Sunday, November 12, 2006

Cafe de Amigo, Funan the IT Mall



Heard this place mentioned a few times and decided to check it out with my brother whom uncharacteristically asked me out for dinner. Nothing against my bro, but he's usually not into traveling out to eat unlike me. Lol.

What I read about this place was that it had recently shifted from Specialist Shopping Centre to Funan. This restaurant is located on the 2nd story and relatively easy to find. Overheard from a conversation from the neighbouring table from ours that it was just opened here about 4 weeks back. The restaurant looked pleasant, had a wine section and even private dining rooms. Each seated table was served with a basket of warm baguette. Warm baguette with butter and sugar sure tasted good. :p 



The menu is separated into specials, salads, soups, mains, desserts and wines. The specials looked interesting.

Angels'n Horseback

These fritters which were from the specialty section of the menu were interestingly called Angels'n Horseback. They'r oysters wrapped in bacon which are breaded and fried. Actually quite good. The bacon wasn't overly salty and the oysters didn't have too much of the oyster-ly flavour. I've had some bad experiences with fried oysters previously so I suppose this is me being twice shy. These here were fortunately pretty good and definitely worth a try. 

Oysters Florentine

The Oysters Florentine were served shortly after the orders were made. So I'm guessing that they're all prepped to baked and they were also not baked for an appropriate amount of time. If you're wondering why I thought so, it's because the cheese didn't melt properly. Even though there were char marks. These oysters were shucked, filled with creamed spinach before the oysters are placed back into the shells and covered with parmesan cheese for baking. The menu described the creamed spinach as spinach moose. Hmmmm......moose. On the whole, they were decent. Just not remarkable.


This was when we waited really long before the soups were served. Choice of soup for tonight were the French Onion and the Not the Same Potato.

French Onion soup

Not the Same Potato soup

Damn straight this ain't the same potato soup. This was the first of these kind of potato soup I've ever had. This tasted like just a potato flavoured starch that's made from powder. I had this very distinct impression that everything was pureed by machine because of the creamy smooth texture. Didn't think it was that good tasting.

The French Onion soup was on the other hand was heart warming. I found it odd that it was served in a small clay pot instead of a regular soup bowl. It's also starchy but the flavours of the onion were robust. There were also shreds of real onion in the soup. What made me happy was the generous portion toasted cheese.

An unexciting dish of Soft Shell Crab

An even more unexciting Seafood Platter

I was disappointed with the Seafood Platter. It was sad and it's not a platter. Not even close. It's a piece of fish, a single prawn and a piece of squid. It's not even Fish & Co. In fact, I felt cheated. The garlic sauce used tasted suspiciously like the jarred variety used in food courts teppanyaki. Totally unimpressed. In fact, I'm negative about it and wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Apple pie

I liked this apple pie. It came with light flaky crust topped with thinly sliced apples and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It would have been nicer if the apples were thicker sliced. It all went down quite easily even though it was big.

In retrospect, Cafe de Amigo was a bunch of hits (Angel's N Horseback, French Onion soup and maybe the apple pie) and misses (the rest). Would have thought a bit better of them if they were less expensive. Couldn't shake the feeling that most of what made dinner filling were fried flour and oil.

6 comments:

Junie said...

hahaha.. that receipt! u're really gonna compete with kelv eh?

LiquidShaDow said...

Nah....I just thought that with so many "not so positive" things I had to say about the food in this place, I should let the readers also know how much it cost. I usually don't do the receipt shots.

Anonymous said...

Ate at this restaurant couple of years back while they still at Specialist Center and the most memorable dish I still can remember is the Apple Pie.

Unable to recall what the main I had but the ambience is nice and the restaurant is not crowded.

LiquidShaDow said...

I guess the ambience is still pretty much the same. It wasn't very crowded when I was there and throughout dinner. If my memory serves me, there were about 2 other tables, that's it.

RubenPotter said...

Planning to book this restaurant for a company event.. came across yur blog when I googled for "Cafe de Amigo", they don't have a website do they?

PS: Lovely blog u hv there ;)

cheers

LiquidShaDow said...

Hey ReubenPotter,

They do have a website. The restaurant has been renamed to Bistro Amigo.