Ginza Bairin @ JCube, Jurong East

Was invited to a tasting session at Ginza Bairin's second outlet in Singapore. Located at B1 of JCube, this shop has an open feel to it and seats 44 pax. The layout of the outlet gave it a somewhat fast-food joint kind of atmosphere, but did you know that Ginza Bairin in Japan, has already established 85 years of experience in Tonkatsu making?

shop interior

Coincidentally, June is also the month where rice planting festivals are held in Japan. What's more apt than for us to celebrate it by savouring rice dishes!

cute logo of shamisen playing pig

rice as a symbol of life

rice, our staple food

A trivia that I found interesting was that due to severe rice shortage at the end of the second World War, Ginza Bairin's founder, Nobukatsu-san had an idea and decided to pair katsu with bread instead of rice. The Katsu sandwich remains as one of its signature dishes till date. Talk about turning adversity into opportunities!

Coincidentally, we started the night with the Pork Katsu Sandwich, which is served in a box.

Pork Katsu Sandwich

closer view of the Pork Katsu Sandwich

The sandwich is simplicity personified. Firm pieces of deep fried breaded pork, coated with special home-made sweet sauce (Nobukatsu-san's recipe that has apples, onions and a blend of vegetables) and assembled ontop of soft white bread.

nice to meat you

The Pork Katsu Sandwich is suitable if you're looking for a light meal, or a snack in between meals.


Next, we had the Special Katsu-don. This was one item that I had wanted to try ever since my friend had it when we were at the ION Orchard outlet.

Special Katsu-don (Pork) existed since 1958

look at that wobbly egg~

mouthwatering looking piece of tender meat, yums!

precious rice with onions and sweet sauce

Seeing a wobbly egg on the verge of bursting was a fascinating sight. Imagine runny egg yolk on piping hot rice drizzled with sweet sauce...mmm

dazzling golden rice

Enjoyed the Special Katsu-don very much. The meat was tender and juicy, with its outer layer having absorbed much of its sauce, giving it a slightly sweet taste. The runny egg yolk mixed into the steaming hot rice gave it a silken soft feeling when eaten. Yums.

After that, we had the 'Special' Mixed Fry Set. Special because this was purposely mixed so that we can try the ebi fry, cheese pork fillet katsu and black pig katsu plus curry rice, all at the same time. Not sure what is the usual combination for the mixed fry set though but from the picture of its menu, it seems like it has ebi fry, cheese pork fillet and chicken karaage.

the flags are specially done for the event, so normally, it won't be served like this!

curry rice, (left to right) cheese pork fillet katsu, ebi fry and black pig katsu

The curry here is sweet and has a good consistency, which means it was neither too watery nor too thick. Has small bits of potatoes in it as well. Note that the curry will gradually thickens when its temperature cools.

curry

cheese pork fillet katsu, look at those crunchy crumbs~

say cheese~

Can you tell from the pictures just how crispy those crumbs were? They were seriously crispy. Apparently, the breadcrumbs or panko here is the reduced sugar version and the deep frying uses cotton seed oil.

black pig katsu

looking rosy

eby fry

The eby fry was firm to the bite but a little overcooked. The cheese pork fillet katsu was quite a huge chunk of meat and has a stronger pork taste compared to the black pig. Am not sure but cheese, meat and curry all translated into quite an overwhelming dish for me. It was a little too rich. The black pig katsu while retained its clean flavour, was rather lean and not as tender as the meat from the Special Katsu-don dish.

Lastly, we had the Spicy Tonkatsu Ramen, a dish that is touted as a Singapore Exclusive.

Spicy Tonkatsu Ramen

look at the red chili oil, and by spicy I mean SPICY but shioks!

slurpilicious soup~

Was kind of surprised when I first tasted the minced pork that was laced with lots of chili oil. It was rather cold. Probably had to mix it into the soup? The soup was nicely cloudy and flavoursome. Thankfully, not too salty too.

springy noodles

The chili oil did a good job in clinging onto the strands of sprightly noodles. Gave that extra kick with each slurp. Nice.

Ni Tamago

For menu and promotions information for Ginza Bairin JCube, here's the link to their website.

Thank you Ashley and Athena, from The Brand Elixir for the kind invitation to this event and thank you to the good people of Ginza Bairin @JCube.

It was also nice to see in person food bloggers like Charlene from Gninethree, Dawn from 365days2play, Jasper from Six&Seven and Melissa from Melicacy. Please vote for them for the Singapore Blog Awards 2012 (Best Food Blog category) here.

Bar Bar Black Sheep @ Bukit Timah

Located at Cherry Avenue, this place always seemed to have a crowd on both occassion of visit. The concept is pretty simple; it has three stalls offering Indian, Thai and Western fare. Food and beer/wine. Good combi, yes?

the Thai and western food stalls

It was post dinner when we visit, so we got some light bites to go with beer. The food was from Smok'Inn Frogz Kitchen. Had onion rings and fish fingers. Can't remember the exact prices but each were below $10. Yep, they were deep fried and very oily.

onion rings, served with ketchup

onion rings close up view

fish fingers, served with fries and tartar sauce

fish fingers and fries

The onion rings got soggy pretty fast. Had better ones elsewhere. The fish fingers were a little burnt, the batter was thicker than expected and the fish meat was soft. The fries were alright though.

Had a funny incident with the beer. Ordered a jug of Kronenbourg Blanc and the guy delivered to us, and we paid. He came back with the change. And after a few minutes, we realized we didn't have any glasses to pour out the beer. Hahaa! The guy forgot to bring us some.

finally, glasses for beer

a jug of Blanc @$25

Payments are in cash terms. This place opens till late.

Zhou's Kitchen 周庄 @ Novena Square 2

Located at Level 1 of Square 2, this place looked pretty small. On the weekend day of our visit, the restaurant doesn't seemed to be ready for its 6pm start of evening service as some staff were seen to have just started to clean up the front section of the restaurant. Probably the tea-time crowd was hectic? Not sure.

booth seats

view for 2 pax seats

For 2 pax dining option, they have two set menus (Chef's Recommended Set and Tasty Set) available and both priced at about $28++. For set menu meals, one can get appetiser, soup, fish, vegetable and dessert. Quite a good variety, if you ask me. However, my dining companion was more keen on ala-carte dishes so we didn't get any set menus.

ala-carte menu

As the usual practice in most Chinese restaurants, a small plate of peanuts or such would be placed on the table. Here, we get pickles. The vinegared fruits and vegetables slices/juliennes/shreds tasted quite nice.

pickles 酸菜

We also ordered pu-er chinese tea for drinks and it came served in a metal pot.

tea pot

pu-er

For food, we ordered steamed sea bass, crispy roasted chicken (half) and stir fried kai lan with sambal. The service was pretty fast, as the food started to arrive in approximately 10 minutes after our orders were taken. Also liked that the service staff will verify the orders once more with you, after it was keyed into the system.

The crispy roasted chicken came first.

crispy roasted chicken (half) @$16++

flavored salt

closer view of yummy chicken

The chicken was quite yummy with its thin crispy skin and tender moist meat, especially the thigh and ribs part. Yums!

stir fried kai lan with sambal

closer view of vegetables

white rice

The vegetable wasn't spicy actually. Just fragrant with the sambal and goes quite well with rice. The surprise dish was the fish, as I wasn't really expecting a milky broth from that dish.

steamed seabass

closer view of steamed fish

Liked how the fish meat was already deboned and placed back on the serving dish to resemble the fish body. There were tofu cubes below the fish meat. The fish was alright although there was a slight fishy taste to it. However the preserved vegetables were kind of too salty to be eaten so we skipped those.

Service was generally alright, although one dish from someone else's table got sent over to ours after we had finished our meal.

We paid $26+ per pax (after 20% off for Tunglok card holder members birthday month discount).

Yakitori Enmaru 焼鳥 炎丸 @ ION Orchard (Part II)

Second time visit with a first-timer. Wendy, my friend, made reservations for us, but on a weekday evening, it was rather unnecessary. The place was quite quiet.

handwritten welcome note

I was happy to note that the $5 shochu promotion (on selected shochu) is still available, so got myself a Tomino again.

We ordered yakitori of course, and this time round, we had tsukune oroshi (chicken meatballs with grated radish), garlic shitake mushrooms, ringo buta bara (pork with apple slices) and tebasaki (chicken wings). For appetiser, we had the tako with wasabi. Also ordered the ibushi yaki and onigiri. I had the salmon onigiri while my friend had the same but grilled version.

As usual, the raw cabbage with miso was served as otoshi. I think they forgot to drain off the water from the cabbage as there was quite a pool of liquid at the bottom of the bowl.

a feast for two

Everything was served to us, almost all at the same time. So that was how we ended up with a table full of food! On hindsight, it would be better if we'd order bit by bit and have those first, before re-ordering. The grilled items probably tasted better while it was still hot off the grill.

mushrooms!

The grilled mushrooms had a nice strong scent. Heady woody flavour. Yums. Next, we had the deep fried chicken skin in ponzu sauce (kawa ponzu).

kawa ponzu

yummy sinful deep fried skin

The deep fried chicken skin was kind of addictive, like crunchy keropok, albeit probably a more sinful version.

Onigiri, I kind of liked. Sure, the rice didn't hold and half of the onigiri crumbled after a few bites and there were scarcely any salmon in it, but somehow, this mound of rice ball wrapped in seaweed was like comfort food. Simple and filling.

salmon onigiri

Ok, I cheated. At times, the plain tasting onigiri was jazzed up using the tako wasabi. Haha! New flavour to consider.

small mound of slimy tako with spicy wasabi in a large bowl

tsukune, tebasaki and buta ringo

The tsukune was a little disappointing. The meat didn't hold together (not as compact as previously tasted) and it was a little dry on its inside. Perhaps we had left it out for too long before consuming it. Tebasaki was pretty juicy, while the apple pork was a little hard. It was a good chew though and the apple slices were sweet.

ibushi yaki, close up

The ibushi yaki and the tako wasabi were quite salty, so it made us thirsty for a long time.

Overall, the service was friendly and polite. The place was fairly relaxed.

Thank you Wendy, for the birthday treat!

Here's the link to first visit.