Din Tai Fung Singapore Has New Menu Items

It looks like Din Tai Fung in Singapore has some new menu items - or at least, the one at Marina Bay Link Mall does. These little egg roll-like things were my favorite of them all, with a light and crispy skin as well as a savory slice of aromatic duck inside. The biggest letdown, however, were those stuffed green chilies in the back, which were not even the slightest bit spicy, but rather annoyingly sweet. The same could be said of the the noodles with spicy sauce, which again were not spicy but sweet. Actually, the biggest surprise was probably the chicken-based xiao long bao. It was still the same little dumpling, but just imagine Mom's chicken soup inside: refreshingly comforting. I'll get that one again.

Fish Burger from Freshness Burger

If that looks like a lot of lettuce in there, that's because I explicitly asked for it. See, Freshness Burger had a little sign at the cash register that suggested making their burgers healthier by requesting more veggies (for free). They also suggested reducing the amount of sauce - and interestingly, with a "warning" that it might actually make it taste better. Either way, it was more surprising to me to that the patty was less than half of what the clown provides...and ironically, without the wasabi sauce either.

The Usual Fruit Platter on SQ

Yes, this fruit platter thing is starting to become a regular thing for me. It sure is a heck of a lot healthier than those regular meals. This one was a bit different in that it came with a banana and kiwi, the latter of which got a bit messy when one had to peel it. Perhaps more interesting was that the seats on this flight yet again did not have power outlets, even if the flight on the way up did. I wish they would standardize on those other seats instead.

Shanghai Ren Jia at Pudong Airport

I needed lunch before getting on the plane today, so I stopped at this restaurant outside of immigration at Pudong Airport Terminal 2. Fortunately, they had river shrimp here, so I grabbed that, even if it was of the cooked variety. It was delicate and tasty, but also a bit pricey at 108 RMB (US$17) for that tiny serving above. I also grabbed more of that shan si eel, which was much more peppery here than the other night - in a good way. I gobbled it down in seconds.

Di Shui Dong, Shanghai, China

A colleague of ours took us to this place (56 Mao Ming Road, 6253-2689) because it was allegedly Mao Zedong's favorite place to go to in Shanghai. I have no idea how true that was, but there were some things named after him here, like some fried shrimp thing that looked like...well, fried shrimp. We were told that these ribs were the things to get here though, so we grabbed this along with a few other small spicy starters (this place specializes in Xiang cuisine from Hunan).

Now, when I heard about spicy Chinese ribs, I thought of those gigantic ribs from Three Guizhou Men in Beijing. So I was surprised to find these much smaller...in a good way. They were also covered in cumin and fennel, which made it basically taste like yang rou chuanr. Most of the other dishes like the spicy cold noodles were fine, but this place was also surprisingly touristy too, most likely the result of being listed in some travel book.

Random Noodles from Huanghe Road, Shanghai

I have no idea what this dish was called - nor the name of the shop that I got it at, for that matter. But I needed some kind of soup noodles to sit in my belly, and Huanghe Road once again was the late night area that the hotel figured that I should go to. I walked into a random shop and he recommended this, which wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but it still did the job in the end, especially with some of their chili oil.

Harbour Plaza, Shanghai, China

At a quick glance, I initially thought it was a plate of mussels. Only when I looked at it again more closely did I realize that they were miniature abalone. It was good - along with a number of the other dishes that were brought out as part of our banquet at this chain restaurant tonight. I particularly liked a caramelized fish thing that apparently is local to Shanghai - it almost tasted like candy.

Xing Tai Canteen, Huanghe Road, Shanghai

I hope I got the name of this place correct - it was the best that I could figure out using nciku. I wasn't specifically planning to come to this shop either (137 Huanghe Road, 6372-5871). But the hotel's concierge mentioned that this street was well-known for having a lot of local food, so I had the cabbie take me to the street to see what I could find.

OK, there was something I was specifically looking for...or two. They were two dishes that I immediately associate with Shanghai food that aren't commonly available anywhere else (so that means *not* xiao long bao nor sheng jian bao). It was that white pepper eel dish as well as drunken prawns, and this shop had them. So I sat myself down and ordered exactly those two items.

While it might not look too appetizing in the photo, the former came out with that white pepper fragrance emanating off of these delicate strips of mildly sweet eel - I gobbled this plate up in seconds with a bowl of rice. The raw prawns, however, were bigger than I was expecting, as I had smaller river shrimp the first time I was up here. Having to peel these bigger guys made it less convenient to eat.

A Better Fruit Platter on SQ

Here was my fruit platter on SQ this morning...fortunately they filled this one up so that it wasn't like the embarrassingly empty plate from last time. And those yellow/orange things in the middle were not cantaloupe, but rather some very sweet mangoes, which was a pleasant surprise.

Perhaps more interesting was the fact that this A330-700 had some documentation in the seatback pocket suggesting that SQ had contracted OnAir to provide not only in-flight Wi-Fi, but also in-flight mobile phone and SMS connectivity, as long as you were on a plane fitted with it (and flying over countries that had approved of it). I couldn't get a signal either way.

Soon Lee Pig Organ Soup, Singapore

Zion Riverside Food Centre has finally reopened. It was largely the same thing aside from a new paint job, overhead lighting, and most notably the restrooms (which hopefully will stink less of disinfectant!). Most of the stalls were still there, including the Teochew noodle man, the famous char kway teow guy, and the fish soup lady. It looks like the satay guy is gone though.

Either way, I hadn't been to this kway chap stall (number 14) yet. And admittedly I was in no mood for innards, but this meatball soup looked pretty good - fortunately it turned out to be pretty good too, with an edgy stank to the meatballs (in a good way, like Punggol Noodles) that went well with my white pepper laced broth and the sour chili sauce. I'll come back to get this again.

Wantan-Men from Ippudo Singapore

I wasn't quite in the mood for a thick tonkotsu this morning, so I went instead for the wantan-men at Ippudo, seeing how they used a shoyu-based broth. Unfortunately, it turned out to be mildly sweet, and borderline annoyingly so - such that I didn't really enjoy it too much. And perhaps due to a couple of recent visits to Noodle Place at Centrepoint, I inappropriately had Cantonese wanton mee in my head instead, to which this one certainly was not as fragrant. Next time it'd be worth checking out some of the other off-beat items that I saw on the menu here though; most notably the yaki ramen and hiyashi ramen.

The French Burger from Hippopotamus

Here was the French Burger from Hippopotamus. What made it French? That thick slab of foie gras on top, as well as some port-based sauce. It tasted like it sounded, even if it weren't quite the concoction that Daniel Boulud is known for. One of these days, that will have to be worth a try.

The Fruit Plate on Singapore Airlines

I got the raw vegetarian meal on the way up, so I grabbed the fruit plate above on the way down. No, I didn't eat any of it before I took the photo; they were surprisingly stingy with the fruit in that center tray. The nearly three hour delay due to bad weather in Hong Kong tonight didn't make this a very fun flight either, especially when I was stuck in a middle seat at the back of a full plane...and not on one of their A330s with the power-outlet seats.

My Dinner From the SQ Lounge at HKG

Of course, these were just your everyday noodles and shumai from the SilverKris Lounge in Hong Kong. But they had Cantonese chili oil here, so that helped to perk it up. Check out the line below, by the way - do you think that the airline is going to charge any excess baggage fees?? Side note: it looks like A. Hereford Beefstouw is either shut down or under renovation.

Lunch of the Streets of Shenzhen, China

Here was lunch off the streets of Shenzhen again today. This bowl of noodles had a duck-based broth as well as a bunch of random duck innards like liver and intestines, I believe. Admittedly I skipped past some of those, but this light soup was what I needed in my belly, especially when paired with some of that chili and vinegar.



We later got some dumplings that hit the spot - again, using vinegar and some chili seeds. Yum - we should have gone back to get another plate...or maybe tried their potstickers instead.

Street Food Near Baishizhou Station in Shenzhen

We headed out of the hotel tonight to try to find some dinner, and ended up basically picking up little snacks off the streets near one of the train stations, like this little bowl of beef noodles above for 5 RMB (US$0.80). This was apparently done up in a more Southern Chinese style, which I'm told was only mildly spicy rather than being the overpoweringly spicy stuff found a few provinces further north. But it was savory and refreshing, and I gulped this thing down in a flash.



These were just your everyday quail eggs, but it was just interesting the way that it was presented with this giant salt-baked tub. Perhaps more amusing was the "Classcial [sic] Wine" that I picked up along the way; it was carbonated and not exactly drinkable...although it's not like I could expect much when it was only 7 RMB (US$1.10), and served in a can with a straw, no less.



Finally, I noticed a number of stalls selling these so-called xiao chao noodles, which look like any other plate of stir-fried noodles. But this guy threw in some flaming hot chili peppers that made it a delight to eat. Xinjiang yang rou chuanr was of course all over the place too, but I was pretty let down by an eggplant that I got, which was covered in so much garlic that I could barely eat it.

A Walnut and Beef Soup from China

Yep - those are walnuts in my soup. We had a full banquet for lunch today, which included a lot of tasty things including a chicken and fish (separately) done up in a light Southern Chinese style, as well as a dish that included some rather fragrant matsutake mushrooms, if I identified it correctly. But I hate walnuts, and of all things, they put them in this soup above. Fortunately, it hardly tasted of walnuts (I basically just drank the broth), but this was the first time I'd seen something like this before.

Noodle Soup for Breakfast in China

I have no idea if this is what people usually eat for breakfast here in Southern China. But aside from the obligatory congee, it was the only thing local that I could spot in the hotel's spread this morning. It wasn't anything special - it was quite bland, actually. But I suppose that those fishballs were tender, and it was just the light pickup that I needed to start the day.

Country Cookshop, Shenzhen, China

I'm sure that there is a more fitting name for this place in Chinese, but I can't read the characters, and the these were the English words underneath it (I thus can't read the address either, but the phone number is 2690-0603). Anyway, I needed a quick dinner after having checked into the hotel tonight, and the concierge said that I'd find dai pai dong down the street if I kept walking a bit. I asked them for some of their signature items, and they told me to get the oysters (fresh but way too much garlic on the top that I had to scrape off) as well as this pigeon (the skin was deliciously crispy, but the meat was a bit gamey until I dipped it in some of that salt on the side).

Anyway, none of this was necessarily anything that I'll go back for right away, although I suspect that I may very well end up back here one of these nights given that they have a Xinjiang yang rou chuanr section in the back, and they are open late.

Also worthy of note is that local beer in the background. When I first saw the label, I thought it had a peculiar name: Mons. I kept wondering what the heck "Mons" was (perhaps being similar to that other Chinese beer, Reeb). It was only a few minutes later that I realized that I was reading it upside down: the brand name was Snow. And now that I've looked it up, not only have I had this before, but apparently it is one of the best selling beers in the world despite only being sold in China. Interesting.

The Raw Vegetarian Meal on SQ

Whenever I order a special meal on SQ, it's usually the Hindu one. And I certainly do like it, but I've been eating some pretty artery-clogging stuff over the past couple of weeks, and really need to eat a little better. So I tried going for the Raw Vegetarian option on today's flight. After all, what could be more healthier than that? (As long as one avoids the ice cream that they hand out afterwards!)

It turned out to be, well, a salad for a starter, a salad for a main course, and a fruit salad for dessert. It certainly wasn't anything to go nuts over, but it did the job of being healthy. I'll likely opt for this again in the future, especially since the stuff that I eat on the road usually isn't the best stuff for me.

The other interesting thing to note was that this 777 was of the same setup as the flight that I took to Delhi two weeks ago: only two cabin classes, with business class using those narrow but flat seats, while economy class still didn't have any power outlets, even if the upholstering was no longer purple. I was hoping that maybe they'd re-do all of their planes with those new economy/business class seats that they've been so proudly advertising, but I can only assume that this is SQ's preferred (and cheaper) configuration for flights of this duration.