Singapore Cafe

Today my wife and I dined at Singapore Cafe (12345 Bellaire Blvd near Cook in Houston). For those unfamiliar, this area is on the outskirts of Houston's Chinatown...the real Chinatown off of Bellaire, not the old Chinatown near downtown which is all but dead now.

I traveled to Singapore nearly 12 years ago with my brother and buddy. I fell in love with the place because it was extremely clean and the food was amazing! I was particularly overwhelmed by the 2-story food court nestled inside a parking garage. You read that right. Take a two-story parking garage, prevent cars from entering it, set up hundreds of food stands and you'll have yourself an unforgettable food court. Part of why this place was so impressive was the fact the food was amazingly cheap. At the time, a dish of rice, meat and veggies was approximately the equivalent of $2 US. So instead of saving money on food, I just ate 3 meals in one sitting. I would walk around and order whatever looked odd and/or appetizing, though not necessarily both. What else was I supposed to spend the money on?


So back to Singapore Cafe. I ordered their Singaporean/Hainanese chicken rice. Typically, to make this dish, a whole chicken is boiled and the rice is cooked with chicken stock but I understand the stock used to cook the rice isn't the same used to boil the chicken. The two are served with assorted pickled veggies with a side of several yummy sauces. In this case, the chicken was covered in one sauce with a side of hot sauce. The hot sauce is the kind of sauce I could eat with rice and nothing else. The spicy red stuff is vinegary and salty and limey and could potentially lead to world peace. The chicken was a free-range chicken, so it was slightly gamy and chewy. Though this might turn some away, I believe it's an essential part of the dish, not necessarily because the dish has roots in lower class society where the chicken is stretched to make an entire meal. No, the extra chewing is essential for me to prolong my enjoyment of the red happiness.


I washed it all down with an order of iced milk Milo. Milo is basically the lovechild of chocolate milk and Gatorade...at least that's what all the marketing wants you to believe. I really don't care whether or not it's good for me. I just know it's chocolaty goodness in a glass. It doesn't taste like "American" chocolate milk either. It has a distinct grainy flavor...I guess it's all the vitamins and nutrients at work.

Eating here made me feel like I was back in Southeast Asia perusing the aisles of countless food vendors. And with the impressively long menu they have, I'm definitely visiting this place again.

Bulgogi Glee

The wife and I went on a triple date with some good friends. As always, we met over some delicious food, this time at the Korean restaurant, Arirang. We were all in for a special treat in that one of the diners is Korean and did most of the ordering for us.

Arirang specializes in grilled meats, which was obvious as soon as I set foot into the building. As I passed through the front door, the tantalizing smell of seasoned meats grilled over seasoned cast iron hit me like a punch to the nose in that I was momentarily stunned, pausing to enjoy the now. Once inside, my eyes darted around uncontrollably between parties grilling meats on the table burners and servers exiting the kitchen while balancing heaps of meat smoking on top of searing-hot iron platters. Muffled conversations fought to overcome the gradually fading hiss of sizzling meat.


For appetizers, we had a "shrimp and onion pancake." As you can see, it was just like it sounds. The batter, more like a crepe than a pancake, was marbled with pieces of cooked white and green onions as well as little shrimp. Each person got his/her own piece, which was reminiscent of a pizza slice. The pancake came with a "special sauce" that was probably soy sauce laced with fresh chili peppers, sugar, and sesame oil. Though I wanted to order another pancake, I was promised that the following dishes would be just as good or better. So I did what anyone would in that situation, I pouted as fiercely as I could.


The next dish dish was beef bulgogi. Though the Wiki link tells you what it is, it doesn't tell you that eating bulgogi is similar to using crack cocaine..without the addiction and eventual family dysfunction, of course. Every subsequent bite was me chasing that first high in that I continually ate an unhealthy amount of the salty sweet substance sizzling over the iron plate.


This was the pork bulgogi, which is just as delicious as the beef but healthier since it's white meat...somehow, I'm sure it's healthier...oh well, I wasn't counting any calories at this meal.


Like most Korean restaurants, dinner was accompanied by a large assorment of small side dishes. These were some of the sides that accompanied the meal. Though I've had these several times before, I still have no clue exactly what they are. Eating at Arirang is like eating a home-cooked meal prepared by your friend's mom, you ask for seconds, not questions. Growing up with this mindset has conditioned my stomach and palate to stare down challenges like a marine in combat. All the sides were some sort of pickled vegetable with spices and all did a great job of preventing me from realizing how much oily meat I was actually eating.


This is my wife's favorite, a kind of tofu soup with seafood. The salty broth was infused with onions and spicy peppers, hence the orangey-red color. Beneath its surface was a piping hot mix of soft tofu, shrimp, mussels, scallops and squid. Though it's intended to be eaten alone, like a soup, my wife prefers it over white rice. Her preference worked out beautifully since she filled up quickly with the additional rice leaving more for me to enjoy.


This grilled mackerel was phenomenal. No analogies here, just phenomenal. I admit I'm usually a sucker for whole fish but this was on another level. The mackerel was cleaned, butterflied, sprinkled with salt, and broiled. That was it. And yet, this simplicity that adds to the phenomenon. Mackerel is a bony, oily fish with a stronger flavor than other fish, which makes it my preferred fish. This preparation intensified those qualities that I love. The broiling seemed to essentially sear the fish, locking in all that moist, oily goodness and rendered all the exposed fins and bones as brittle as potato chips (and yes, I ate all the fin chips I could). The dusting of salt complimented its intense flavor making it a perfect for warm fluffy white rice. And the regular process of using my teeth to extract bones was entertaining to everyone in the party, making this mackerel the life of the party.

Much thanks to Trista and Marcos for ordering new and exciting dishes I wouldn't have known about otherwise and thanks to Dante and Jodi for their adventurous spirit in trying these dishes for the first time like my wife and me. Through good food and great friends, I do believe I was closer to enlightenment while eating this meal.

Ooo Ooo Fu Fu

Hello, my friends, we meet again. Sorry for the delay in updates. Thanks to everyone who's been hanging in there.

The wife and I visited one of Houston's Bellaire Chinatown's fine dining establishments. I specify Bellaire Chinatown because according to the highway signs, the traffic officials still think Houston's Chinatown is near downtown. Despite being out of touch, I'm sure they're good people and they mean well. Any how, the wife had been here with a coworker, liked it and here we are interacting via a food blog.

I entered this dinner with high hopes since Fu Fu Cafe is situated in a strip mall and for those of you who don't already know, I'm a big fan of strip mall eateries. Though they're not always good, more likely than not they are enjoyable and occasionally exceptional. My theory is because these establishments spend their resources on the food and not the appearance or rent of stand-alone structures. Fu Fu is somewhere in between good and exceptional. Through the glass door you step directly into the dinning area which accommodates 40 diners, maybe 50 if the guests can tolerate little table area. Even with limited eating real estate, you would have to pass through a crowd of waiting famished as you put your name on the waiting "list," i.e., the server's/hostess' memory.

For our meal, we got soup dumplings and beef tendons with scallions. The dumplings I liked though they weren't as good as the ones I've had in NYC. The wrapping was overly thick and doughy for my tastes. The broth and pork filling inside was warm and flavorful. For those you haven't had soup dumplings, imagine a French-dip sandwich that, instead of dipping the sandwich, the au jus and meat were encased inside a water-proof bread crust. Like it sounds, not only would it be incredibly delicious, you would also have to eat it with extreme caution. Wow...I might have just come up with a great new food item. I'll have to experiment and get back to you. Oh, and for those of you who haven't had soup dumplings or a French dip, pat yourselves on the back for being cruel and negligent to your taste buds. Unfortunately, the yummy dumplings made for a poor foto.


For our main dish, we ordered the "beef tendons with scallions." What's funny is that I quoted the actual English menu entry but the Chinese version had about 20 characters. Just goes to show this place caters to Asians and Chinese illiteracy just means your dinner is like a box of chocolates. The beef tendons seem to have been slow simmered in broth and then flash stir-fried with fresh green onions when ordered. There's really no consistency with tendons since they can come from many joint of the cow. So some pieces were firm and chewy while other pieces were soft and edible sans teeth but all pieces of tendon had the subtle tendon flavor infused with the salty brown broth. The flash frying merely softened the onions, leaving a nice pungency to cut through the oily broth and gelatinous tendons. We ate this with white rice and smiled the whole time.

Since our first visit together, we've revisited Fu Fu, reordered these same dishes and received the same smiles.

Thai or Viet?

Met with the father-in-law for dinner the other night. He recommended a new Thai place in Chinatown called Thai Spice. Turns out they have many locations and this is their newest one. To those who don't already know, Houston's "Chinatown" is a bit of a misnomer since it's more of a Little Saigon. So when Pappa-2, as I have him listed in my phone, suggested Thai in Chinatown, I was curious as to how authentic it would be. Well, in Thai restaurant nomenclature, on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being kinda Thai and 5 being too Thai) it was about a 0.75.

The restaurant seemed to be Vietnamese owned and operated. The menus had English and Vietnamese descriptions. Come to think of it, most of the menu were down right Vietnamese fare. To justify "Thai" in the title, I think they merely added more Thai basil and limes and chili peppers to the dishes. Though Thai and Vietnamese cuisines have certain similiarities, I felt like I was in a Vietnamese restaurant. Imagine going in for Italian food but feeling like you're in a Spanish tapas bar. I've only been to this one location so it might be different with the others.

Despite my ranting, I enjoyed the food enough to look pass everything I just stated.


The beef noodles weren't too oily, which is usually the case. The dish was seasoned well and the meat was nice and tender. The addition of carrots were unexpected, but didn't make me mad at my wife for ordering it.


I liked the veggies more than the noodles. Again, not too oily. The hard stalks were cut thin and cooked well so that they were tender enough to enjoy but still had a nice fresh snap when you bit down. The firm tofu was fresh and its silky texture balanced out the crispness of the veggies. If I ate only this dish for dinner, I would have been happy.

Overall, Thai Spice wasn't outstanding but I didn't regret eating there.

Food-filled weekend

Good food has many effects such as happiness and misery, depending on how much you ate. Another effect is extreme lethargy, which affected me most of the weekend. So now I have 3 days worth of good food to post about. Off we go!

Friday

I joined some friends for a long lunch at one of my favorite steakhouses here in Houston called Taste of Texas. This place has been around 30 years now and has only one location. As its name suggests, it's full of Texas pride. As you walk in, you enter what all non-Texans expect a Texas living room to look like: large fireplace, huge Texas flag hung with care, firearms and other paraphernalia hanging on the walls. Living here most of my life, I can say that not all living rooms are like this...though they should be.

After ordering the 6-oz filet mignon, I headed to the AYCE (all you can eat) salad bar. The salad spread itself is decent enough to appease any vegan. Ironically, however, it's famous for it's warm bread, flavored butter and enormous cheese wedges. That's right, ToT's venerable venue of veggie variety for devouring is better known for its cheese and bread. Shave off as much cheese as you think you need, grab as much bread as you'd like (there's rolls, jalapeño corn bread, cheese rolls and more) and your favorite butter (plain, apple or cinnamon honey). Usually, I have a hard time finding space for any veggies on my salad plate.

Even though my salad plate was mainly filled with bread and cheese, the mere act of walking through the salad bar line made me feel less guilty about the steak I was about to inhale.

Isn't she a beaut?

ToT serves its steaks with the option of two seasonings, which you can have one or the other or both. I chose both. The first seasoning is a dry lemon-pepper rub and the second is a sizzling lemon garlic butter. Neither seasoning are mandatory as far as flavor, but since there's no additional charge, why not? Ordering the butter will have your steak come out on this cow platter, which puts me more in touch with my prehistoric ancestors, who I'm sure ate directly from the side of animals with knives and forks. My filet was cooked perfectly and, as always, disappeared within 5 minutes.

Then came time for dessert. Good thing I ate my steak so fast because I had time to digest some before ordering the Snickers Pie.

How do you top off a meal of fatty red meat? With fatty sugars of course!

Fans of Snickers and cheesecake will enjoy this pie. The description will read whipped cream on graham crackers on cheesecake on Snicker crumbs on chocolate, but what it leaves out is "smile on your face." I personally can do without the whipped cream and cheesecake, so I eat it with the skill and dexterity of a surgeon performing heart surgery.

Saturday

The wife and I trekked to favorite Houston sushi place, Kaneyama. We went for lunch thinking that we'd be frugal and save some money. Yeah right. As soon as we looked over their menu, our eyes lit up like Brangelina in an orphanage. So $70 dollars later, here's what we had for lunch.

Seaweed salad starts about 90% of our sushi meals. The simple, clean taste helps our palettes prepare for the seafood to come.

Gindala, or miso-marinated cod, is another favorite appetizer of ours. The cod filet is marinated overnight in a miso mixture and then broiled. Great salty flavor and flaky texture.

Chawanmushi is listed under appetizers, but since it takes longer to prepare, it always ends up being served with the main dishes.

Clockwise from top left: hotategai (whole scallop), two uni (sea urchin), tobiko (flying fish roe), unagi (fresh-water eel), masu (sea trout), ika (squid) and sake (salmon).

Amaebi (raw sweet shrimp).

Most the time, this is prepared from frozen shrimp. However, sometimes we're lucky and there will be live shrimp. The difference in freshness is distinguishable, but frozen shrimp doesn't ruin the experience. This piece was from a frozen shrimp.

Nothing wasted: the head of the shrimp used for amaebi.

The best part about ordering amaebi is that she'll eat the tail and I get the shrimp's head! It's lightly battered and fried so the shell turns brittle and essentially becomes a crispy seal locking in all the good stuff inside the shrimp's head. IMO the better half of the order.

Sukiyaki, the food not the 4 P.M. song.

This was my first time trying sukiyaki. The description enticed me by listing "yam noodles" as an ingredient along with beef, tofu and veggies (napa cabbage and green onions). The broth was sweetly salty. The yam noodles, translucent and slightly chewy, weren't quite what I was expecting, but I wasn't disappointed. I not sure how exactly yams were included in its making since I didn't taste yam nor saw evidence of it. The wikipedia listing has a picture that doesn't look like the noodles I had. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the mix of just a few ingredients that worked well together. I would definitely get this again.

Sunday breakfast

Met some friends for breakfast at Avalon Drug Store and Diner. This was my first time here in all the years we've lived here. Since my wife and I were running late, we asked our friends to order for us. So here's what we got:

Pecan waffle

The waffle looked and smelled great and had the crispy, cakey texture expected. However, it was sour. Not slightly sour, as if it had buttermilk or sour cream, but overpoweringly sour. I'm not sure if this is intentional or if I got a bad batch. Needless to say there was a lot left over. I then turned my attention to the following.

Chorizo quesadilla, bacon and eggs

I'm a huge fan of chorizo. Like everything else, some chorizo is better than others. This chorizo was good, but I would have like to see twice as much in the quesadilla. BTW, it was my first time having quesadilla for breakfast.

The highlight the meal was definitely the bacon, which was cooked exactly how I like it, mostly crispy with a few pieces of chewy fat. I was tempted to order another 4 orders of the cured belly bliss.

Sunday lunch

The wife and I met with her father for lunch at his favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Tay Do. Whenever meeting him for lunch, he either chooses this place or a buffet. Lucky for us, after the breakfast above, he chose the option of less gastric misery.

Steamed chicken with ginger soy sauce

This is one of my and my father-in-law's favorite Vietnamese dishes. This order was served warm topped with green onions and cilantro. We received about half a chicken skillfully chopped. There's nothing more annoying than chicken chopped with little shards of bone scattered through the dish. The ginger soy sauce is actually diluted with other sauces, but the ratio of dilution and the other sauces are usually a guarded secret. One thing the soy sauce is definitely diluted with is chicken fat. The resulting dish tasted like juicy meat drenched in angel tears.

Canh Chua (literally translated to "sour soup")

This is one of my wife's favorite dishes. The broth is a tamarind base, hence the sour. This order was made with catfish steaks, celery, tomatoes, bean sprouts, okra, Thai chili peppers, pineapple and coriander. All these ingredients amalgamate into a spicy, salty, slightly-sour soup with tender catfish and enough veggies to satisfy a hobbit.

In conclusion, I had a weekend spent with friends and family over some delectable delights. All the ingredients for a great time. Hope yours was the same!