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2009-09-24
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In the area waiting for someone to join me for dinner, travelled past this shop and faintly recall it being mentioned on the Openrice forum! A closer study of the shop window revealed clippings of 亞穌's recommendation of their Baked Porkchop Rice! In fact she recommended a few shops in the area too! Anyway I hardly watch her old or new shows, some people seem to love or loathe her especially her recommendations, but let's give it a try! ************BAKED PORKCHOP RICE: The Sauce is made in-
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BAKED PORKCHOP RICE: The Sauce is made in-house by baking/cooking together for hours a mixture of tomatoes, carrots, onions and celery - much like French or Italian cuisine's sauces or stock. The end product tasted sweet, mainly of pureed tomatoes and carrots. Good but it was a bit plain! There wasn't enough sauce on my porkchop rice however, so we had to beg for more 'unbaked' version of it twice before the staff gave it to us reluctantly!
The Pork Chop itself was thick. Its soft but was very lean and not tasty enough. It lacks either the deep-fried or post baked aroma, also came with no pork meat taste. I've had better pork in other places I think! The Rice was expectedly a 炒底 type with just shredded eggs and MSG, rather than 炒飯底 which comes with more ingredients and suits some other dishes better! The rice grains were 乾身 and 粒粒分明, it was slightly bitey too which was awesome, with some decent rice plus eggy aroma and taste! However one can't attribute this fully to the chef's fried rice skills, because to me, it was quite obvious this was largely to do with the special longish rice grain they use here.... it was different to other shops' grain selection and is some sort of longish 在萊米 or Thai Basmatic Rice, then mixed with pre-fried eggs rather than frying them together as 'coating', like other chefs prefer. It was a smart and efficient move by the restaurant to go down this path!
ALL IN ALL, this based porkchop showed a lot of Intelligence and also 誠意, especially with the sweetish slow-cooked sauce and the rice grains! However as a whole, the end result wasn't Great, barely Quite-Good. 大家樂, 美都, 大快活, 翠華, etc - all have their own advantages over here, especially when counting the vegetables and pork side! If anything, its the rice here which wins it points...
MOROCCAN CHICKEN WITH RICE: Their other Signature Rice Dish here but hardly anyone orders it. When this came, it had a Portuguese Curried type of sauce, which was mainly Yellow, but on the outside display photo the sauce is meant to come with gravy and should be much darker! The Chicken was shallow-fried, its a bit stringy but ok-good since anything cooked in enough oil is good, its almost the expected Chinese philosophy that 'more-oil' = 'more-moist', its like their shortcut method! A piece of Bacon came on the side and topped with a fried egg without much 鑊氣.
The rice is a Turmeric based Rice, similar to India or Indonesian style - but it lacked fresh Turmeric taste so one gathers its mainly powdered Turmeric for colour. In case it was too boring on its own, the restaurant mixes in some Sultanas, chopped peppers and slightly more shredded fried eggs. This rice wasn't good however, it lacked any discernible taste and colour-blind eaters can't tell its not a white rice. To me, it felt like an under-achieving Mexican or African Spicy Rice.
My Lemon Tea was a bit bland that night also.
Anyway, will probably come back 1 day, but both of us diners wished it was much better!
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