A Week of Bourgeois Dinner

Rabbified

It was a dinner to catch up with a bunch of good friends and check out one of the newest kids on the Dempsey block - The White Rabbit.

Amongst us, 2 food critics who have very obviously well-trained palates, which made the evening even more pleasurable (read: critical).


The place is without a doubt beautiful. The high-ceilinged chapel of stained glass windows, the mellow hue of warm orange lights. It was like stepping into Wonderland.


Sadly, the food wasn't part of the magic. Even r@e and I, non-professional at food reviews, were not impressed. Except for the salad of duck confit which was not bad, all the other dishes were disappointing.

The signature Mac & Cheese was mushy, the truffles off-tasting. Cafe Cartel could have done better with the Poached Salmon. The portion of Rack of Lamb was shockingly puny.

I hate to be critical here, but the Mars Bar Souffle totally gave a wrong interpretation of what a souffle should be - the texture was just wrong! Even the signature deconstructed Black Forest Cake looked quite, ahem, phalic - amazing how things can look so different from another perspective...


Although reluctant at first, we eventually shared our opinion, as tactfully as we could, with the manager. He was really sweet and open about it, hopefully we were not judged as a bunch of overly-critical bitches.

We did ask ourselves if we had come with too high expectations but it wasn't just one or two dishes that were bad, and I'm usually quite forgiving. We did commend on the attentive service though, and he still took some nice pictures for us, haha.


It has been opened for about a month so far, so I think I'll definitely go back, to give it another shot again some months later. :)

Le Pont de Vie

Yet another catch-up session, this time with one of my closest gfs, SY.

Le Pont de Vie, a little restaurant offering European classics. One of the owners was ex-sommelier at Raffles, so the one thing I have to say first is that the choice of wines he recommended that evening was excellent!

With SY, it's always very easy to order from the menu - we've always shared the same taste for most things in general. Whatever one of us is thinking of ordering, the other would say, "Yah, that's exactly what I was thinking of too!"

For starters, we had the Black Truffles and Cheese Souffle - the earthy taste of the truffles was perfectly blended with that of the cheese, it was heavenly.


For the mains, I had the Duck Leg Confit while SY had the Grilled Kurobuta Pork Cheeks - totally no regrets, both were done perfectly.


As we polished off the Baileys Irish Cream Cheese Cake, I made a mental note to come back again soon. But that evening was their last night of operation from the Waterloo location, they will be moving over to Kandahar Street from August.

And here's us - gleeful and satisfied by the excellent food and wine.


Ok, better hit the gym right away tomorrow.

I'm Alive

Yes, I'm still alive. Have since been getting calls from a number of dear friends demanding an explanation for my lack of updates on this page. Thank you darlings, for all your concern. I love you all too.

Books, SATC dvds and such have been keeping me occupied these days. Other than that, think I'm still pretty much the same.

#1: I still love my bags and shoes. Vive la France, Viva l'Italia!


#2: I still love my food.




#3: And my wine.


#4: My job.





#5: And all its fun.




#6: And of course, family time. Julian's so grown up now, but still as cute!


Now, that pretty much sums up what I've been up to. Somewhat.

There's still another though - I'm still around in sunny Singapore, and not in New York as planned. That will be one major ranting in the next entry. For now, it's time to hit the Zara sale....

B for Beef!

The quest for good food didn't end there over the long weekend. After watching KF Seetoh on Makansutra smacking his lips in immense satisfaction to the beef noodles at the Beef House at Joo Chiat some weeks back, we decided to give it a try.

It wasn't easy finding this place, especially when the weather was so unbearably hot. But it was all worth it when we started chewing on the springy beef balls and tender beef slices. We thought my dry version was nicer, but I would say that the soup version was very "cheng" and flavoursome too.





The chilli sauce was the power one - super spicy and tangy - added more heat to the afternoon! Obviously, I was trying very hard to look cool eating this hot stuff, even though I was melting in the sweltering heat!


Incidentally, this is also the place that we usually order our popiah from, it claims to be "the original popiah since 1938". Joo Chiat is yet another haven for great food!

A Weekend at Wessex Village, Portsdown

Over the long weekend, we were down at Portsdown Road 2 days in a row. The first was on Sunday, after the baking class, where we hung out at Laurent's Cafe & Chocolaterie , a very newly opened quaint little cafe.

As the name suggests, chocolate would be the order of the day. But as the afternoon was so scorching hot, I didn't feel in the mood for any. A pity, will be back again to check it out.






And yesterday, with a spontaneous SMS from Mudgod, we were back again, next door at Pietrasanta, also another new kid on the block.


Quite crowded for a Monday evening, the place has a certain rustic charm, a very relaxed Tuscan feel. Owned by chef Loris, with brother Giuseppe and wife Jennifer, it was the classic Italian way of running the food business!

Food was on the whole, pretty good. The eggplant parmigiana was done pretty well; my main course of homemade spinach pasta with white wine mixture of meats tasted very homely. Think the spaghetti vongole and osso bucco were quite average though.




The only glitch was that service was still rather raw, the servers not too acquainted with the menu as they were mostly Chinese-speaking. With only the wife Jennifer and brother Giuseppe running the show, I think the crowd was more than they could handle. But I guess that with a little more time, the delivery should become more polished.

A great way of ending off the long weekend, and fighting the onset of "monday" blues - we polished off two whole bottles of prosecco. Not that impressive judging by our previous records, but we left the place bubbly happy!

Mummy's Day

Lunch was at Tetsu @ Tanglin Mall today, to celebrate Mummy's Day. My own mum couldn't make it, she had to work (of all days!) as one of their important directors was in town.

Julian just gets cuter each time we see him, breaking into this cheeky smile of his every now and then!


We took lots of pictures. It's been a while since we had lunch in such a big group, which could have been even bigger if my family had joined. And Julian has the funniest reaction when you feed him lemons!




All the mummies.... and the not-mummy-yet.


And I had my go at carrying him around, trying to distract him from his parents with anything that is "exclaimable" - WOW LOOK AT THE ELMO BALLOON!!

After that 5, 10 minutes or so of carrying him around, my arms were weak and trembling by the time I returned him to his parents. I'm amazed at how strong mummies can be, having to carry their babies around like that all the time!








We rounded off the afternoon with a nice cuppa at Oomphatico. I've always thought it would be a small cafe, as the entrance was quite small. So I was pleasantly surprised to see how big it opened out, into an al fresco verandah, upon entering. I was immediately taken in by the small artistic touches around the place - I love the chairs!! We'll be back very soon for sure, to check out their food.