Les Bouchons, 7 Ann Siang Road

If you're a meat loving carnivore/omnivore who has bouts of craving for meat of the bovine kind, this is a heads up to read on. Les Bouchons is a small French restaurant located along the ground floor of a bunch of shophouses down at 7 Ann Siang Road. The restaurant was decorated with French posters of cigarette advertisements, old theater plays, booze and unrecognizable whathaveyous on the walls - painting a cozy, French-y and warm ambience. Akin to what one would generally romanticize of little street side bistros that one might find in France.

The menu of this place appeared to be curated with the majority of the offerings being grilled meat. The dinner tonight was focused on a specialty of the restaurant known as côte de boeuf, a kilogram slab of prime rib for two. Gash your teeth and keep your pants on. Although the price of the beef was stated at $37/per, that beef platter serves two. And multiples of two. The meat was pre-portioned.

The restaurant provides free flow of small hard loaves. Regular tasting bread and wasn't heated up. Made decent munching with butter while waiting for the food though.  The appetizers we had were the Burgandy escargots with garlic butter and the Terrine "Maison".

Burgandy Escargots with Garlic Butter

Terrine "Maison"

The escargots could do better with more garlic butter. Apart from that, the snails were scalding hot and tasted quite decent. I found their terrine much more interesting. Wonderful infusion of peppercorn with a coarse finish which tasted good by itself or with bread.

On to the dinner highlight.....the côte de boeuf.

It tasted as good as it looked. The meat was a little dry. However the rich beefy flavour were sealed in the meat and I think it appealed to the primeval red meat cravings that I have sometimes. I'm sure there's a whole lot of you out there that share the same sentiments regarding beef so if you're thinking to let loose some of that beastly urge for large quantities of medium rare beef, you'll know where to look.

Orders of their beef came with a basket of fries and a salad each. For this case of the côte de boeuf, it's two portions of the chilled salad.

Le Bouchons doesn't have much of desserts. Apart from ice cream, the only others were a rather nice creme brulee with Grand Marnier and the Ile Flottante. The creme brulee here was pretty good and there's enough Grand Marnier in the dessert to be identifiable but not overpowering. One of the uncommon renditions which I thought was not bad.

Ile Flottante means floating island? My French is 10 years rusty and the translation was the courtesy of Babelfish. It's a soft meringue topped with almonds and drizzled with caramel, floating on a milky erm...sauce? The meringue was firm yet easily disintegrated in the mouth. Not bad.