wasabi and a dab of shoyu with each piece of meat. It would have looked prettier, except that I ordered it without the chilli padi.

Kudos to ichiban for keeping costs down while not compromising on food quality.

While the market continues to rock on their colorful xlbs. We joined in that madness and ordered steamers after steamers of xlbs. Crab, meat, garlic, truffles. Like that. Just a whole table of xlbs and saucers of ginger slices and vinegar.

Dinner was served and devoured with pleasure. The garlic ones were the least well received and the crab roe ones were the first to go. Crab roe xiao long bao was bursting with flavours of the sea and its pretty yellow color from the roe made it a delight to eat.

The grey garlic ones weren't the most attractive colour and the taste of garlic left a foul smell in one's mouth that basically caused anyone to think twice before taking a second helping.

Simple original meat xlb takes the cake. I loved the basic meat ones that go for $9.80 for a basket of 10. Full of juice and perfect zing from the vinegar. Yum.

On a Saturday night, business was brisk at this stall.

But once I saw black mushroom slices, I was sold.

I would wait for as long as it would take. Finally! My bowl of Home made noodles with my raw egg yolk and ignoring everything else, mushroom slices!

There was a good amount of actual minced meat. Not like other stalls that have such a high fat to meat ratio, i'm basically just eating fats.

The soup base was good. Not too salty nor MSG laden.

Worth every bit of $3.50 and time spent.

Four hungry monkeys decided to head for a sunday food hunt down old upper thomson road.

"That yong tau food place...

You mean like the ones we eat every week from Marina Square?

No no. This comes with gravy.

Like the ones at Suntec?

Mmmhmm.

Oh i'm so hungry I could die. I hope we get a parking space soon."

That's our conversation in the car. And we could not have gotten to this place any sooner. As luck would have it, it wasn't long before we got our parking space.

And that was mad heat we had to brave to get to the stall. Which was just less than 50m away from the car.

"Yong tau foo? Yes, yong tau foo. Dumpling soup? Yes.

Chicken? Yup. White chicken. Just the breast please."

Now we sit and wait. 5 minutes. Tops.

And this appeared.Of course, it was the only photo I was allowed to take before we doubled over in hunger. I make it sound like we just left a concentration camp. When it was really just Sunday rowing trainings.

Guess how much all that cost? Ytf, rice, chicken breast, dumpling soup and one barley drink.

$35.

That was some satisfying lunch.

We cleared it all in half an hour. Or less.

It's been a while since I've been here and I still loved the brinjal and bouncy fishballs. Most of all? I love that starchy gravy.

It's not superbly cheap but this was the best value we got for our buck this month out from the usual foodcourts in Marina and Suntec.