New Restaurant: Ki-sho

Another new Japanese restaurant has opened! I found out from the chef (and I'm guessing he's the boss? Or one of the partners) that they actually opened in Aug if my memory serves me right, but the official opening was only recently! 

The chef has been in Singapore for 4 years now and speaks rather fluent English!! Do converse with him if you go down for a meal :) He worked previously at Waku Ghin in Singapore and honed his culinary craft in Kyoto since age 17/18. 

The sushi bar seats only 10 people and its a traditional wooden setup, I like the relaxing feel it brings. They only have 3 Omakase menus to choose from and they differ in terms of price (obviously) and mainly, the number of seasonal dishes in the menu. We took the $280 per pax menu which has 5 seasonal dishes.

There was a menu laid out (pictured below) on the table when we reached and this was the menu for the $280 set which the chef recommends cos its the "just right" kind of menu. $230 one may not be enough and the $330 one may be too much. So we listened to him and took the $280!

Basically each menu has:

Appetiser

Seasonal dishes (3/5/7 dishes depending on price)

Assorted sashimi

Hida wagyu dish

Nigiri sushi

Miso Soup

Seasonal fruit & granite

The set-up

Yuba with Wasabi

Yuba is something that is made from soybeans and the chef says that this is homemade. The sauce accompanying it was incredibly salty. This was the only not so favourable dish during the meal. 2.8/5

French Oyster with Ikura

The oyster was so SO plump and juicy!!! One of the best oysters I've had in my life I think and I've had quite a lot. Really fresh too. The broth was light and slightly sweet. Overall, this was very enjoyable! 4.5/5

Shirauo and Nano Hana

Shirauo is the small white fish and nano hana is rapeseed. Very light, sweet and fresh. The fish was slightly crunchy. The word "fresh" is going to come up a lot here because all of us agreed that the food there is really fresh and good. We heard the other diner comment that food there is really fresh as well. 4.2/5

Crab and Crab Roe

This crab is the female Hokkaido snow crab and according to the chef, they're kinda like the hairy crabs we eat, cos we mainly eat them for the roe! The usual hugeass Hokkaido snow crabs Singaporeans so love are males. The female crabs are in season now. Roe isnt as sweet as hairy crab but this was still enjoyable because of the freshness. 4/5

Uni and Caviar

Decadence, decadence, decadence. 

I believe this will tickle lots of tastebuds!!! It was extremely good! The chef was super generous with the portion of uni, there was another big slab of uni below. And the uni is sweet, not just your run of the mill (and sometimes some places even give you smelly ones that've gone bad) uni, this was good and sweet. The "jelly" that accompanied it was integral because it helps you break the "jia lat" feeling after eating too much of uni as its refreshing and just helps you cleanse your palette. Honestly the caviar doesnt do much here in terms of taste, texture wise maybe a little but overall, the focus is on the uni. Our waiter told us that this is the chef's speciality and rightly so! 4.7/5

Did you know that there are many different colours of uni? As in the shell! Call us slow/mountain tortises, but we only knew when the chef told us! There's white, purple, green, blue, black etc. and the diff colours are found during diff seasons!

Ankimo

This is monkfish liver and it was not what you'd expect! Apparently, this costs as much as a monkfish, so says the chef. The texture is something like that of foie gras/tofu, very smooth and soft. But the taste is not strong, not overpowering unlike foie gras and doesnt have the pig liver taste. This one's mild and very smooth. We enjoyed this a lot! And were very impressed. It was done very simply, with just ginger on top. 4.6/5

Kue Soup in Dobin Style

Kue is known to us as grouper and this soup was boiled for 4hrs with the fish head and other ingredients. The soup is different from the usual teapot soups we get outside, its less sweet and more of a slightly salty but fragrant taste. 

Inside, there's a generous portion of the kue fish! Which is super fresh and sweet tasting. Goes very well with the ponzu sauce served with this. 4.5/5

Assorted sashimi

Otoro, botan ebi, ika, chutoro, yellow tail

We were advised to eat it from left to right otherwise the toro may just cover up the taste of the rest. As a general statement, all of the sashimi can be summed up w a word - FRESH. The ika was a little chewy but crunchy too and was rather sweet. Botan ebi was not too bad in terms of sweetness as well. Yellow tail was rather normal. The otoro and chutoro (fatty parts of the tuna) were quite melt in your mouth but unfortunately had not much taste. 4/5

Fugu Shirako with White Truffle

I thought this was a rather unique dish! Fugu Shirako is basically sperm of the pufferfish (fugu). I've eaten whale sperm before at Aoki but this one was much nicer in terms of taste and texture! This doesnt have a strong fishy smell and its really soft. There's no white truffle taste in this at all though. But I wasnt complaining because it was done so simply that its natural sweetness and flavours shone through which is what I like in my food. Below the shirako looked like it was chawanmushi but it was more soy beancurd haha because it tasted more like the latter! 4.5/5

Otoro

I'm not sure how this was cooked but am guessing maybe seared? We had our beef course changed to this because we do not take beef. But this was yum yum :) Done very nicely, the fish was not too hard nor too soft and some parts still melts in your mouth. By itself, it doesnt have much taste hence its served w wasabi, sea salt and ponzu sauce! I felt that it went really well with ponzu and sea salt. 4.4/5

The chef at work - Chef Hamamoto!

White snapper sushi

Taste-wise, nothing much to shout about but 'twas fresh. 

Akagai sushi

Ark shell sushi

This was crunchy and slightly sweet, one of the better akagai I've eaten

Otoro sushi

This again didnt have much taste.

**

The chef makes his own rice as rice is very very important in Japanese culture esp at specialised restaurants! His rice is quite nice but somehow I feel Shinji's has more flavour.

Miso Soup with clams

This was so-so

Pear and Granite

The pear is the soft kind of pear and was v sweet!! Granite was cold and was a refreshing end to the meal. 

Service was really good - polite, friendly, helpful. When we left the restaurant, the waitress actually stood outside the restaurant and waited for us to drive away when she sent out us. Okay this restaurant is housed in a colonial building along Scotts Road (yknow the ones with SKII Spa Boutique/Song of India those?) yup so our car was parked like next to the restaurant so she waited for us the whole time to send us off. I'm not sure if the valet is compulsory but they didnt drive our car to us, we had to go and drive our own car, so might as well just park it ourselves right?

Would I go again? Yes I most definitely will. My family and I agreed that this is almost on par with Shinji so it'll definitely remain on our to-go list! The menu changes with the season.

Ki-sho

29 Scotts Road

6733 5251

Mon-Sat 6.30-10.30pm (last food order: 9.30pm)

Sunday and PH closed

Website

Do note that the sign saying 29 Scotts Rd is quite small, and there's no obvious signage for the restaurant. Its after the SKII Spa Boutique if you're coming from Newton MRT side. This website shows where it is, click.  

New Restaurant: Tsujiri

There's another new mall in town! Called 100am. And a green tea shop hailing from Kyoto Japan with 150 years of tradition has opened in this new mall. Maybe a new trend's starting? With Nana Green Tea cafe previously at Jcube.

They have a huge huge range of green tea things on offer. Tea, latte, ice blended, o-maccha specials, shaved ice, soft serve ice cream, parfaits and cakes. Mainly split into 2 flavours, green tea or vanilla. So like for the same parfait you can choose either green tea or vanilla flavoured ice cream. There are some drinks and shaved ice with yuzu as the main star as well.

O-maccha Roll Cake

$4.50

The boy and I ordered this cake! Besides this there is cheesecake as well and a chiffon cake. I like that it comes with adzuki beans at the side and this nice soft fluffy cream! The roll cake itself isnt very sweet, though I'd like it to be a little colder. It went well with the red bean though the sponge isnt very fluffy. Not a bad dessert I'd say. Red beans got a little sweet after awhile. 3.8/5

Shiratama Parfait (O-maccha)

$7.80

This parfait has quite a lot of ingredients!! Alot of adzuki beans, this transparent jelly thing, about 6 or 8 pieces of mochi, and some green tea below. Everything went quite well together and I'd say I enjoyed this quite a lot! I think a simple soft serve ice cream here would be nice if you're in the vicinity! 4/5

Some pics of what is on offer!

The seating area isnt very big, mostly self-service ie you order then they make it and you go get it yourself. Worth a try if you're in the vicinity!

Tsujiri

100am 

100 Tras Street #01-14 

10am-10pm

www.tsujiri.sg

New Restaurant: Quarter to Three

The boy and I were driving along Tanjong Pagar Rd to get to our dinner place (more abt that in another post) and I happened to catch a sign that I've never seen before along that stretch of road so the boy and I decided to check it out before our dinner!

Its a 6 week old cafe selling some food, coffee, cakes etc. and what's special is that they do customized cakes as well!

Interior of the cafe decorated for xmas!

Here's their menu:

Bestseller ranking

1) Sweet little sixteen

2) Good day Sunshine

3) For you blue

This was what the owner told us!

Sweet Little Sixteen

$7.20

Strawberry cheese sponge 

Slice of light Japanese style cheese sponge with layers of fresh cream & decked w fresh strawberries

The owner said that this cake is the top seller in their cafe and its different in the sense that they use a cheese sponge instead of the usual vanilla sponge. It reminded me of a Jap strawberry shortcake but a slightly denser version of it. Would like it if the bottom layer isnt that thick though! Not too sweet, which is quite good. 3.6/5

Happiness is a Warm Gun

$7.20

Opera with Rum

Wonderfully rich and dreamy combination of delicate almond biscuit, chocolate ganache & coffee buttercream

I thought the bottom layer of this cake would be crispy or like a hard crunchy layer, but it wasnt, tastes more like a sponge cake at the bottom! Rum taste was quite evenly distributed but not overly strong. Chocolate was smooth and not overly rich, which made it quite nice. Coffee buttercream doesnt really have a strong coffee taste but goes well as a whole with the cake. 3.7/5

I'm supposed to be studying for exams now but I just had to share this new discovery with you guys :) I heard their carrot cake's really really good and am looking forward to trying it out aft my exams! If yall do give it a try, please tell me your feedback! :)

Quarter to Three

88 Tanjong Pagar Road (its near Kaixo!)

Mon-Sat 12pm-11pm (on Fb says its 11am-11pm but the sign in the shop says 12pm-11pm)

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mezza9 Sunday Brunch

Hi everyone! Sorry the lull, and there will likely be another lull till after 10 Dec cos I have exams on that day!

I went for this Sunday Brunch with the boy and his family at the start of this month. Am really apologetic because at the ready-made salad counter, the chef told me that no photos allowed (but chefs at all the oth stations didnt say anything... Wonder what's up w this?) so I only have pics of most of the spread and not all! Had to keep a lookout for that chef.

The layout of the buffet is different from the rest of the buffets I've been to in the sense that its spread out over a HUGE area, like literally throughout the restaurant! Each "cuisine" (Western/Chinese/Japanese), appetiser + cold seafood and dessert stations are separated which can be good or bad.

1) You may think "aiya omg so full, dont wanna walk alr, lazy to go and get the _____ that I may still wanna eat"

2) You walk more and hopefully digest better/burn more or sth and then you get to eat more and make better value outta it! #singaporeanmentality

Another difference is that there are SIGNIFICANTLY more expats here for brunch than I've ever seen at any other brunch restaurants!! And I've been to quite a lot alr. Feels kinda like you're overseas. 

I shall start with the appetiser/cold seafood counter! This is right in front of the entrance of the restaurant, centrally located.

Juices are included in the price

These are freshly shucked and placed on the ice

And then I had to stop taking pics of the salad spreads cos the chef told me no photos. Anyway they have quite a few ready-made salads! Besides these Thai ones, they have Western ones as well

Cold Seafood

They have one of the FRESHEST cold seafood spread I've had so far!!! The lobsters are the BEST I've eaten so far at buffets! Super super fresh and SWEET (most oth buffets, probably fresh but not sweet, these were so good). Everything else got overshadowed by the lobster. Mussels and clams, nth much imo. Prawns were fleshy and juicy.

As you can see, I went for more of the lobsters!

Parma ham wasnt v good, rock melon was sweet. That's asparagus salad there and there was a mozarella x tomato salad as well

**

Round the corner from the salads side is a small display of some cheese and pre-made waffles, I'll talk about this later. No pics of this part of the spread cos of the chef.

**

Japanese counter

This is situated to the most right of the restaurant when you enter (ie the innermost section)

Grilled on the spot!

Tempura

The boy and his mom took this and said that it was cold already and I dont really think ppl like eating cold tempura? So I suggest the restaurant to think of a better way to keep this heated up! Otherwise ppl will just wait for the new batch to come.

Unagi

SO SO PSYCED that this buffet has unagi!!!!! The only other time I had it was at Greenhouse but after 1 round, they replaced it w sth else and the eel was SO rubbery and tasteless. This one was extremely good I kept going back for seconds, thirds, fourths, etc. I really liked it! Nice flavour and tastes and most imptly, it was hot or at least warm most of the time! 

Bacon-enoki mushroom roll

Think those to the right is chicken

Sushi!

I went at the wrong time and got it before it was refilled! But after going back again, it was fully refilled! Didnt try this so no comments!

Japanese Salads

They have quite a big selection relative to oth buffets! Seaweed salads and I dont rmb what else there was!

Sashimi galore!

Nice that they have ikura besides the usual tuna, salmon, swordfish, octopus. Sashimi is quite fresh and nice!

Oh yes there's miso soup as well at this counter!

**

Chinese Counter

This is before the Japanese counter.

Selection of dimsum

Hargow, Siewmai, Pau (not sure what), stuffed mushrooms

Siewmai & hargow were not bad

Roast meats!

Charsiew, roasted pork, roasted duck

This counter also has a station where they'll make you some chinese noodles on the spot! Also a selection of chinese dishes - veg, steamed fish, etc.

**

Western Counter

This is after the cold seafood/appetiser counter and features quite a wide variety of food!

Roast lamb, roast chicken, roast beef

Yorkshire pudding

This was q nice!

Chicken sausages

Chicken nuggets (relive your childhood memories or well, all of us love eating nuggets still right?)

Mini burger sliders (these are q good!)

Fries

They also have a selection of Western mains like sauteed mushrooms, grilled veg (sorry cant really rmb what else they had) and a mushroom risotto in a huge parmesan cheese wheel and pan-fried foie gras made a la minute.

Pan-fried foie gras

This is diff from what I've experienced at other buffets (besides Triple Three) cos theirs, they pan-fry it even before you order and put it at the counter then you come and take it.

Good points: LARGE serving! Look at that size! Biggest sized foie gras served at a buffet, I daresay. And its not just this one piece, all of them are abt this size

Bad points: barely lukewarm, which takes away some of the deliciousness of foie gras AND barely any taste, I'm sorry. This was really bland and doesnt really have the texture of crispy on the outside and soft/melty on the inside.

Quality really trumps quantity in this case!

The mushroom risotto was cold too and bland

Sauteed mushrooms (top left) was quite good, sauteed veg next to it was bland

Roast lamb (middle) was okay, could be more flavourful

Desserts Counter

This was well disappointing for me cos I'm a DESSERT FAN. And the spread was really too small for me. Another bad thing was that there were NO SIGNS so everyone started asking the chef there what each thing was.

Shown here is most of the dessert buffet spread alr (besides ice cream, choc fountain, alcohol meringue station)

Carrot cake - was ok

Sticky Date Pudding - needed to go w the vanilla sauce, else was q bad

Apple Crumble - doesnt really have apple taste

Lemon Meringue Tart - lemon curd wasnt thick enough for me

Macarons - passionfruit & some berry flavour, both were really good w chewy shells and not overly sweet

Choux Puff - too hard!!!

There was also bread & butter pudding, cheesecake, pannacotta shooter and strawberry shortcake (which was not bad)

Waffle from the cold seafood counter

This barely had any waffle taste that we usually associate waffles with, it has another taste which I cant quite describe but was not bad! Crispy definitely. I wonder how it remains crispy despite being left in the open

Cheese platter - The selection of cheeses were okay, nth spectacular abt the tastes I feel. That "Cracker" or wtv its called at the top, tasted so mouldy and icky. Thought it'd be crispy but it was soft.

As you can see, I took more macarons :)

Ice cream!

I love their variety of ice cream cos they have some unique flavours!

Left - CINNAMON ice cream!!!! And this really really tastes like cinnamon, super super good!

Middle - raspberry sorbet. Sorry was too preoccupied by cinnamon, I forgot how this tastes! Not sour enough for me though I rmb.

Right - Coconut. This didnt have a strong coconut taste :/ but still, unique flavour!

They also had this alcoholic meringue station (turn a corner aft the choc fondue) where they make the meringue on the spot in dry ice and you've to eat it on the spot in one mouthful!! Its FULL of gin or was it vodka? Some liquor and it explodes in your mouth and is really quite cool! Give it a shot! :)

Overall comments about the buffet:

1. Service: plate clearing was quite fast, servers had a smile on their faces most of the time, rather polite, didnt get the "friendly, amiable" feel. Water was constantly refilled though
2. Spread: Not bad a spread, I wouldnt exactly call it huge, but not bad. Quality wise, not that many hits? Although cold seafood's really good & the unagi haha.
3. Value for money: I'm bordering btwn value for money and not value for money. Because cold seafood quality was good, as was some dishes in the mains. However, small dessert selection + food in spread generally not that up to par! But its a buffet! So cant be everything's well done :)
4. Ambience: the chair we sat on was kinda hard, not really conducive for long periods of sitting. The decor of the restaurant is just black schemed and simplistic so nth much in terms of decor there. Privacy space between tables - okay.

Would I go back again? Probably not since there are other places at cheaper prices w better quality of food :) 

mezza9

Grand Hyatt Hotel Singapore Mezzanine Lvl 

Sunday Brunch 11.30am-2.30pm (available on PH as well)

$138++/$128++ for free flowing champagne (Depending on type of champagne! Refer to website)

$108++ with free flowing juices, soft drinks

$69++ per child (7-12 years old) with free flowing juices, soft drinks

Complimentary parking is provided

On other days & Sunday dinner, mezza9 serves ala carte/set options