Little Singapore

So originally Shishi and I had planned to go to restaurants together, many posts ago. Shishi is always busy though, so that makes it difficult. This weekend was no different. Shishi had a friend over from another state, and so we only had a small window of opportunity to seize. He had stuff to do at 3pm so we had to be done by then. We invited my sister, VGirl, JGirl and Yannikins along. As a result, we had to start from 1pm as that was when VGirl finished work.

That doesn't actually leave much time to do anything. Since we all live so far away from each other, we were restricted in our choice of suburbs. We had to stick to the southside of Brisbane as the aggregate, roughly triangulated meeting spot of all our locations. Frankly, the southside is terrible for food, Sunnybank/Hills area is the mecca of food, if you like Asian cuisine, and the only other spot of note, is not even jokingly Ikea.

I had originally picked out Taste of Penang in Sunnybank Hills to try out, however it was closed on Sundays so we had to pack it up and head to Oishii sushi bar. Also closed. Frustrated, we went to Market Square and since everyone had spent so long trying to find me (long story, trust me), we wanted somewhere quick, fast and cheap. LITTLE SINGAPORE IT IS.

Everyone was sitting outside.

We were mildly surprised to see it so busy during a Sunday afternoon. We managed to get a small booth though and were given two drink and food menus to sort out between us. I think that is the fastest we've ever ordered anything. JGirl and Yannikins sat next to each other, whilst Shishi sat pimp like between myself and VGirl.

JGirl and Yannikins.

They said I should take pictures of them from the chest down, to show who was there and as a means of censorship. Frankly, I think JGirl just wanted a legitimate excuse to photograph my chest. All the description below happened out of order, but I had no idea how to organise it like what happened. The drinks arrived all at the same time barring the grass jelly, my food arrived first, than VGirl's than JGirl's and Yannikins and lastly Shishi. It'll be reviewed according to person though.

VGirl, Shishi and myself.

JGirl got the satay beef with rice. She also got the weekend special as did everyone else of the home made lemonade for $2. I stole a bit of her food without asking and found the satay to be very sweet. I think probably from the liberal use of pineapple, red capsicum and I guess sugar? The meat was very soft and tender but that was easy to see why!

Beef satay with rice

Check out that beef! It was pretty much rare/raw! I'm surprised she even saw it under the thick layer of satay sauce it was coated in. She was initially worried that she would get sick, but we reassured her that was pretty much only for long dead seafood, poultry, game and pork. JGirl found only a few pieces to be like this and towards the bottom of the serving oddly, but she ended up sending the plate back and getting another serving.

Just a bit gross.

Yannikins may have gotten the Hainanese style dry noodles and lemonade. Why did I say, he may have gotten it? Our waitress took all our orders without pen and paper, and recited them back to us. At the time, I think she had gotten the order down as Hainanese chicken rice before Yannikins clarified the order. With that being said, his Hainanese style dry noodles came in a puddle of some broth/sauce I didn't taste. It didn't look anything like the picture on the menu either! He stuck with it though and polished off the entire plate. I also stole stuff off his plate and the noodles were nice and chewy :>.

If they're dry why do they have broth?

VGirl ordered the vegetarian Singaporean laksa and wanted it mild, also lemonade. I can't stress to you how huge this bowl was, it was a trough of laksa soup! I didn't try it until the very end, and that was just a sip of her broth. It was a nice mild bite, nothing too special. She kept finding weird unidentifiable vegetables in her laksa, for a vegetarian she isn't very good is she? She couldn't identify the eggplant they had slipped in despite it having small stripes of the purple skin.

Shishi helpfully rearranged the garnish for me

I even took a picture against the lemonade to show you how huge it was.

She actually finished everything but the soup

Shishi wanted the Singapore Chilli Prawns and rice mild too, yeah he got lemonade too. His meal definitely wasn't mild, Yannikins and I agreed. It had a slow back burner effect as well as heavy kick in the face of chilli. Shishi religiously counted the prawns and came up with eight, so it wasn't too bad and a decent size too. The prawns were fantastic, tails left on, plump and juicy and coated in that odd sauce.

The sauce was weird. I can't really put my finger on it, it was really thick and sludgy like a raw egg that had been mixed up. If you lifted up the spoon, it poured down in a ready line. It was very thick, but it didn't have that same consistency that cornflour has when used as a thickener. The eggy bits were just set and very silky thin, the same texture you get when your pour an egg into a hot broth and stir it to cook it. Similar to the eggy threads in corn and chicken soup!

I ended up ordering the most as usual, with a plate of chicken satay skewers, Malaysian char kway teow, a grass jelly drink and a lychee frappe. I was super thirsty okay! Next time my eyes are firmly on the mango or fresh coconut frappes. I was pondering ordering ice cendol, but Yannikins said it was alright but nothing crash hot. I briefly considered the roti canai or maybe murtabak but wanted the gorgeous char kway teow that I'd seen others eating in passing.

The chicken satay arrived first and I handed out a strip to each of the other meat eaters. It was average, the chicken was tender but not particularly addictive like really good chicken satay is. The sauce was very sweet, bleh. 

Eh average.

My lychee frappe was delicious. I'd have happily had another of these immediately after. I kept getting brain freeze from drinking so much of it in one sip. Everyone at the table had a drink and we all agreed it tasted exactly like a bunch of real lychees had just been blitzed up in a blender with some ice. It was missing that weird fake sugar taste that lychee syrup has and there were real lychees at the bottom! I doubt they use anything other than canned lychees considering the season, but boy that drink was good. 

So goddamn delicious lychee frappe

OH REAL LYCHEES OMG.

My grass jelly drink was missed until almost the end of the meal! It was so delicious. Words cannot even express. I wonder how they got their grass jelly to float so well?

Mmm grass jelly

I'm not sure whose lemonade this was. I drank it though, it was slightly on the sweet side and everyone agreed it wasn't bad for $2. I would've preferred it just a bit stronger, with more sugar and lemon juice, but it was perfect for a hot day like it was that day.

Possibly Yannikins or JGirl's?

This is my Malaysian char kway teo! Its a really tasty dish, that is quite controversial like pad thai. Everyone has their own variations on the dish but the only real thing people agree on is that it needs a dark/light soy sauce combo and it has flat rice noodles. The rest of the ingredients, the inclusion of pork fat, eggs, lap cheong, prawns, cockles, bean sprouts, chilli, belacan, garlic chives, chicken, seafood mixes, fish balls and many more things I'm probably forgetting, are entirely up to the person cooking and the personal preferences of the person eating.

Looks good! Malay char kway teow

In mine there was eggs, pork fat cubes, squid pieces, prawns, bean sprouts, garlic chives, lap cheong, strips of fish cake and bits of onion. It looked really good! There was a mild smokiness to the dish, the strands of noodles were all nicely separated and there was a good assortment of ingredients. However is was resoundingly bland. The colour was spectacular, but it didn't really taste of anything, I think they could have done with more of the sauce. I ended up eating maybe half of it, and palming the rest off to Shishi.

Pork lard bits!

The damage!

We were in that little hollow behind the blurry waitress

All in all, the food was really cheap, fast and filling but not particularly tasty. We were averaging $12-14 per meal, with my exception of about $30? The drinks were amazing though. I would definitely return for the drinks.