mad for garlic, suntec city

ok, you guys – we were surprised at this place. first, it’s a small italianesque menu in a restaurant first founded in korea. say what? and second, excessive use of that allium creates rather potent dragon’s breath – which isn’t the best thing for starting a night off.

so we entered with much trepidation and low expectations – all completely eradicated when the food started arriving. the food is remarkably tasty, the portions generous, and service staff friendly and enthusiastic (which made up for any hiccup).

ssikkek korean grill bbq, novena

caution: lots of raw meat up ahead.

decent food-court-style buffet at united square – like a ever-so-slightly more sophisticated version of the secondary-school hangout that is seoul express.

I’m saying sorry upfront for only taking photos of the multi-colored bits of raw marinated meat – it was a large communal lunch not quite amenable to taking photos, and really – any pause in laying meat (and claim) to real estate on the grill results in someone swooping in under your nose to take your place.

plus, I was too busy eating to remember photos. but you know what cooked meat looks like, right? (full of excuses, I know.)

borough market, london

a first of two posts on borough market – I love this place. there is something incredible about markets – the produce, the produce-producers, the products from the produce – my catalogue of posts about markets is rather testament to my fascination with them.

london doesn’t have nearly as many pedestrian markets as in france, and I’ve always found somehow that london markets have a higher ratio of cooked food and packaged food stores than actual grown produce. that’s just my impression though – and not necessarily a bad one as it means I can nibble from store to store (the remainder of that usually goes to my long-suffering partner and family).

marché d’aligre, paris

located at Place d’Aligre, 75011 Paris. (bad and rather rudimentary) website here.

so yes, I know, I have shared a few markets with you before, and mostly from france. but really, I haven’t seen any markets elsewhere in the world that have produce better, or even comparable to that in france. ripe fruit, vibrantly-coloured vegetables, the tastiest food you’ve ever seen all piled up in a large compound – not always the prettiest, the shiniest, or any of those incredibly mundane and utterly meaningless attributes supermarkets all over the world have decided are desirable in our fruit.

handlebar, sembawang

great american food in the deep-of-the-woods in sembawang. I’m of half a mind not to share this with you, but I rather like the photos that turned out so let’s just say I’m doing this in narcissism, though we both know I’m being amazing!!! by sharing what really is a sort of largely undiscovered gem.

I’ve never really thought much about bikers or the biker culture in singapore – for one, I hardly knew we really had one, and secondly I had always sort of thought them a group of rather obsessive hobbyists with nothing in common with myself (not that I don’t recognise a sort of problem in my clear obsession with food). in any case, handlebar is a rather aptly named bikers’ bar that just sort of happens to serve remarkable food, and at prices that are more than reasonable for quantity and quality – I think this must have to do with their really rather rural location.

rodizio preto, london

very good meatfest in soho. I had booked this place, went back to the netosphere to read more reviews, then doubted my choice of restaurantfor a dinner with friends. we needn’t have worried though.

the restaurant was rightly crowded on a saturday evening, and we were seated belowstairs. in fact the only downside to the whole experience was our waitress who was a tad ditsy and unsure about things – oh well.

this rodizio (as with most) operates on a all-you-can-eat policy such that you basically pay a flat rate at the end. there are only two choices, one for only the hot buffet and the salads, and then you pay a premium of about 5 pounds over that for the option of the having loads of meat. I don’t think the buffet and salads are worth it – though it does mean that you can have vegetarian friends with you even though they probably wouldn’t have as great a time as you do.

I’ll start by saying that the buffet spread upstairs seems larger and better than the one downstairs, but we were there for the meat anyway so the salads and etc. merely served as a buffer. there was a fried food counter with fried onion rings, brazilian cheese mochi bread (not spectacular but alright), fried bananas (my friends went back for seconds and triples as you can see from the laden plate on the left, second from bottom), what looked to me to be variants of pasta and lasagne. very heavy starchy stuff.

adjacent to that was the salad section which were 4 different salads heavily dressed as well as a bowl of fresh cut tomatoes and baby salad leaves. the salads included a bean-and-mushroom salad, a green-beans-and-peppers salad (I liked these two), something with radishes and cabbages that looked the least oily, as well as a strange looking salad of okra. the salads all taste like they have the same dressing, but it’s not a bad one, just a bit heavy on the oil.

let me tell you my strategy for going through this meal. aim for the simply grilled meats, stay away from the starch, and use the salads and fresh tomatoes to refresh your palate as the meal proceeds. there are apparently 15 different types of meat and I’m not sure if we got them all, but these included many different cuts of beef, pork, chicken and lamb. out of those, the lamb was apparently not too great, the pork was dry and the beef and chicken did the best. stay away from the bacon-wrapped chicken which was horribly salty and dry – I’m still suffering from that tiny bite I had.

I can’t tell you what the best one was since I don’t know which cuts they were as the meal went on, but I would stick to the beef and chicken – there was one sort that was exceptionally good – medium rare beef. incredibly tasty and rare, you can see the photo above of the pink meat. I got at least four or five slices of that. sorry for the morass of meat photos – there isn’t a really appetising way of photographing slices of meat that just happen on your plate as a waiter walks by.

I’d come back especially when I have many (male) friends to feed. it was very cheap for the amount of food we got, as well as the fact that we’re right smack in town.

by the way – we also celebrated a birthday at the restaurant that night and they didn’t charge us for service and were really nice about bringing it out and giving us plates and serviettes and etc. very impressive. the cake was from patisserie valerie, if you’re interested, and was a black forest cake with a moist crumb but a bit too much cream for me!