Tapas Club, Orchard Central

Apparently the group D+1 Holding that opened Tapas Club (#02-13/14/15 Orchard Central, 181 Orchard Road, tel : +65 3163 7577) holds the master franchise for Llaollao in Asia. Maybe it's why those yoghurt in the pineapple dessert tasted so much like them! 

I'm seeing that the management group is pedestal-ing this as a premium tapas restaurant. It's about as much a tapas restaurant as SEPA is a real bacaro, but hey, what do I know right?

Pretty decent grilled asparaguses wrapped in thin slices of pork belly. But of course it was Iberico pork belly. Of course I couldn't tell that too. I'm not sure if less salt is a trend around here these days but I'm pretty damned sure this dish would have benefitted from a bit more salt. Under salting these small plates is inexcusable.

We ordered these baby squids because they looked like they might have been grilled from the picture in the menu. We had also been imagining that they might have been the size of firefly squids but these were actually about half as large as those and were deep fried in batter. I didn't dislike this. I just didn't think they were that good eating. In retrospect, I wouldn't order these again even if they were half of what was charged for them.

Some anchovies with onions and peppers on some stiff coca bread. These were pretty edible I guess but nothing so special that I would return for. 

Things started picking up from their tuna tartare. That's tuna tartare with avocados, tomatoes, some black pepper and something that had citrus flavour. I rather liked this with that almond soup.

Cold cuts were pretty good. But cold cuts aren't an indication of cooking skills. These ones were rather thinly sliced though. One could also tell that the olive oil used on their pan con tomate wasn't exactly the the good fruity stuff from the flavour alone. I was quite disappointed by that.

When the lamb ribs arrived, I thought they were tiny. When we started on them, we realized that probably a good two third of what's on the rib was fat. Flavourful lamb-y fat. Then I was glad that those ribs were tiny. A little more meat in the ratio would have been nice.

The grilled sea bass was not bad. Garlic, chillis and I believe lemon infused oil. I was oozing oil from the pores of my face after this but I'm not complaining.

These guys do very nice patatas. The potatoes were in small cubes, had a very nice exterior crisp while the insides were slightly sweet. 

So here's the pineapple dessert I mentioned earlier. The menu described them to be sautéed with spices so I had thought it to be warm. But these were chilled. So I'm pretty sure this was assembled rather than prepared upon order. There was more discernible sour than sweet which wasn't what I was expecting.

Tapas Club was not quite La Taperia. The latter was classier and the food was tastier. All that name dropping of having the executive chef from Binomio (which I admit to knowing nothing about) and a Manuel Berganza of two Michelin star pedigree....I'm not feeling any of it here.