Saveur, Far East Plaza

Association with big names by the way of alumni-hood is a pretty sure fire way of drawing attention. For Saveur (Far East Plaza, 14 Scotts Road, #01-7B, tel : +65 6736 1121), I'm reading Guy Savoy, Fi53fty Three (once upon a time locally) and Tetsuya in Sydney. The restaurant opened a couple of years ago IIRC and made some waves with the queues they garnered. I didn't pay much attention at that point because I had thought that they were just another one of those places trying to create affordable local interpretations of French bistro food. Not that I have anything against that. It doesn't work all the time. And it is not really uncommon knowledge that the path is not easy and it's much easier to fail at it than one would think. 

But there are bright spots. Saveur is one of them.

Remember that their name of the game is affordability. These guys managed to pull off a modest piece of foie gras, nicely pan fried and well flavoured in a pool of creamy lentils. I would have loved for the portions to be bigger, but it would be asking too much for what they charged. It actually tastes pretty good.

There's a small 'Premium' section in their menu. There's only three items and one of them was their entrecôte, a 300g ribeye. The steak was not bad at all and I wouldn't mind eating this again. Even though they had it slightly overdone from the requested medium rare. However this piece of meat certainly also blows the affordability image that they're trying to maintain out of the water. For one, one can get something similar for less in town. If I top up another 8 bucks, I could have a nice rendition with proper table service down at L'Angelus.

Potatoes au gratin here was lip licking good. The spuds were buttery, creamy and filled with garlic flavour. I liked that they were not shy with the salt. 

Tarte au citron was decent. I would have liked more lemon curd than custard.

The pistachio panna cotta fared better with me. What really worked was the layer of crushed nuts that brought forth the flavors, pairing nicely with the creamy green pudding.

We tried the duck confit which I didn't take a photo of. It was honestly pretty decent duck for what they charged with the food being very valid effort. I could eat two of these and still get change with what some French restaurant charges for their confit. Will come back another time.