RSVP @ Park Hotel 28 Dec 2007

We had a $100 meal voucher for Park Hotel, from my company's D&D.

My initial reaction was 'huh, how to fully utilise the $100 with just the 2 of us?'. I was so wrong. Googled Tatsuya and discovered that it cost an arm and a leg, plus maybe an eye-ball to eat there. Probably had to top up another S$100, which I'm not prepared to pay.

The only alternative is RSVP. Found out that there's a 7-course degustation menu at $75+++ per person, and was prepared to top up the balance, meant to be a lunch treat to T since he's a foodie, and I got my bonus.

Called to enquire and was told that this set menu is only available for dinner, plus I couldn't use the voucher on set meal - only for buffet or ala carte. The girl was truly apologetic, but she offered this piece of news - hey, don't be too disappointed (and get this) - 5 out of 7 items from the set menu can be found in the ala carte menu!

Now, maybe I'm probably missing something, but isn't it better off for us to be able to pick & choose the items at much cheaper cost? So we settled for lunch, went to look at the buffet spread (T was sorely disappointed with the spread) and settled for ala carte.

Bread came. Hard as rocks. We messed up the table with crumbs but wait staff didn't clear, had to sweep the crumbs on the floor. Actually, swept onto sofa first until foxy realized how messy she had been, so then decided to sweep onto floor...

The first dish was soup - can't remember the fancy name, but it's the only soup in menu that is not common. Had some alcohol in it, brandy I think. Actually, it was a crustacean bisque and the alcohol was cognac although you really cant taste it since it was either most likely cooked out or left out completely. Don't think adding alcohol adds any value to the dish other than making it more expensive.

Tastes very much like lobster soup, only saltier, with a hint of alcohol. (not really!!!) Presentation is unique though, with a prawn & scallop. Interesting, yes.




Next is a salmon appetizer. There are 3 kinds of salmon - I'll let T elaborate on it. My favourite is the raw salmon and crunchy fish roe. The 3 types were cured salmon, tempura salmon, and pan-fried salmon. It was ok, but the cooked salmons were a bit dry. And no tempura sauce.



Next came our main dish, beef & goose liver. We saw the beef alright, but where is the goose liver? We asked the wait staff, who was clueless that there was supposed to be a goose liver on the plate, and went to the kitchen to check it out. Hmmm...beef & goose liver dish without the latter, and nobody found it strange? The beef was a tenderloin, supposedly the most tender part of the cow. And cooked medium rare, but the beef was nowhere near tender and quite flavorless, which leads me to believe it was of poor quality.



Our risotto came next almost together with the beef dish. When we placed the order, the wait staff asked us what kind of pasta we want for our risotto. Despite stressing that we wanted risotto, he repeated his question.

Our conversation went something like this :

Wait staff (WS) : what kind of pasta do you want in your risotto?
Us, puzzled : we ordered risotto.
WS : ya, what kind of pasta do you want?
Us : you mean you have pasta with your risotto?
WS : so what kind of pasta?
Us : risotto is rice right?
WS : oh, let me go check.

Never came back with the answer.

Despite the strange encounter, the risotto turned out fine, topped with beef, semi-dried tomatoes and black olives. And as you can see, lots of olive oil.



On our way to the hotel, we spotted a banner that offered free lobster for spending above S$80. Now we're definitely going to go above that, so after placing our order, we checked with the wait staff. Of course he has no clue and had to check before getting back to us that yes, we'll be entitled to lobster, and how would we like it done? We asked him about our choices and he could not explain, had to run off to get a card with pictures of the lobsters.

We chose butter lobster. Actually it turned out to be the best. What irony, the freebie is the best dish.



Wait staff brought a small bowl containing goose liver, no explanation on why it was missed out. T was very sure that it was fried -too hard & too oily. Sorely disappointed. The best way to prepare foie gras is to just pan sear it. This was definitely not pan seared as there was no color, the foie gras was tough inside and looked shiny and quite oily. How sad to destroy such a nice piece of meat.




Last was dessert. We ordered apple strudel. What was served looked more like popiah, with apples that were over-cooked. The saving grace was the scoop of ice-cream and strawberries.




Total bill? We don't know, there was no receipt. Wait staff just verbally told us that the S$100 voucher covered everything, no need to top up any cash.

Unprofessional service, so-so food, doesn't live up to fine dining at all. Disappointed to say the least. Will we be back again? Unlikely, unless foxy gets another $100 voucher...

Jumbo Seafood, East Coast Seafood Center, 20/4/07

This time we took G&G on their last nite in Singapore to a must try, die, die (Note to Stud : your singlish is still not up to standard, it's 'die die must try' lah) place for all newcomers to this country. Anyone that comes to Singapore must have the world famous chilli crab at least once. We invited K&A to join this festive dinner.

I've always like the environment at the East Coast Seafood Center. If you add good food and great company, then it just doesn't get better than that. This makes me jump up and down to tell mom about!!!! (Foxy can't stop rolling her eyes now.)

Naturally, we were pretty excited for this dinner. However, as usual, Jumbo was pretty crowded, so we were placed indoors. Not the best location, but oh well. We ordered the chilli and black pepper crab, sambal kang kong, cereal prawns, and seafood hor fun. Satay was the appetizer - 10 pork & 10 chicken if I remember correctly. Peanut sauce was a tad oily, but tasted really good.

K&A were running a bit late, so we decided to start with the cereal prawns since A is allergic. They were not the usual looking cereal prawns that I am used to seeing. It had much less cereal than I am used to. But the taste was very good. Gats, I believe, was also very impressed with it - his HK-based S'porean friend recommended him to try this when she heard that he was going to Jumbo. I think he was pretty surprised at the unusually sweet taste of the cereal and how it matched perfectly with the prawns.

Go thinks this is the best dish that he tried in S'pore, not wanton noodle, as Stud guessed. Btw, where's my S$100 - you lost our bet, or are you still in denial?



When K&A finally arrived, it was just in time as the rest of the food was served. The sambal kang kong was nice and salty, just the way I like it. The seafood hor fun was well, seafood hor fun - nothing special.

Then we had to wait and wait and wait even after numerous times of asking for our crabs. The black pepper came out first. It was very nice. Not much sauce though. I would prefer it with more sauce next time. Then came the chilli crab. This was fantastic. I especially like the bite sized fried buns. They just go perfectly well with the sauce. I am drooling while thinking about it.

There was another option of steamed bun, which K says goes well with the sauce too....maybe will try that next time. G&G both preferred the black pepper, but only because the chilli crab sauce is similar to another dish they have back home. However, Gats did love the fried bun with the sauce as well.




Overall, this place never seems to disappoint with the food. However, and this is a big one, their service has taken a HUGE step backwards. We were served the cereal prawns quite early, but was only given our crab probably an hour later. And this was because we kept asking for it. We had to ask a number of different people as well as no one seemed to know what was going on.

The lack of service happened during dessert too. We ordered for 6 but only 2 turned up, so the rest had to watch impatiently while they ate, and after much prompting were we finally served. We were even discussing about running off without paying the bill, but had to abort the plan since Foxy wasn't sure if Stud could out-run the wait staff.

Maybe the wait staff heard us, because the bill couldn't come fast enough. Another reminder to Stud, you owe me S$100 here too, for grossly mis-estimating(add that to our dictionary!) the cost. Haven't you learn by now that you ALWAYS lose to me?!

Anyway, if this kind of service continues, then we may have to start looking for alternatives at the seafood center. The food is good, but their service almost ruined the dinner....

Oh yeah, and by the way, we also had frogs legs...Foxy can elaborate more on that as I need to make a trip to the bathroom now...Blah!!!!

Wimp.

Frog's legs were nice and tender, just the way I like it. Go had doubts that it's frog, as the taste is just like chicken, but Gats pointed out that it does looks like frog's legs. I think Gats tried frogs in where he's based, so it's no big deal to him. Go is surprisingly adventurous when it comes to food, and I'd like to think that he enjoyed it...well, he did finish the last few legs.

Stud, on the other hand, had to be force-fed. Tsk tsk.

After dinner, we proceeded to Geylang for fruit tasting. K&A chose 3 really good durians, and the other guys got some fruits - mangoesteen, rambutan, pomelo, dragon fruit, jack fruit and bua chiku (I think). We had to egg Gats on to try durian, which he did so reluctantly. His fav was mangoesteen, which he could not stop eating. Go on the other hand, was game enough to try everything. Good boy!

RAS Indian Cuisine - Clarke Quay, 19/4/07

My cousin Gats came down on a business trip, so we decided to head out to Clarke Quay at the last minute with his colleague Go. He was staying nearby, so it was very convenient. It was also pretty late and not many other places were probably open.

Anyways, we decided to have dinner at this Indian restaurant called RAS. The atmosphere is pretty nice and authentic, but because its Clarke Quay, its very touristy. We ordered the tandoori chicken, butter chicken curry, palak paneer, vegetable briyani, and a couple of naans. They started us off with papadums with chilli sauce and a mint sauce. The mint sauce was quite nice.

The tandoori chicken came out first and it was pretty nice. Both Gats and Go were quite impressed at the amount of flavor coming from the chicken. They assured me that they can't get this kind of Indian food back home. They really enjoyed it.

Next up was the butter chicken curry, palak paneer and the vegetable briyani. The curry was ok, but I believe I have had much better elsewhere. The palak paneer was also not something that made me jump up and down or tell mom about. Neither was the vegetable briyani. My classmates can do much much better. However, I think G&G were really enjoying their first taste of authentic Indian fare. It doesn't sound like much, but that was alot of food. We were extremely full by the end of the dinner.

Overall, the food was nice, but it was quite expensive. Especially since I think there is much better Indian food served all over Singapore. I would not go back there or recommend it to any of my friends. Once is enough...

Forture Steamboat - Bukit Timah, 18/4/07

We had lunch at this steamboat place, but in fact, it is really known for their herbal chicken. When we got there, there was literally no one inside, which kind of gave us an uneasy feeling since Makansutra highly recommended this place. It was already 1 plus, so we had to give them the benefit of the doubt that it's past lunch time.

Nothing fantastic about the ambience, but we were not expecting much anyway. There was the main dining area, reasonable size, and a room that has 3-4 big round tables. We were shown into the room and had the whole place to ourselves, which was nice. A chinese calligraphy hung on the wall facing us, not exactly sure what the words were about, since Foxy's chinese language is not that advanced, but something about having treasures from all over the world.

A pink (yucks!) plastic sheet was placed over our table, presumably so that they can throw after we finished rather than clean the table. Looking at how messy Stud can get, it's not a bad idea afterall. Maybe for future outings, we should bring newspapers and lay them on Stud's side of the table. Hee...



We ordered their dou miao, a tofu thingy (which is how Foxy so eloquently puts it), and of course, their herbal chicken. Their dou miao was a soya sauce flavored dish. It was quite nice, especially with the rice, crunchy & not oily at all. Not as good as Din Tai Fung, but DTF uses a garlic sauce and you know how much I like the garlic...



The tofu thingy was fried tofu with minced meat (either beef or pork, don't think it was chicken) and a thick sauce, almost like a gravy. Foxy suspects there are bits of sichuan vegetable (now how to explain to Stud what that is?) with the tofu that gives it a bit of crunch, but really can't be sure. This went even better with the rice than the dou miao. A bit salty, but the rice helped balance the flavors out.



The herbal chicken was next. It came out very quickly, so we suspect it was pre-made and just heated up for us. Maybe it would be nicer if it was just cooked. But it was actually quite nice already. The chicken meat was very tender throughout the whole chicken and the soup was nicely flavored with heaps of chinese herbs. We devoured the soup and the chicken till nothing was left except the bones. Yup, not even a drop of soup left, since Stud was convinced (by who else?) that the herbal stuff is good for the body.

The portions for the 3 dishes were way too big for the 2 of us, more like for 3-4 persons, but we finished everything, except the bones. If the bones were edible, I'm sure Stud would have chewed & swallowed them too. Anyway, the food was either that good, or we were just too hungry. However, the wait staff should at least warn us about the portion upon order.

No presentation skills, what you see is what you get. Would be better if they add some colours to the dull-looking dishes. Prices same as what you would pay for a normal zichar stall in coffeeshop, but at least some zichar stalls make the effort to garnish their dishes with chinese parsely or carrots or something.



Overall, this place was very good, but is it worth the journey all the way to bukit timah, aka 'the boonies'? Let's let Foxy make the call... (Foxy says forget it, esp since it was a 'long' walk to the nearest bus stop and we had to take a *gasp!* NON AIR CON bus to Clementi MRT.)

Organic Cafe Xperience at Century Square, 13/4/07

We had lunch at this new place in the basement of Century Square Mall. Its called Organic Cafe Xperience. Actually, they have quite an extensive menu for being a place that is (at least I would suspect that most of their ingredients are) organic. Do you suppose that they may have only one or two ingredients of the dish that are organic and the rest not, just so that they can call their place 'organic'? Hmmm... Food for thought.

We were there around 10.55am, 5 min before they were due to open. There was a wait staff cleaning tables and another at the counter, busy chatting with someone in the kitchen. We approached Ms Chatty and asked if they were open yet. She replied no and continued her chat. We then asked if we could just be seated first while we wait, but was flatly refused, some stupid excuse about not done cleaning up. Had to walk around CS basement for another 5 min before going back. Sheesh.

Anyways, we had their lunch set, which was the chicken legs in a brown sauce, that came with a Sichuan cold drink (at least I think that is what the waitress said - and anyways, what it the world is a Sichuan cold drink?), their soup of the day (minestrone) and a dessert. We also had the cod fillet brown rice.

Well, I suspected that the drink was going to be spicy hot, but in fact, it was a bit sweet and sour. Nothing special...Actually, couldn't really even tell what flavor it was supposed to be. The soup was your typical minestrone, with some spring onions & alfafa sprouts in it. Boring... Nothing to write home to mom about. (Note to Stud : No more jumping up & down, I see. Getting fat due to too much eating for this food review blog. Hee....)

The chicken was pretty good. It was quite tasty and the portion size was nice. The veges were also not bad - carrots sweet, fries big but a little more salt will be better. This dish had alfafa sprouts on top, for decoration I suppose.

The cod tasted a bit fishy to me, but the brown rice tasted a bit like a risotto complete with parmesan cheese, so that was pretty good. Foxy thought that the sause on the cod tasted rather salty, but Stud LOVES salty stuff, so it's ok. The bad part were the raisins...Hehehe... Just kidding! (Note to stud : Hey! Gimme all the raisins!!!!) Again, there were alfafa sprouts in this dish - hey, I'm getting sick of this type of skinny bean sprouts, give me the fat crunchy ones!

The dessert was a fruity ice cream. It also was pretty good. Basic and simple, but tasty. Next time Foxy wants to try their yoghurt ice-cream, looks yummy in the menu.

Overall, for a low profile type of place, it was actually pretty good in my mind. However, if most of their ingredients are not organic, and I suspect that most are not, then we will need to deduct points. Cannot claim to be something they are not and try to deceive the public.

Not sure if this type of organic place will sustain, afterall not many people in S'pore are really in to organic food yet. Plus you can't really tell if the ingredients used are really organic anyway. Food is reasonably priced here, but there's no reason for non foodies or non health-conscious people to pay more for organic food anyway.

Basil Alcove, Fortune Centre in Bugis, 10/4/07

Today, we went to this small (and I mean real small) place in near Bugis MRT (note to Stud : it's not Chinatown lah, did you lose your street directory?) called Basil Alcove. This place has been getting rave reviews for its cheap prices, no frills service and ambience, but fine-dining quality food.














Well, the place is like the size of a hawker stall, seats about 20 i think and they only had one server for all of us. Needless to say, the service was atrocious. Stud was shocked & amazed (and may I add, appalled?) by how small the kitchen is.

We went during lunch and their lunch menu only has set meals, the ala carte menu is for dinner only. The only options were Duck breast cream pasta or sausage spaghetti aglio olio. How about offering something other than pasta for choice, you think? It comes with a soup of the day (it was tomato clam today) and a drink. Well, we waited a good 15 minutes for our peach tea drink, and was offered only upon inquiry. One would think that serving drinks is a very basic thing in a food establishment and would be done almost immediately. But, oh well. The server had obviously forgotten about us.

Next, we waited for our tomato clam soup. A party of four sat down next to us about 15 minutes after we sat down. They were served their drinks, soups and one of their main courses before we even had our soup! Again, we had to remind the server and explained that we were in a hurry.

Finally, when our soup did arrive, it was cold. It was not meant to be a cold soup, at least we hope. However, it was a decent tasting tomato base soup, better than Cosafe, and a pretty generous portion of clams to its credit. It would have been much nicer if it was hot and if we got it sooner.














The main dishes finally arrived and they looked pretty basic to us. We had one of each to try them both. The sausage was tasty and a large portion. The aglio olio spaghetti was also a very generous portion but was a bit on the dry side. Nothing to make me jump up and down.

The duck breast seemed to be a bit undercooked as it was still red in the middle. We asked the staff if was purposely done like that and was told yes. (Note: ask the customers if they don't mind if their duck or any meat for that matter is not fully cooked when they order as not everyone will know how best to prepare certain meats). They did offer to cook it more if we preferred, but we decided to be adventurous. It tasted nice with a good sear on the outside and a tender meat on the inside, but was a bit chewy. The cream pasta was your basic creamy pasta. Nothing else to say about that. Presentation was average as it just looked like duck breasts on pasta and a big sausage on , once again, pasta.










Overall, this place is ok but they are unprepared for big lunch time crowd, not that it will be too big, given the space constraints anyway. Our lunch experience took 1.5hrs including waiting time, way too long for office workers out for lunch break. Chef has to work on time management skills and come out with a more efficient system for server(s). It shouldn't take so long to prepare a basic meal of pasta & soup.

Still, we will want to try it again during dinner when their full menu is at our disposal. This way, we can really truly evaluate its cuisine properly instead of just a simple lunch set. However, it is probably not worth all the hype from the reviews it has gotten.

Bakerzin, VivoCity, 6/4/07

For our late night dessert, we decided to mosey on in to Bakerzin. There aren't many places that remain open after 10pm at Vivo anyway.

We were ushered in and told to choose our own seats. After settling down and being offered the menu, we were asked to move to a smaller table to cater for a family of 5. Being nice people and in good mood, we obliged without a fuss.

Their menu included something pretty new. They offered dessert tapas at $5 each or 3 for $10, 5 for I forget and 7 for I forget even more... The menu had a lot less desserts than I could recall. But the menu is quite nice. We decided to order the irish cream souffle and 3 tapas. For the tapas, we had black forest coupe, strawberry cheesecake coupe, and strawberry chocolate fondue.

They came in these strange, but cool glasses (and were bigger than we expected) that were on a slant. Not sure why they did that other than just to try something different. The black forest was disappointing as the cake was not very nice and the alcohol soaked cherries (bing bing?) were too strong. The strawberry chocolate fondue tasted like strawberries dipped in melted chocolate... So what?! Nothing special here either. The strawberry cheesecake was actually pretty nice. One out of three is better than nothing, right?

Next is the souffle. When we first tasted it, it tasted very foamy and undercooked. Not sure if we don't know how a real souffle is supposed to taste like, but we know that we didn't like it that way, which is the only thing that matters, right? So, we sent it back to be cooked longer. It came back cooked more, but was still foamy. Oh well. It also came with a shot of espresso. It does go nice with the souffle until the very end where it gets very bitter (almost as bitter as apple cider vinegar...YUCKS!!!!).

Next time, we must go with the classic warm chocolate cake with the melted chocolate oozing out. NICE!!!

The only complaint from Foxy is that they don't serve free water. Bottled Evian is available for purchase.