One of the new birthday foods we had for Hedgehog this year was at this place near NEX at Serangoon.
What the name is, I have to check.
If I'm not wrong, it's called Gusta Sourdough Pizza Co, and you find it at the void deck of Blk 326 Serangoon Avenue 3.
It's easier to walk from the Serangoon Central Bus Interchange than from the main road of Serangoon Central- which is what we did.
What you do is to head towards Serangoon Avenue 2 from the bus interchange, turn right and then keep walking until you come to the junction of Serangoon Avenue 2 and Serangoon Avenue 3. The Braddell Heights Community Club is the landmark you look out for. Blk 326 is in the section diagonally opposite, so you cross Serangoon Avenue 2 first, then Serangoon Avenue 3, and make a left until you come to Blk 326.
It's pretty straightforward.
You know, there was a time when people wondered if food from the HDB heartlands could be any good, but experiences, and social media, are showing more and more that not only can the food be good, the nature of it being a HDB means that one can play around with as much aesthetics and mood and everything without having to be overly concerned about this, or that.
It's probably easier to have it set up too.
I was a little surprised by the decor of the place.
No, I don't mean that it was unpleasant to the eye, no, nothing like that.
On the contrary, there was a very simple, clean aesthetic to the overall theme (very much like their pizza, as I later found out) and had such a casual, easy vibe that you felt comfortable either way regardless whether you came dressed for a date, or came downstairs in T-shirt, slippers and shorts.
There was a bit of wait, I must mention, and whilst that did get me a little on the gwumps side (I was hungry), thankfully the wait was not too long and we got directed to a small, cute little table right at the back.
When I say at the back, I literally do mean, at the back, right under the huge wall-mounted mirror, and next to the alcove under the shop's stairs near to where they stored their cartons, some pots, pans, and their dry ingredients.
We placed our order, trying to decide between their Classic Pizzas or their Modern Pizzas.
I quite liked the Classic Pizzas, but have to admit, the Modern ones seemed a bit more interesting.
How often is it that one gets a Potato & Cheese Pizza complete with baked potato, garlic, cream, paprika, black pepper and parsley?
Or a Pesto Pizza that I (quietly) had wanted to try?
I mean, someone might say that it's 'just' pesto, but I like pesto, and this one had mozzarella, kale and parmesan.
I was quite tempted to order the Parma Ham & Peach pizza.
Also for the same reason that I like parma ham, I like peach, and I like the sweet and salty combination.
It wasn't just the Modern Pizza we found interesting.
The Classics were just as good too.
You had the Hawaiian Pizza- tomato sauce, cooked ham, mozzarella, pineapple and EVOO.
You also had the Italian Sausage Pizza which, besides tomato sauce, parsley, EVOO and mozzarella, you had Italian fennel sausage.
The Five Cheeses Pizza was something we looked at, too.
Very tempting to try out new cheeses that I've never had before (and can't pronounce). This particular cheeses pizza had Mozzarella, Asiago, Grana Padano, Provolone, and Pecorino.
I wonder what they are.
I also wonder what they taste like.
Maybe next time I go I should give it a try.
I should also try the Smoked Salmon Pizza.
So it might seem normal, but besides the smoked salmon and the mozzarella, they had sour cream and dill and lemon juice and something called mizuna leaves.
I wonder what those are.
This afternoon we chose to have one pizza, and one side.
For the pizza, we deliberated between this pizza called The Sunset, and Ham & Mushroom.
The Sunset had Mozzarella, tomato sauce, Parma ham, grated parmesan, ground black pepper, chives and one raw egg yolk.
My friend was charmed by the Parma ham, the grated parmesan and the egg yolk, so we had that.
This picture might not look like much, but let me tell you, it was pretty good.
If Parma ham isn't already a meat good on its own, way better it is with warm, mushy, melted cheese and a crust of soft sourdough. It's not just the perfect salt taste of the ham, it's the way the thin, slightly hard texture complements so well the soft of the cheese and wraps it all inside your mouth.
I'm not sure what the raw egg does- my friend had had it all mixed it up with the cheese- but there's that bit of wetness that clings to each slice, and makes each bite feel smoother, more delicious.
We also ordered a side of chicken wings, specifically, baked chicken wings marinated with yogurt, paprika powder and herbs including garlic, marjoram, sage and rosemary.
On the surface these chicken wings might look unassuming, like any other ordinary chicken wing you find anywhere else, but first bite brought me straight to the oil-drenched, lime-squeezed BBQ chicken wings of Fengshan and East Coast Lagoon.
The taste was exactly the same.
Literally.
From the faint sheen of oil on the lips to the tender meat of the chicken underneath the perfectly browned crisp, the taste, texture and palate was down to a perfect T.
I don't know if it were the paprika that made the wings taste the same as the BBQ ones did.
I also don't know if the garlic or sage had anything to do with it.
What was it that gave the chicken the taste of burnt?
What was it that gave the lime lime taste of sour?
It might have been the yogurt.
The probiotics.
But where did the milky part of the yogurt go?
It couldn't have possibly disappeared somewhere.
Maybe it might be the fact that I'm no cook and I'm terrible at estimation, so I don't know what's what and I don't know what's where.
I just eat.
So how all the sage and rosemary and garlic translated into the Fengshan, East Coast Lagoon BBQ chicken wing, I don't know.
But oy, rare is it to find something this good, this healthy, this delicious, this familiar.
I'll be quite keen to try the pasta next time.
Especially the Traditional Carbonara and the Basil Pesto & Broccoli.
I like carbonara.
Though I can't have it very often because I can't do a lot of cream, so when there's a place that serves up something as healthy as pasta with the cheeses of grana padano and pecorino with pasteurized egg yolk and bacon bits, I got to try.
Same way too how I like pesto, and if there's something that's got pesto worth my tummy to try, I do.
I'd love to know how charred broccoli in basil pesto, and cheese, tastes like too.