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.

Keppel Bay for the 1st Time

We finally got our chance to go over to Prive over at Keppel Bay last evening.

It was a friend's birthday, yes he's a leap year baby, celebrating his birthday for the 7th time in his entire life! It was quite funny when he attempted to cut the cake first before blowing out the candles, given that he has only done this 6 times before. Haha!

Anyway, The Boy and I decided to grab a bite first before the birthday party. Was hoping to check out the Prive restaurant but it was closed for a private event. So we ended up at the Prive bakery cafe, which we were sorely disappointed. The cream of organic mushroom soup was too salty and the pastry of the chicken pie tasted too "flour-y" which I suspect that it was one of those pre-made ones. And Baker's Inn Croque Monsieur is a million times better. Gah.

So while the place is all chic with a gorgeous view at the waterfront, the gastronomic experience (or rather, lack of) left much to be desired. Maybe we'll have better luck at the restaurant next time.

Morton-ed Out

Morton's has been a place we've been wanting to check out for a while now. Finally, thanks to some credit card points, I sent an email to The Boy, asking for "a date over dinner at Morton's this Friday". The "verbal" menu was most interesting, the guy rambled through the menu so fast we didn't have a clue what he was saying at all. And when he was interrupted halfway through, he had to start right from the beginning.

Service was a rather short of expectations, maybe due to a full house on a Friday evening. But then again, this was no excuse. The "ball" of warm onion bread was pretty good, too much for two of us to finish though. The crabmeat cocktail was fresh to the bite - The Boy's special request. The Morton's Salad was a mix of crisp romaine lettuce, blue cheese and anchovies, refreshing and appetizing.



By then, we were eager to tuck into our biggest challenge of the evening, the famed steak that comes in enormous portions. We opted for the Porterhouse steak, accompanied with some sauteed spinach and mushrooms. The steak was tender and juicy, though I believe we have had the same, if not better, elsewhere before. You can tell by The Boy's expression and the leftover that we were too, too stuffed by then!







The famous Warm Chocolate Cake was quite a disappointment - it was not as good as I remembered it to be. The so-called molten hot chocolate did not oooze out as it should have, and the sponge layer was a tad overbaked. It was not even warm to begin with! The only saving grace was the scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Overall, I totally enjoyed the company of the beloved the whole evening - he did the sweetest thing by putting his blackberry away in MY bag. However, the so-called gastronomic experience-wise, it fell short of being excellent. If not for the voucher I had redeemed, I might have thought twice about it. The less-than attentive service and noisy chatter of atmosphere didn't help either.

Honestly, Morton's name as the granddaddy of steakhouses has since grown weary, so has the dated furnishing of American opulence. I can think of a dozen more hip, contemporary restaurants, that can serve a good cut of the beef with much better polished delivery.


Will we be back again? I'm not sure....