The Land Of Smiles

(INVITED TASTING) Nothing complements some tantalising Thai food better than an ice cold pint of Thai beer, and especially when the Thai cuisine is as outstanding as @folkscollective. Better yet, when you head down to Folks Collective for lunch on Tuesdays to Fridays from 11.30am to 3pm, you can crack an ice cold pint of @changbeersg new Cold Brew Lager for just five bucks with an order of a Weekday Lunch Set. Now that’s what I call a cracking deal!⠀
⠀
My dad & I unanimously agreed that the Moo Ping Set was the undoubted winner here. The grilled pork had the meaty, satisfying chew of a pork steak but the tenderness & moisture of a particularly remarkable meatball. The moo ping was tremendously tender, juicy, smoky & sufficiently seasoned, and dipping it into the sweet chili sauce made this an all star all rounder. The papaya salad on the side was crunchy & tangy, but I reckon they could’ve used papaya that was more ripe for more sweetness.⠀
⠀
Thank you for organising this tasting @accela.comms & @changbeersg, and thank you for hosting us @thaisupermarketsg & @folkscollective!⠀

(INVITED TASTING) Nothing complements some tantalising Thai food better than an ice cold pint of Thai beer, and especially when the Thai cuisine is as outstanding as @folkscollective. Better yet, when you head down to Folks Collective for lunch on Tuesdays to Fridays from 11.30am to 3pm, you can crack an ice cold pint of @changbeersg new Cold Brew Lager for just five bucks with an order of a Weekday Lunch Set. Now that’s what I call a cracking deal!⠀
⠀
The Folks Crispy Chicken were simply chicken tendies dusted with a tom yum powder, and it’s decent but nothing to shout about. However, the tom yum was worth a shout as it puts the yum in tom yum. It’s supremely sour with an overarching kick of spiciness, and the combo of sour & spicy open up the palate and whet your appetite like nothing else. And of course, there ain’t nothing better to wash these tasty Thai dishes down than a cold pint of Chang’s Cold Brew Lager.⠀
⠀
Thank you for organising this tasting @accela.comms & @changbeersg, and thank you for hosting us @thaisupermarketsg & @folkscollective!⠀

@changbeersg has always been an easy drinking beer, best suited to the sweltering heat of Thailand, and Chang has made it an even more appealing brew to beat the heat of Southeast Asia with the newly launched Chang Cold Brew Lager. The Cold Brew Lager can be best enjoyed on a hot afternoon on the beach, or paired with titillating Thai cuisine.⠀
⠀
Speaking of pairing with Thai food, this crisp, cold blonde was positively perfect with @folkscollective Crispy Pork Belly ($8++ for a small serve). The stunningly savoury & fantastically fatty pork belly is deep fried for that coveted crunchy crackling, and dipping each piece of pork into the feistily fiery chili dip imbued it with spice & extra umami. Perfect for washing down with a swig of Cold Brew Lager.⠀
⠀
Thank you for organising this tasting @accela.comms & @changbeersg, and thank you for hosting us @thaisupermarketsg & @folkscollective!

Easy come easy go seems to be the unfortunate catchphrase of many F&B businesses these days, as the famous Nian Nian You Yu at Maxwell closed mere months after opening. However, Fish Village spawned right in as its direct replacement, also specialising in steamed fish and miscellaneous seafood. On the evening I visited, they were slammed with an odyssey of orders, so they won’t be worrying about a lack of business for now.⠀
⠀
The Thai Sauce Scallop ($14) is decently delicious, albeit nothing particularly special. An abundance of scallops are doused in a subtly spicy & sweet Thai chili sauce, and garnished with pickled onions & what appears to be julienned cucumbers. It’s sour enough to stimulate your salivary glands & your appetite, and it’s suitably savoury, with the hints of sweetness & spice from the chilies jumping in at the end. The scallops were dangerously close to being overcooked, but fortunately they stopped just short.⠀
⠀
Fish and seafood are exorbitantly expensive these days, so to find such fresh produce at such a bargain is truly a blessing.

@jiak_song star attraction is supposed to be their handmade noodles, but as toothsome as those noods are, they simply can’t hold a candle to their tom yum broth. The Tom Yum Mee Hoon Kway ($5.80 nett) is a big bowl with lots of charmingly chewy mee hoon kway (flat hand torn noodles), slices of poached fish & minced pork, but all of that are just witnesses to the glory of the terrific tom yum soup.⠀
⠀
Jiak Song’s tom yum takes the ubiquitous Thai spicy soup and amps every attribute up to eleven. It’s sumptuously salty, satisfyingly sour and most importantly of all, the spice is violent enough to ignite a wildfire on your tongue. This stellar spicy soup flavours every single ingredient in the bowl, and it’ll spice up your day too. For under six bucks, this banging bowl of tom yum noodles offers absolutely unparalleled value.

@warmupcafe_sg name is a bit ironic as it’s pretty cold inside, but they do bring that Thai heat to warm your belly up. They have all the Thai classics like basil chicken, pineapple fried rice and Pad Thai, but the Creamy Crab Omelette Rice ($13++) called to me the loudest that day. The crab omelette isn’t quite an omelette, but more like scrambled eggs with all those runny, eggy curds burying the rice.⠀
⠀
A dollop of crabmeat atop the omelette and a green chili based sauce on the side complete this comforting looking dish. Truth be told, although the runny, silky egg curds were texturally terrific, it was a tad bland. However, that’s the cue for the green chili sauce in the little fish shaped plate to shine. It perfectly embodies Thai flavours: spicy, sour, salty and slightly sweet. ⠀
⠀
The subtle spice enlivened the crab omelette, while the sourness was so shiok it compels you pour the sauce all over the omelette rice and give it a good mix. The salinity of the sauce makes up for the lack of it in the omelette, and if I had to guess I’d say the green chilies were mixed with fish sauce & some vinegar. The Creamy Crab Omelette Rice was simply scrumptious thanks mostly to that absolutely GOAT-ed chili sauce. Warm Up Café’s green chili sauce goes straight into my list of ‘sauces so stellar, they should be bottled & sold’.

Whenever you step into a Thai restaurant, you MUST get their prawn cakes. Simple as. If and when you dine at @kinnarithaicuisine , not getting their stellar prawn cakes ($8 + 10% service charge) should be a crime under the penal code.⠀
⠀
Prawns are finely minced up into a coarse paste, shaped into a donut and coated in breadcrumbs before getting deep fried. Anything deep fried is usually good, but these prawn cakes were utterly sublime. Sure, they could’ve done with an extra sprinkle of salt, but the textures were downright heavenly. A light, thin layer of crunchy breadcrumbs envelop the sprightly & springy prawn paste, and that prawn paste is intermittently interrupted by a larger chunk of prawn. It may be eight dollars for a pair of these cakes, but these are some thicc ass cakes. Totally worth it.⠀
⠀
Trust me, every man loves thick, juicy cake, and this man loves this thick juicy prawn cake from @kinnarithaicuisine.

@kinnarithaicuisine has been established along Joo Chiat Road for a good long while, but it’s only recently that they’ve rolled out a couple of sick lunch specials. One of those lovely lunch offerings is this bowl of Khao Soi Chicken, which is eight dollars before additional service charge only at lunch.⠀
⠀
Khao Soi is a Thai coconut curry soup noodle, and is a rather familiar dish to Singaporeans. That’s right, it’s a Thai twist on curry chicken noodles. The luscious coconut milk enriched curry is chock full of lemongrass and fish sauce. which is the main difference between the Thai curry & the nyonya version. The aromatic Thai curry gravy houses egg noodles, which is essentially mee pok, chicken thigh chunks and raw shallots. The dish is generously garnished with an abundance of crispy deep fried mee pok at the top.⠀
⠀
There really isn’t much to say about Kinnari’s Khao Soi chicken, it’s a redolent, rich curry gravy that binds al dente noodles & chicken together. It’s simple, but it’s simply comfort food for a rainy day or when you need something hearty & spicy to breathe life into a dreary day.

I’ve had @ccthaifood Garlic Fried Pork with rice before, and while the deep fried pork belly was supremely satisfying, the grease level got out of hand halfway through. I found myself wishing that they put a side of tart mango salad to keep the fatty deep fried pork from being surfeiting, but I didn’t realise that Cool Cool Thai already had the solution on their menu.⠀
⠀
Their Fried Pork Belly Salad does cost a little more at six dollars (and an extra seventy cents for rice), but it resolves all of the grease control problems the rice version has. The same delectable, deep fried pork belly slices are now tossed in a Thai salad mix of raw red onions, shredded carrots, coriander/cilantro (DISGUSTANG), tomatoes and an unholy amount of Thai bird’s eye chilies all bound together by a sweet and mostly sour dressing.⠀
⠀
The incredibly sharp tartness of the dressing subdues the greasy tendencies of the pork belly effortlessly, and the strong sourness of the dressing gives way to the infernal, hellish heat of the chilies. These tiny Thai chilies are no joke, they are shockingly spicy and they WILL give you the sweats. Bracingly sour, slightly sweet and severely spicy? Yep, those are all the hallmarks of good Thai food.⠀
⠀
The pork belly had a charmingly crispy rind and each slice had a titillating thickness to boot. However, you don’t really have time to ponder the merits of the deep fried pork belly before you get slapped around by the stupefying spiciness. As much as this salad hurt me at both ends, I’d still order this again.⠀

#takeawayszn isn’t over yet, and many F&B establishments are still serving up tremendous takeaway deals. @lotusthaisingapore whips up a gnarly garlic chicken set for $10.80 before GST, and it’s a fairly reasonable custom for some tantalising Thai cuisine.⠀
⠀
Besides the garlic chicken & rice, you get a clear tom yum soup on the side and a cup of the ubiquitous Thai iced milk tea. The clear tom yum soup contains nothing but a slew of shimeji mushrooms and a wedge of tomato, but it is astonishingly ambrosial. It’s salty and satisfyingly sour, pulling double duty as both the perfect palate cleanser and appetite whetter. Of course, shemeji ‘shrooms are always scrumptious, and it gets even better in a solid salty & sour soup.⠀
⠀
As for the main event, it certainly delights. The slices of deep fried chicken are seasoned very simply with salt & white pepper before it’s dredged in flour & deep fried with an abundance of garlic. As the name implies, it’s all about the awesomely aromatic fried garlic and the succulent chicken that’s perfumed with the aforementioned garlic. It’s so gloriously garlicky that it would probably outright kill any vampires skulking in the shadows.⠀
⠀
For $10.80, you could do a lot worse than getting some titillating Thai garlic chicken for lunch. Get some. Then get more. With Lotus Thai’s garlic chicken, you’re a winner.

Ten bucks before tax & service charge for this piquant plate of fried rice with honest to god crabmeat in there? Shoot son, get me more! @khaohomsg has an ample array of fried rice, and this one commands the highest premium of them all. Yup, they’re in the eight to ten dollar range. That’s some sick value right there.⠀
⠀
The fabulously fluffy fried rice is splendidly salted, with the wonders of wok hei amplifying the stellar seasoning of the egg & spring onion speckled rice. As for the crabmeat, they were delectably fresh and cooked competently. It relies more on the strongly seasoned fried rice for flavouring, and that’s perfectly alright.⠀

Not gonna lie to you folks, the #burpplebeyond selection at @khaohomsg is pretty limited. You can pick from the salads, stir fries & rice/noodle section, but any and all seafood is completely off the table. A little bit of a bummer, given that Khao Hom seems to be a seafood specialist.⠀
⠀
Fortunately, you can get the Kao Ka Moo ($9++) with Burpple Beyond. Despite having ‘Moo’ in the name, there’s no bovine here, and is actually the Thai version of braised pork knuckles. It’s done decently, with tender, moist meat that’s satisfyingly salty & herbaceous from the braising. The skin is fantastically fatty & wobbly, with collagen in copious supply just under the skin.⠀
⠀
As for the other dish, it’s a simple stir fried mixed vegetable dish ($10++). A variety of veggies are stir fried over infernal heat with what tastes like oyster sauce till perfection, and in this case, simplicity sufficiently satisfies.⠀
⠀
Thank you for having us, @burpple & @khaohomsg!