Sunday, June 19, 2022

Re-visiting The Masses

The Masses, Beach Road

I've wondered about the term 'Franco Asian' that's used to describe The Masses. Can't reconcile the term with some of the food here. With much borderless styles and proliferation of cross cultural ingredients in the recent decade or so, wouldn't their dishes mostly fall within the basket of non-traditional French?  

Exceptions that comes to mind were their pulled duck chee cheong fun and those thosais from The Masses X Heavens. I'd Franco Asian those.

Maybe I'm overthinking.

The Masses, bread & spreads

Bread is on the menu, not gratis. There's a choice of sourdough, brioche or a mix. Does not come with spreads - those are a separate order. There's a choice of caramel kaya, umami butter or a mix. I recommend the umami butter which was folded with kombu and dashi. The flavour rocks.

The Masses, pork & foie gras pithivier

That's their pork and foie gras pithivier - the second pithivier I've ever had. The first was from Belon and that was a superior experience. This one tasted like a savoury char siu sou (叉烧酥). The foie gras seemed to have melted in the pastry so not much flavour from that. Wouldn't say that this was bad but it wasn't memorable as well.

The Masses, truffle & globe artichoke soup

Black truffle and artichoke cream soup. Nice.

The Masses, purple cabbage

The savoury creamy richness from the dashi beurre blanc pairing with the prawn head butter and ikura were pretty much an explosion of flavours. This was the most delicious red cabbage anything I've ever had.

The Masses, octopus

Octopus with lobster porridge - not bad but not good enough that I'll want to get it again the next time.

The Masses, lamb loin

Lamb loin was layered with fat and needed a more uniform salting. Otherwise not bad tasting too. There's suppose to be Jinhua ham (金華火腿) in the dish according to the menu but I couldn't tell.

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