The irony of staying in the west is that I always tend to travel further away from the west for food. They call this the-grass-greener-on-the-other-side theory. Sweet Salty Spicy at the railmall is just five minutes away from my place, but I have never visit it until now.

The Miang of prawns & pomelo ($3.5 per portion) marks the start of our Thai dinner. The correct method of eating this is to roll up the betel leaves with all the fillings within, and eat it in one mouth – or at least that’s how I ate it.

If there is a perfect appetizer, it will surely be the Salad of green mango with crispy salmon ($9). Spicy, sour, and refreshing – it has everything you can ask.

And other than the mango salad, the Hot & sour tom yum soup ($12) is definitely the other classic representative of Thai cuisine. On the surface, the slightly-marred soup appeared to be harmless, but the first slurp hit me in an instant and I was already grasping for water.

We thoroughly enjoyed the Traditional Thai fish cakes ($8 for 4 piece) that came with the sweet spicy dipping sauce. The fish cake was good, but it was the sauce that made it even better.

From the Wok menu, the Crispy Pork knuckle ($10) caught our eyes immediately. I don’t know about you, but I like pork a lot, and this certainly works for me. The others like to have it with the spicy nahm prik relish, but I prefer to have it on its own.

Let’s be honest: what’s there not to like about the tender Pork collar ($14)? They were more delicate and fragile than the pork knuckle, but they were delicious. They were slightly crisp on the outside, just as I wanted, and the meat was so tender and soft. It was a very close replication of roasted pork, not as crispy, but in some ways, I liked it even better. So I finished everything on my own. And my conclusion: these were keepers.

I was pretty skeptical when we ordered the Angus Beef cheek with flat rice noodle ($16), I mean this is Angus beef cheek that we are talking about and they probably will just give a tiny winy piece of meat with lots of noodles. But the result, as you can see in the picture, was a huge serving of the most flavorful and tender of tamarind glazed Angus beef cheek in the fragrant ginger broth. We didn’t manage to finish the flat rice noodle since we were saving our stomach for the other dishes, but if you ever come here; trust me, you will want to finish this bowl of noodle.

Sweet Salty Spicy has five curries in their menu, and we had the Curry Triplets ($24 for 4 person) that allowed us to choose three out of the five. There was the Jungle curry of scallops and prawns, Panang curry of Angus beef in addition to the Mussaman curry of chicken, Green curry of baby snapper and roast duck red curry that we had.

Talking about curry, my favorite will definitely be curry fishhead, but unfortunately they did not have it here. The Mussaman curry of chicken was passable, while the others like the snapper curry. I don’t know about you, but somehow green curry is a turn-off for me; it reminds me of the puke when you are overdosed with liquor from a boys/girls night out.

If I have to choose my favorite, it will be the roast duck red curry. I always have a fetish for roast duck, so it’s a fascination how they manage to blend the taste of the tasty roast duck and curry together. It was a little on the sweet side, from the addition of grapes and fruits to cook with the curry.

I always remember about the Pad Thai that I had in Phuket. In retrospect, it seems funny that I should say that, since I can’t hold my chili very well. But Sweet Spicy Salty’s rendition of the Pad Thai ($12) was not spicy at all, I’m not sure if all Pad Thais are not supposed to be spicy, but the one that I had back then was definitely hot and fiery.

In fact, I like the localized version better, it was somewhat sweet and the stir-fried Thai rice noodle was very fragrant. The addition of peanut added crunch to it, but it would be even better if they’ve threw in more beansprouts.

I like prawns. And so it make sense to order the Jumbo prawns ($4.50 each). But there’s a snag, the de-prawning is always an issue for a lazy bum like me, and luckily they shelved it for us. We also ordered the Grilled squid ($12) that had the same marination as the prawns: the taste was pretty run-of-the-mill.

Despite hearing horror stories on the possibilities of the ways they treated Soft-shell crabs ($13) to make it soft, we went ahead and order it. Often, it’s the dressing that makes the dish taste better, there wasn’t any spectacular about the soft shell crabs, wellt hey were crispy, and eh, soft, but it was the the chili jam & lemongrass dressing that enhanced the taste.

At this point of time, our stomachs were already quite full, but when the staff told us there’s a signature dish that we did not order; we were greedy and went for the Deep fried silken tofu ($18). It was a pretty high price to pay given that it’s only fried tofu stuffed with minimum crab and maximum minced pork. The sauce was good though, but the price tag doesn’t justify for tofu.

The only reason why we made some last minute orders like the soft shell crabs and tofu was because we thought there wasn’t any desserts available. So it came as a surprise to us when they showed us the separate dessert menu, and boy I was excited when I saw the long list of selections they had. And it was even better when I found out that the desserts are made in-house.

We were debating over the white layer in the Devil’s chocolate cake ($8), the menu wrote raspberry ripple so we tasted the layer on its own and tried to convince ourselves it was raspberry. But it was actually mascarpone cream cheese, if you looked closely – the raspberry ripple is a thin layer in between of the cream cheese and the chocolate cake, which explains the reason for the pinkish tinge in the cream cheese. The chocolate cake was a little dry, and personally I felt that cream cheese does not goes well with chocolate cake.

Sometimes luck is very important when it comes to food. You may be scarred by a bad experience and refuse to try a particular dish just because it was bad during the first time you had it. Well, my previous and only encounter with the Sticky Date pudding ($6) wasn’t exactly memorable, but I decided to give it another shot. The problem arises when I do not know how a good sticky date pudding taste like, so there’s no comparison. The one here was fairly competent, it was very date-ish, if there’s such a word, and it would be better if there’s a scoop of cold ice cream to go along with.

All the citrus junkies will absolutely go crazy over this Lemon & wine tart ($7). With the strong and distinct lemon taste lingering on the tongue, the crispy tart crust goes crunch, crunch in your mouth.

* * *

This is last part of the series that I’m doing with Standard Chartered, I will like to thank Claudia from 24seven Communications, and Standard Chartered Bank for the invitation.

Just a quick note about their new credit card campaign, I’m sure most of you will have seen their latest Barry and Fin advertisement; first you get 15% off total food bill (click here for the list of restaurant), and at the end of the month if you have charged more than the minimum amount of $500 (which can be anything, not just dining), you are entitled to an additional 15% cashback which applies to all restaurant in Singapore.

Sweet Salty Spicy
394 Upper Bukit timah road
The Railmall
Tel: +65 6877 2544

//  Read my list of Thai Restaurants in Singapore.

Joe’s kitchen may look ordinary on the outside, or even you might totally missed it when you passed by the place at its location at Bukit Merah, just directly opposite Alexander Hospital. I did. Having passed by the area a few times, i didn’t know there was this hidden gem offering authentic thai food experience in our midst of our heartland.

I was given this opportunity for the wonderful Makan experience organized by Leslie of ieatishootipost fame. A total of 47 food punters joined us on this occasion. Some of which were ieat’s old makan kakis, while many like me were first-timers joining ieat on his makan session.

The interior of the place was simple, the place wasn’t very big but it managed to squeeze all 47 of us inside the place. I wondered how all of us managed to eat inside that night. Miracle!

The event was supposed to start at 7pm, i got there around 645pm and there were people there already. Damien was the co-organizer for the outing. Jiawei and Shanice were the earliest there if i’m not wrong, i seated in the same table with them. Also on the same table as me were liverpool, eastcoastlife & hubby, yanti & friend. All of us had a wonderful time chatting taking photos, and savouring the food.

The crowd starts to come in and by around 740pm or thereabouts almost everyone arrived. The menu was to be 14 dishes including some starters, mains, and desserts. All the dishes came in sampling tasting size so that we can have a bit of everything. The female boss, Jamie (chef Joe’s wife) is friendly and attended to us warmly.

Crispy rice cake

The Kao Dang Na Dang help to kick-start our makan session. Not commonly found in Singapore. the cripsy rice cake, was supposed to go together with the peanut sauce. I didn’t quite enjoy this appetizer as i found it to be way too dry for my liking.

Prawn Cakes

The Thot Man Goong or Prawn Cakes was nice to eat, it was crispy and the prawn taste is just right.

Green Papaya Salad

The Som Tum or Green Papaya Salad is one the appetizer dish that you will not be surprised to find in a Thai restaurant. No doubt about it, th salad is packed with everything. The first taste of it, refreshing. The initial impression was its not as spicy as i thought. But the magical part of it was the longer it gets, the spicier it became. A few more bites and the mango salad got to its “full level”

As most of us waited quite long for everyone to turn up before the dishes to serve, by the time the mango salad came out everybody were famished. We literally “attacked” the salad, and it was until ieat told us to hold our horses, that the salad was supposed to eat together with the sticky rice and chicken which were not out yet then we realized that.

Gai Yang (Grilled Chicken)

The grilled chicken was quite good to be honest, everyone got a bite of it. Placing the papaya salad and the chicken onto the sticky rice, the taste is very different from eating the three dishes separately.

Grilled Pork Collar

This was no doubt for me, the star of the show! The Khaw Mu Yang, or grilled pork collar was somewhat similar to our Chinese char siew, albeit Thai style. Many of the kakis found it to be good too! Its also commonly eaten together with the sticky rice and papaya salad. But its so good that we eat it on its own.

Tom Yum soup with fried fish

In my personal opinion, how good a Thai restaurant is can be based on the test of their Tom Yum soup. Unquestionably. Tom Yum soup is the first thing that most people will think of when they think of Thai food. Well i say the Tom Yum soup by Chef Joe should passed with flying colours. The soup is really spicy, at least from my perspective. Dipping the crispy fried fish into the soup was quite a experience for me.

Green curry beef

The beef was tender, and immersed with the essence of the green curry.

Deep fried Grouper with Thai chili

The Thai chili was excellent here, real hot and a little sweet spicy. But i couldn’t help drinking more water so as to have a few more mouthful of the chili with the deep fried grouper.

Red Curry Roasted Duck

Having seen the green curry earlier, my first thought was red curry after green? This was followed by roasted duck curry? I have never heard of roasted duck curry, let alone tasting it. But this dish was really not bad, i’m not sure how the roasted duck came about, whether Chef Joe roasted the duck, or he brought it from elsewhere and cook it with the red curry, but nevertheless its good.

And to our astonishment, there were grapes, yes grapes inside the curry! Talk about surprise, first roasted duck in curry, then grapes?

Basil leave minced pork

I was never a fan of minced pork in the first place, n’uff said!

Claypot Crab Vermicelli with fatty pork

Although the claypot crab was suppose to be the highlight here, but we got into eating the vermicelli instead. After cooking, the essence of the crab and fatty pork all went into the vermicelli, that alone should suffice for eating the vermicelli.

Poom Fy Dang – Kang Kong Thai style

Like all the other dishes in Joe’s Kitchen, the first taste was not very spicy, but the second bite was real hot. The Kang Kong got hotter with each bite, i suggested just swallow the veggies!

Mango Stick rice

To round off our authentic Thai food experience, we had Mango sticky rice, the mango was real sweet!

Tapioca with Coconut milk

I didn’t like tapioca, so this dish was not to my taste bud

Total Bill was $1646 for 47 people, $35 per head for the Authentic Thai food experience at Chef Joe’s place. I love going to Makan outings with big groups because we can get to know more people. Think Yebber Party @ MINT where there were about 50 people, the Social Media Breakfast with around 40 odds people, and now this ieat makan outing with 47 people.

Credits to Leslie (ieat) and Damien whom organized this makan session for everyone to get together and enjoyed food. I looked forward to the many more outings organized by them, to meet more people and eat more food!

The beauty of food, it can bring everyone from all ages, different backgrounds together, for one common purpose that is to savour all the good food. How often do you see strangers getting together and seating down for a meal? I’m going to organised LIC food event soon, do watch out for the post!

Joe’s Kitchen
Blk 125 Bukit Merah Lane 1 #01-182
(Opp Alexander Hospital)
Tel: 6270 8484

” Authentic Thai Food experience, in the midst of our heartland “