Mata Thai, Bishan Street 11

Cheap and cheerful. This pretty much sums up our meal at neighborhood joint Mata Thai. 

The pad thai is a pleasing dish to begin with and it's the cook's skills that take it from good to omg-hands-off-my-pad-thai. This particular one might have lacked wok hei but that was a distinct caramelized flavour that is twice as hard to find and certainly twice as delicious.

The fried chicken with sweet chili sauce was tasty but the thickish toughish batter would prove slightly challenging for some. 

The prawn omelette was ordinary in an acceptable way while the stir-fried kang kong was deceptively spicy even without visible traces of belachan.

What proved to be my undoing that afternoon was the tempura fish!

An explosion of fried foods that included eggplant, long beans and carrot strips. On top of that (oh yeah), there was tons of batter bits just waiting for me to scoop them up by the mouthfuls. Love in the first degree burns.

I'm not a fan of tau pok kwa to begin with but the soon-to-be 16 month old sitting beside me loved this dish.

The tom yum was reportedly good too; note: I was utterly destroyed by the tempura fish by the time the tom yum soup arrived.

Thanks to my mum's super social skills, we received a plate of of tapioca dessert on the house. Tapioca is one of those desserts that get overshadowed by other desserts such as mango sticky rice or red ruby. It is earthy, fibrous, and once upon a time sustenance of war-torn civilians. Yeah, terribly appetizing, isn't it?

But this was a solid dessert - and by solid, I also mean it will cling onto the inner lining of your stomach for dear life till the next meal.