Saturday I I got up about 7:30 and did a bit of work; then
met with Lori_Q around 10, and headed northward by
degrees: started off buying a few sheets of new year's
jerky, then finding a Japanese bookstore, then walking
around Fort Canning, then north to Little India, arriving
at Muthu's at exactly noon to find bseller sitting there
and nobody else. Waited for half an hour and decided
the heck with everyone, we'll have a good time anyhow.

The three of us ordered somewhat too much food.

A small fish head curry at $20 was an enormous bowl
with a big ugly fish head in it - sort of Mafioso fish
soup. I'm not quite sure what the species was - probably
some kind of perch or snapper or something. The broth was
tangily flavored with tomato and cumin and was quite yummy.
By itself it would have been enough for the three of us.
Mutton curry was standard but very tasty, as was butter
chicken. We were upsold from one to three garlic naan by
the waiter (good idea) and an appetizer (bad idea: tandoori
mushrooms, which were nice enough but too much food).
Various lassi things and a pitcher of Tiger rounded
things out. A good meal, but it would have been better if
others were there to share the fun with us - but I hear that
after breakfast nobody else was willing to compromise their
stomach space for the main event.

We had a drink at the Raffles courtyard bar - bseller
had a special Raffles cuvee from Hardy's - Colombard,
Chenin Blanc, and something else, a Portuguese variety,
Malvasia or something - tasted as if it were designed to
taste like Pinot Grigio at half the price. Lori_Q had a
strawberry daiquiri, and as bseller said he was taking
the round, I ordered the Million Dollar Cocktail, which
cost a paltry $19.80.

--mm
Million Dollar Cocktail
categories: booze, historical
servings: 1

30 mL gin
7 1/2 mL sweet vermouth
7 1/2 mL dry vermouth
120 mL pineapple juice
1 ds egg white
1 ds Angostura bitters

Shake with ice, strain.

All it takes to relive the intrigue of the old East is
your first sip of a Million Dollar Cocktail at Raffles
Hotel's Bar & Billiard Room.

Once as popular as the Singapore Sling, the Million
Dollar Cocktail was, like the Singapore Sling, an
invention of Raffles Hotel bartender, Mr Ngiam Tong
Boon, around the early 1900s.

The Million Dollar Cocktail gained considerable
notoriety - and considerable sales for Raffles Hotel -
when it featured in one of Somerset Maugham's most
famous barside tales, "The Letter".

Raffles Hotel has immortalised one of Maugham's great
stories by continuing to serve the tangy, bittersweet
creation at the Bar & Billiard Room.

Source: Raffles Hotel recipe card

M's note: despite the pineapple juice being the most
prominent ingredient, the drink is notable for
tasting primarily (though hazily) of gin and vermouth.
---

A medium size group assembled for miles4all's city walking
tour, which this year featured churches and temples.

We started off at Chijmes and saw the Armenian church, the
Shinto, Tamil Muslim, and Taoist temples; I think there may
have been more, but I bailed out early, as the tail end of
the tour was in Chinatown, near the hotel.

A shower and nap were most welcome for an old fart such as
I; up in time to take the taxi to Esplanade and walk around
for a while before dinner. Lori wanted to check out the
new Makansutra food court, which actually looks kind of
promising. And there is now a stringed instrument store in
the building, filling a long-felt want. We bumped into
miles4all again and made our way to the Esplanade branch of
No Signboard. Okay, it was perfectly palatable food, but it
was nothing compared to the Geylang branch. Furthermore,
here the waitstaff were the rather common chip-on-the-
shoulder why-am-I-serving-you-instead-of-the-other-way-round
types that you get in the big cities: they were grudging and
unavailable although somewhat more literate than their
Geylang colleagues, who for dinners past had been attentive
and helpful. Next year in Geylang was the consensus,
although one local flyertalker named Michael (handle
forgotten) made a strong case for Gold Coast.

We had three tables reserved, but owing to certain
unfortunate circumstances involving missed connections
and/or passport shenanigans only 2.5 were filled. I
ended up ordering for the table I originally sat at and
also for the last one, where I ended up dining with newself,
stimpy, madformiles, and eventually fly4free, who cabbed in
town during a shortish layover.

Our half table had a smaller selection of things, though we
ate and drank sufficiently, especially the latter.

Yangchow fried rice was pretty standard, but our fried rice
people were pleased enough. Sauteed kangkong were limp and
not very interesting, although they'd been saltily, fishily,
and hot-pepperily sauced. The crab (we had white pepper)
were moderately fresh but not very sweet; the sauce was
decent. I asked for steamed man tou; the waitress said they
didn't have steamed, only fried, and anyway you never eat
man tou with pepper crab. I said give us some anyway (the
"idiot biotch" was perhaps apparent from my glare at her if
not in my words). Fried really means baked. They were fine,
and in fact needed given the dearth of napkins. We also had
prawns in a yam nest, a quite nice dish.

Those who had the chilli crab reported that it was much
different than at Geylang - rather underspiced here was the
consensus. Michael said it was less sweet, which he didn't
like (but which I wouldn't have an objection to - I like
moderation in sweetness if not much else); I tasted just a
fingerful of sauce and found it less sweet, less hot, less
garlicky, and in fact less everything (which I DO mind).

For many of us the meal was made by many pitchers of Tiger.

Afterward, a dozen or so of us trekked to some Indian place
on Boat Quay for a round or two of brewskis for dessert.