Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Geyland Claypot rice, Geyland Lorong 33.
Dropped by Geylang Lorong 33 this evening for a dinner with the family. My dad's been raving about the claypot rice here for a long time and decided to bring us there. The place is like a typical quaint little classic coffeeshop. It's called Geyland Claypot Rice. They have a website as well. http://www.geylangclaypot.com/.
The claypot rice. We called in to order, since it would take 30 minutes to prepare and we didn't want to wait. The number is 67444574 or 67443619. It was one of the nicest claypot rice I've eaten. One thing I really like about it is the chicken cubes. In many of the ones I've tried before, the chicken becomes too dry and tasteless. Not in this one. The chicken was slightly juicy and had a subtle saltiness to it.
There have also various zhi char like dishes to go along with your rice, but they're definately not your run-of-the-mill kind. This is quite simply, hand made tofu with prawn. I really like this dish. The tofu was soft and fragant, and when you bite into it, it crumbles into pieces. Very very nice. And the prawn was of a decent size, and very juicy. One of the gripes I have about prawns in such dishes is that they sometimes lose their flavour because they are overcooked. Not in this case. It came out perfectly. The gravy is like something from Mui Fan or Hor Fan in zhi char stalls, but somehow they made it really delicious. This is a must-try if you eat here.
This dish is known as Assam Tomyum Fish. I thought the assam was way too overpowering. So much so that the fish and the tom yam loses its significance in this dish. I wouldn't order it again.
The remains of their soup of the day. I took it after we drank all the soup. Oops! It changes everyday. My mum commented that they had watercress soup the last time and it was very good, so we tried this soup. Even my parents were stumped because they had never heard of this soup before, pronouced Fei Hua soup I think. You can see the Szechuan Veg looking thing inside. I think that's the thingy that they were talking about. The soup tasted abit like lotus root soup, although it had a little bitter taste. According to the waitress, it has medicinal properties. Not too bad, not too good either. But you can taste that they have been cooking the soup for very long, from the taste and the color. I'm sure if it was something else like old cucumber or lotus root, their soup would taste great.
45 dollars in total. It was an OK price, I guess. I was a little disappointed with the soup and the fish, but the rice and tofu were really good. I wouldn't mind coming back again.
Posted by Gerald at 8:24 AM
Friday, September 26, 2008
Well, with this, the official food review blog by yours truly, the gerald, is officially launched.The first place I'm going to talk about, is going to be Dracula Romanian Food. With the name itself, you would probably envision in your mind a dark scary castle atmosphere type restaurant, I know I did. But it was not to be. Maybe the image stuck in my mind hindered me from properly looking for this place, and I had to comb the area before I found it, tucked away in what seemed like just another of those normal kopitiams.
The prices of the food is relatively decent. We ordered the Romanian steak ($10) and the Romanian sour meatbal soup ($4).
I was relatively disappointed with the soup. I expected a soup bursting with flavours, sort of like the Tokyo chicken stew from soup spoon, which happens to be one of my favourite joints. But more on that some other time. The soup came with a few large chunks of meatballs, potatoes and carrots. The soup didn't pack any of that punch I would have expected, and to be honest was kind of bland. The meatball, despite it being big, isn't big on flavour. Grains of rice were inside the meatball to make it that big. With four slices of bread accompanying the soup, along with the large meatballs and the potatoes in the soup, this just makes me think of some poor Romanian family having this soup for dinner. Not something I'll recommend you to order.
The romanian cheese steak was next. An average sized steak, with the cheese sauce and sauteed mushrooms on top, accompanied by two slices of bread with a spread that looks like cooked onions of some form and a salad with, potatoes and olives amongst others. With the bread, and the potatoes again, it seems like they refuse to let you leave hungry. The steak was decent. I personally liked the mushrooms on top. They have a smoked taste and I felt went really well with the steak. I didn't like the bread though. Maybe it was my Singaporean instinct where bread should always go with kaya, but the cold foul smelling spread did not appeal to me. It's hard to describe, but I doubt it's a taste many Singaporeans will like. The potato salad was ok, nothing special. Overall a decent dish, and I think the steak alone would have been worth that money.
I left feeling very full, but not really very satisfied. I wouldn't recommend it to just anybody. You have to be adventourous about your food to like what's being offered at this place.
P.S Future reviews shall come with photos. I forgot to take some!