u m a m i

Spizza

When I was a child, Pizza Hut was one of those happy places the parents would bring us to on Sunday nights. There, we could feast on their pizzas and submarines, all very exotic, remember we have not even began to imagine sushi back then. Then, as usual, some bright spark has to spoil it all with the Thick Crust Pizza......and I entered pizza purgatory. For the longest time, I did not eat pizza, because I was defeated by all that thick indigestible dough. This dark period carried on during the late 80's and the early 90's. My sisters went to Italy for holidays in 1993 and raved about Italian pizzas being so light and delicious, yaya papaya, so what? You expect me to fly to Rome just for pizza? Fast forward to 1998, when I ate pizza again at a noisy Italian run pizzeria called La Porchetta in London and rediscovered this wonderful food. In 2000, I had the best pizza ever at Lulu's in San Francisco, where the crust was light, snappy and crispy and beautifully infused with the juice from fresh grilled shrimps, even though I could not actually eat the shrimps as I was in my seafood-allergy phase at that time!

In Singapore though, we could not even get the likes of Pizza Express to open here. Occasionally we would go to California Pizza Kitchen, but the experience always leaves me hollowed inside, not hungry, just hollow, as if I am missing something. Relief only came later, when the first outlet of Spizza for Friends opened at Club Street. Italian-style thin crusty pizzas, with Mediterranean type toppings of olives, anchovies etc, and not a chicken rendang or wonton skin in sight. The restaurant was packed, and the waiters hustle you out as quickly as they can they can so they can seat all the restless crowd outside.

We stopped going there, until they opened an outlet in Balmoral Plaza. They also seemed to have quietly dropped the "for Friends" part of their name; it is in barely visible fonts on their signboard. The Spizza in Balmoral Plaza is just my favourite restaurant in that stretch of shops, even if we don't eat there, we order takeaways to eat in front of the telly.

The decor is stylish, even for a neighbourhood place. Beautiful lights, even the alfresco area. In the evenings, the place look really stunning, like a bar for beautful people. Here the crowd is mostly small families, couples, lone expats and girls on nights out.

The menu includes salads and soups, but these are rather forgettable. There is only one pasta dish, a lasagna. The pizza reigns supreme here, and are cooked to order in a special oven. We like every one we' ever tried, about 5-6. Our favourite is the Ginna and Rosa. Rosa especially, is delightfully light, as it has no cheese topping, only tomatoes, anchovies, garlic and dry oregano. It is so thin it is like eating crackers, and they don't stinge on the anchovies either.

And Rosa complements what husband thinks is the best lasagna in town. He may be right, the version here is rich and indulgent, with tender minced veal and plenty of melted cheese. The picture of the lasagna looks messy, it is, but it is really delicious.

It may not be as nice as those that my sister ate in Rome, but I am more than happy with the pizzas at Spizza.

Reviews

I eat out quite often, at all sorts of eating establishments. Street food, fast-food, hawker food, cafes, bistros, casual and fine dining places. And if there is anything of interest, I will post a review of my experience.

I don't get paid to do this, so I am not obliged to remain completely impartial, nor can I validate my opinions. My tastebuds are my most reliable tools. My opinions are coloured by my preferences, knowledge and tastes built up from my years of eating and tasting. Some people may label me a food snob, kinder souls say I have high expectations and a fussy palate. As for the the validity of my opinion. the fairest way, I think, is to eat at the place at least 3 times to determine if the good/bad/mediocre/ bizarre experience is consistent, but neither budget nor my short-attention span allows this. If I really like a place, I can go as often as once a week, but conversely, I have formed good opinion of places I will hardly return to, for one reason or the other.

But writing about restaurants does carry some responsibility, so I try to be fair and follow some of my rules, though sometimes, I may bend them, a little bitty bit:

1. New places need time to settle down and it is not fair to judge them in that honeymoon period. I will only try a newly opened restaurant after its first 3 months. This 3-month rule does not apply if I am someone's guest, or when I am eating out of Singapore. 3 months is a good window period and sometimes, the place will fold within this period, so saving me the trouble.
2. Since it is usually just me and husband, we have an unspoken rule not to order the same dishes, and of course we share plates, well alright, we go so far as to exchange plates. We also like to get as much out of the dining experience, so we will order as many dishes as we can manage (occasionally overdoing it) and drink an appropriate beverage, be it wine, beer, sake, tea or soft drinks. If there is an attached bar, we try to fit in a pre-dinner drink, it makes the dining experience a lot more pleasurable.
3. I will try to find out the chef's specialty as much as possible, unless the specialty also happens to be the most expensive items, in those cases I will have to judge whether they are trying to scalp me or if the expense is justifiable. If the waitress mindlessly quote "steamed live fish/ lobster sashimi" as their specialty, it is automatically minus points in my mind.
4. I don't have a personal rating system, it would be too much trouble to validate it. But I would roughly use the following criterion: food (70%), service (10%), ambience (10%), price/ perceived value (8%) and the remainder on other factors, e.g. novelty value, view etc.
5. I would do some homework before I venture to a new place, beside reading reviews and feedbacks, I would sometimes call the restaurants up and pose questions, or even study the menu if it is posted online or outside their main entrance. Positive reviews help, whether it is from a food critic or friends, but I would reserve judgement until I try it out for myself.
Homework also includes learning about the food, e.g. what utensils to use, how to order judiciously, what condiments or sauce go with what and so on. If I drown my salad in Thousand Island sauce then I am being unfair in saying the food was vile, since I made it vile.
6. Chains, or food empires may fall out of my radar screen if I had previous unfavourable experiences at more than one of their outlets. That is why I seldom patronise the likes of Starbucks, Coffeebean & Tealeaf, and everything associated with the omnipresent Tung Lok group and most Les Amis establishments. Conversely, I've had mostly good experiences at say, the Lei and Peach Gardens and even some Crystal Jades so I tend to patronise them more. It is not fair I know, but corporate values do count in my case and there are too many dining options out there, I've got to have limits.
Also, my interest is always piqued by chef-owned restaurants, because chefs seem more human, and the dining experience a lot more personal and less robotic, generally speaking.
7. If there is a cheaper lunch menu, or budget set, I will not base my review on just the "more economical" meals, since these may not reflect the chef's or the restaurant's strengths. I will order from the regular menu and base my judgement on those dishes.
8. Just because my last meal there was good, remember, it does not mean that it will be good next time, especially if next time is quite a while. Standards may and do fluctuate, so when friends ask me for recommendation I will also point out when was the last time I ate there.

Franchising: Up and Out

I asked my colleague to buy some char-siew/ roast pork rice for my lunch. On opening the styrofoam food container, I was disappointed to find that for $3, they have only apportioned about 6 thin slices of char-siew and another 5-6 slices (cut like fat french fries) of roast pork. No complimentary pieces of sliced cucumbers or tomatoes. I really wish I have my camera to show how measly the portions were. My colleague also ate the same thing at lunch and his plate was equally mean. Apparently the stall has just started operations and it is another franchise of the famous Tiong Bahru Roasted Pig Specialist. Now, I am a fan of Tiong Bahru's suckling pig, and I am happy that they are expanding their business. But I remember that the original stall at Tiong Bahru market were more generous.

This typifies the Singaporean food scene. What happens when an outlet becomes successful? It starts to think that it has what it takes to make it really BIG. The fastest way to grow, it seems, is to franchise their business. To open new branches would take too much work, time and money. Franchising is seen as a way to let others take risk and invest their money in the business. We have seen the franchising of Katong Laksa (thick rice noodles in thick, spicy gravy), Tiong Bahru porridge, Zhao Ann Grass Jelly, Ya Kun Kaya Toast, and now roast pork. Typically the recipe remains a top secret and the franchisees have to buy the final product, e.g. the laksa gravy or the porridge base. They typically pay a percentage of their sales to the franchisor, which means they have to keep their expenses down to earn profits, which they do by cutting corners, like watering down the gravy, substitutiting of cheaper ingredients or simply giving the customer less. There are usually no monitoring of food quality or consistency of each outlet. Franchisors seem to be just as greedy, there must be about 50 Katong Laksas in this tiny city alone. In the long run, the brand is prostituted until it loses its allure. End of brand, end of story.

A Good Cake

Most cafes serve heavy cheesecakes which seems very generic and I always have trouble finishing a piece, even if I am sharing it. I definitely prefer a lighter cake. Cedele/ Bakery Depot have some cakes that tastes truly home-made, especially their Orange and Cranberry cake with its gorgeous frosting. Recently I came across this lovely apple cake from Caffe Beviamo at Tanglin Mall. It has a light spongelike, crumbly texture with sweet chunks of apple and almost-crunchy "skin" at the top and sides.

Thosai

This South Indian dish is usually served for breakfast and I have to have it at least once a week. Thosai is a thin lacey pancake made of lightly-fermented rice flour. Goes great with dhal and coconut sambars. Easy to digest and really cheap ($0.60 for a plain version like above). Variations include the extra-crispy paper thosai, or augmented with onions, fried egg or cheese, or even stuffed with a spiced vegetable mix called masala.

Race Course Road

When the fancy for something hot and spicy Indian style comes to us, we usually head for Race Course Road. The stretch of this road close to Tekka Market in Little India is full of Indian restaurants. Tourists make a beeline for Muthu's Fish Head Curry and Banana Leaf Apollo, which is good enough reason why I avoid these outlets. Seriously, they are very over-rated, because they use too much MSG and almost always overcook the fish. Instead, we like to poke around the neighbourhood and try the competition.

There's Andhra's Spice, opened a few months ago and located towards the end of the road. The restaurant was empty on our visit. The first floor (in Singapore we have no ground floor, we have Basement Level, First Floor, Second Floor.....) was too extravagantly perfumed for me, so we ate on the second level which was quieter and fresher-smelling . While eating our food, the power blacked out. Oops is it because they opened the second floor for us, switching on lights and air-conditioners? But the food we tried, our default orders of naan, tandoori and aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower), was tasty enough and reasonably priced.

We've also tried Spice Mela, and should have known better. It is operated by the people behind Apollo Leaf, and the food is mediocre and rather expensive. The aloo gobi seemed to be doused in ketchup (gross!), and the tandoori short on the taste of spices and yoghurt. The Punjabi dhal though, was a new discovery, the lentils were well cooked in a mildly spiced creamy sauce, this is rich comforting food indeed.

Our Makan Shop is a curious anomaly in that it is run by Chinese operators. The decor is original and genuinely retro, circa 1970s, and the place feels really down-to-earth. The proprieters are friendly and laid back. We love the squid cooked in black ink and the spicy fried chicken. However, the fish head curry is nothing to shout about. Really it quite impossible to find a good curry fish head in Race Course Road.

And for those looking for cheap and good food, they have to try Jaggi's. It is not really a restaurant, because there is no wait staff or fancy napkins, everything is self-serviced. But they have air-con, and the usual fixtures like the Bollywood music video*, water station and a prominent double sink to wash your hands. The food is really cheap, our dinner of keema (minced mutton), aloo gobi and chickpeas with a piece each of plain naan and chapati and a cup of tea, cost us only $9.40.

After eating, I like to check out what's new at Aussimart, a small convenience store that stocks certain exotic stuff like Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pies, Arnotts biscuits and other uniquely Australian foodstuffs. The owner is really chatty and he recommended his favourite restaurants around the neighbourhood- Jaggi's, Gandhi's just behind, and surprisingly he is also keen on the fish head curry at Chinese-run Soon Heng further up the road.

Note: Our Makan Shop and Soon Heng is only open for lunch.

*Bollywood music videos- I am fascinated by them. The dances look easy but must have taken quite some time to master, taking its inspiration from classical Indian and Middle Eastern moves, but pumping it up with disco beats and plenty of dramatics.

Seletar Hill Restaurant

You know how you have different sets of friends? Friends from kindergarden days, friends to go shopping for new shoes with, friends from work, uh huh. Well, you may or may not be surprised to find that I have a group of food-loving friends. In fact some of these foodie-friends are quite hardcore, they have made food their business, whether it is in maintaining a forum for like foodies, or running their own food enterprises. And one of the things we love to do is to gather for meals, at least once a month. And tonight, all 31 of us made our way to this remote part of Singapore called Seletar to eat at this place called, uh, Seletar Hill Restaurant. It has a big red signboard. Decor is the standard white walls, fluorescent lighting and requisite Chinese prints of flowers and birds. Their specialty is Szechuan food.

As usual, dinner was a noisy affair, conducted with much loud conversation, jokes, gossips and general catching-up. As is not usual, the food was sadly below expectation. We had many dishes, but most were memorable for the poor quality ingredients and badly executed cooking. Here are the more palatable dishes. The first is kong-bak pau, i.e. braised belly pork eaten with a bun (the pau); the pork was meltingly tender and fatty. The crispy duck was crispy but a little dry, it really needed to be dipped into the reddish-brown sauce.

Thereafter, it was downhill, all the way. The Hot and Sour soup was a caricature of Chinese restaurant soups- we had expected that it will be thick with cornstarch and were not disappointed, to add insult to injury there was only mushrooms and some unidentifiable vegetable matter in it, although they were more than generous with the pepper seasoning. After the undrinkable soup, cubes of tofu in a bland ma-po sauce was served, later I realised that the white tofu may have been the cook's witty idea of a counterpoint to a series of what I came to know as Black food. First, mandarin peel beef, which is supposed to be beef lightly coated in flour and cooked in a mandarin-peel infused sauce, appeared as a jumbled heap that resembled chocolate popcorn. I could not taste or bite into any meat, it was probably beef-flavoured batter we got. There was another version that was meant to be chicken, again, if I were blindfolded I could have sworn I was eating a new flavour of popcorn. A less than fresh steamed soon-hock (fish) in a deceptively fiery-looking gravy broke the tedium of Black on Black, but only for a while, next in line was black prawns. OK prawns in kung-bo sauce, actually damn frozen prawns and chau-tar (burnt) dried chillies. Finally the vegetables arrive, followed by four season bean, then an eggplant dish, both oversalted and sadly lacking crucial wok-hei (fragrance). My friend with the most discerning palate suspected that even the cooking oil used here may not be fresh.

Finally, it was all over. We had some more mediocre generic desserts like mango pudding and sea coconut with almond jelly. One of our new friends brought a lovely souvenir from USA, everlasting lollypops from See's Candies, it will take a good few hours to get through one of these. Thanks Kat!! Not forgetting also, an incredibly rich expresso cheesecake from talented baker JeremyK, just fabuloso.

The food may have been blah, but the company was not, so the evening was hardly spoiled. There's always the next time to get it right. Here are the details to remind you not to bother visiting:

Seletar Hill Restaurant
16 Jalan Selaseh
Seletar Hills Estate. S 808440

Roast Kampung Chicken

Although Wati cook dinner most weeknights, I try to cook dinner for husband and myself once a week. As I only have about 1.5 hours to prep and cook, the dish has to be quick and easy to prepare. So no more than 5 ingredients and no stewing or braising. Tonight for dinner I roasted a whole chicken and some vegetables. There was some walnut bread too, bought from the Bakery Depot. And for dessert husband and I shared a very scrumptious Pecan and Orange cupcake, also from Bakery Depot.

Last weekend husband bought some fresh kampung chicken from the wet market. Kampung is the Malay word for village, and kampung chicken does not mean that the chicken came from the village, but was reared in the kampung style, i.e. allowed to roam freely, the equivalent in western countries would be free-range chicken I suppose. Kampung chicken retails at almost double the price of a battery chicken, since it costs more to produce. The specimen above cost $9, and is enough to feed me and husband and still have some leftover for lunch tomorrow.

The chicken was first rubbed with some salt and olive oil and roasted at a 220 degree C, during the roasting time I peeled some onions and squeezed some lime juice. The lemon carcass and onions were then stuffed into the chicken and the heat lowered to 180 degrees C. The lime juice mixed with some meat stock (the last 7 cubes from my freezer stock) were used as basting liquid. After about 40 minutes, I stuck a sharp knife into the thigh and observed that the "juices run clear", yippee, the chicken was done. The pan juices were deglazed with more of the basting liquid and then reduced to make a glazing sauce. If you use a kampung chicken or similar good quality chicken, you will have a terrific dish. The meat was juicy, lean and muscular, unlike the pappy texture of battery chicken. The skin was quite thin, in battery chicken the layer of fat is thick and always makes me imagine that the fat is the collection centre for all the injections of hormones and antibiotics, but tonight, husband and I could not resist the skin, it was soo crispy and more-ish. The clear, mildly sweet taste of the meat reminded me of why chicken used to be such a prized meat many years ago.

While the chicken was cooking, I was also frantically cutting a cauliflower into tiny little pieces and then roasting them in a baking sheet with olive oil and salt. They needed to be turned only once or twice. Half way through I added some sliced eggplant as eggplant does not need as long a cooking time. I still had a jar of oven-dried tomatoes in olive oil that third sister gave me for Chinese New Year, that went well with the roasted veges. The vegetables were fabulous - especially the cauliflower. I learnt this method of cooking cauliflower from egullet, and this is one of our favourite vegetables now. The edges are caramelised while the rest of the floret is still crispy and sweet. It is terribly addictive, I could finish 3 plates of the stuff without blinking. If you are making this for the first time, please factor in more than you need, they shrink dramatically during cooking, generally allow half a head per person. Bon appetit!

Untold Scandal: the food

Normally at Korean restaurants we would be served 3-4 small dishes. Like bean sprouts, spinach, and the ubiquitous kim chi and cold tofu. Mainly vegetables, so there's hardly any need to order any vegetable dishes from the menu. I love picking at these side dishes, and usually ask for extras. Last weekend I saw this fantastic movie called Untold Scandal, and at my other blog, I did go on and on it. The food scenes, well, not really scenes, more like passing shots, show the characters having meals composed of so many side dishes I did not have enough time to count. At least 30 dishes at one seating to choose from. All beautifully plated in silver bowls and dishes and arranged on a large tray set on a low table. Makes the Japanese bento look like a kiddie meal. The tea tray also looks just as gorgeous. Hmm, guess who is going to have Korean food this week?

Tea Eggs

And for tea-time, we'll have Tea Eggs. Tea eggs are eggs cooked in tea and Chinese herbs. They go well with Chinese tea too, surprise surprise. So tea eggs are served with tea and at tea.

Only snag was, it all only came together at about 6 pm, so we're talking old English hi-tea time and not midafternoon as is common here. My English classmates used to say they have tea when they mean an early dinner, if they eat something else later that meal would be called supper, though sometimes they also call dinner, well, dinner. Confused already? Not to forget that, at the other end of the social scale, some would say dinner when they mean lunch, apparently in the old days of poverty, people have only one main meal a day and it would be quite substantial with loads of bread and butter, so that meal was called dinner.

Right....... My initial plan was to make these eggs for tea, but I did not factor in the 3 plus hours cooking time when I started cooking at 2 pm. But the end result was definitely worth the wait. Of course, tea eggs are readily available at supermarkets and pasar malams, but I've been disappointed with too many bitter bullets and "exploded" eggs far too often so I decided to make my own. The recipe is from "ASIAN RETRO FOOD, Dishes from Yesteryear" by Betty Saw. Of course as usual, I tinkered somewhat with the recipe, adjusting the amounts of herbs and seasonings, but the result was still marvellous. The smell from the simmering eggs were wonderful too, smokey and aromatic, unlike the overt medicinal and burnt heaviness that assails the nostrils as we pass by a tea egg stall.

How is this egg cooked? First, take 12 eggs and leave it to come to room temperature. Then cover it with water in a saucepan and bring it to boil. Then simmer for 15 minutes (seemed a bit long to me considering we have more than 3 hrs to go, so I shave about 5 minutes off). Drain eggs and leave to cool.

When the eggs are cool, tap them with the back of a spoon to crack the shell, but do not peel. You didn't think I waited did you? I started tapping on the eggs while they were cooling.

Then return the cracked eggs to the saucepan and add the other ingredients which included tea leaves, 5 types of Chinese herbs (tong-kwai, dong-sum, kei-chi, yuk-chuk and pak-kei), sugar, salt and dark soya sauce. And top up with water to cover. Bring the whole pot to the boil and then simmer for 3 hours. Or more, it can't hurt. I had a nap while the eggs cooked.

The eggs are then drained and left to cool and then peeled to reveal the tea-stained cracked shell pattern. Some of the crackings were not too delicately rendered so they were stained in patches rather than a reticulate pattern, but I actually found those patches more flavourful, because they've absorbed more of the tea. Even after 3 hours of cooking, the yolk remained soft and melted easily in the mouth. The eggs smelled of tea and tong-kwai, They've absorbed the flavours well and was not as bitter as I had expected, tasting mostly of tea and herbs with a light sweetness. A healthy and satisfying snack. Washed down with some green tea, I felt like I had connected with tradition and history, at that moment, I felt really Chinese, yes, even though I am Chinese. Just somethings can make one feel more Chinese than usual.