M&T, Guoco Tower

I've been curious about M&T(#01-12 Guoco Tower, 5 Wallich Street, tel : +65 8948 9242). I've mixed feelings about the food. What we had felt like it came from a kitchen that's been given instructions/recipes to cook rather than being one that has experience with French food.

Goat cheese salad was not bad. Properly tossed, sweet cherry tomatoes and all. My gripe was that the goat cheese tasted weak.

There's a croque au bleu which is a croque monsieur made with Comté and Fourme d'Ambert. The lack of punch (from the lack of quantity) from the latter was kinda disappointing.

Grassfed beef burger with Fourme d'Ambert was also disappointing. Patty's kinda dense, lean and was not particularly beefy tasting. Fries were mostly hollow...like they're shells of actual fries. 

Not much of the Fourme d'Ambert in it as well. We've had better French blue cheese burgers.

Pithiviers and Wellingtons @ Gaston

Recent weekend lunch at Gaston.

Those above were Croquettes Bourguignonnes. The insides were smoked ham and Epoisse cheese. So what we had was a crunchy breading on the exterior and piping hot creaminess with stinky cheesiness inside. Nice!

Guinea fowl pithivier with foie gras, shaven black truffle & morels in vin jaune sauce. Nice, creamy and no kidding about the rich part. There were strips of bacon in the sauce as well and the puff pastry was buttery.

The venison wellington was an on board special. Like the pithivier, there was foie gras, shaven black truffle and also bacon with the sauce. Not forgetting buttery pastry as well. Sauce was a velvety richness...likely a reduction of sorts but fruity.

Bonjour Ma Cuisine, Craig Road

Bonjour Ma Cuisine is the brunch operation of the one Micheline starred Ma Cuisine (38 Craig Road, tel : +65 9627 1058). The former is available for breakfast and lunch for weekdays only and the latter only has dinner service. At least for now that's how it's working for them.

Iced coffee's okay. 

Chocolat veinnois had a rich milkiness paired with a creamy viscosity and an infusion of cinnamon in the chocolate. Not bad. 

One of their recommended dishes was their Croque Madame Truffe - their refined rendition of the traditional sandwich with truffle. Doesn't look like the standard variety sandwich of its kind. Ham and cheese was inside the disc of crunchy bread with a pretty sunny side up. Not bad tasting. Now that I've tried it, I won't get it again. That's how it was.

We were more impressed by their quenelle de brochet sauce nantua.

Quenelle had a creamy/custardy texture flavoured by presumably the pike that went into it and that crustacean-y sweet, savoury and spicy sauce nantua. 👍🏼

Salade de foies de volaille - warm chicken liver salad with rockets. Nice. Sauce was vinegary and with onions which cut through the richness of those livers.

Their pasta with Parmesan is apparently a thing. Menu calls it linguine but isn't this pappardelle? Anyways, the application of the cheese is balanced by what the restaurant thinks ideal. It didn't taste bad. It just didn't pack the punch from the cheese like I imagined. But otherwise, it's okay.

They have a pretty refined hand chopped tartare de boeuf. Meat's in small chunky cubes which provided a good texture full of bite - if that's your thing that is. It was mine. We enjoyed this.

We were recommended their pain perdu kaya. I was initially wondering where the kaya was. It's the yellow sauce. Bread's nicely brûlée-ed with a light crisp and caramel bitter sweetness. It was also airy on the insides which helped absorb the custard-y sauce. This was nicer than I imagined.

Frog legs, veal sweetbread and lamb at Gaston

Been a while since we were last at Gaston.

This was our first time doing lunch here.

Sautéed frog legs with watercress coulis and garlic. That watercress coulis was buttery, earthy and delicious. We mopped the plate clean with bread. Frog legs here were pretty small comparatively with those from Le Bistrot du Sommelier or Atout but that watercress coulis.......

Pan seared veal sweetbread wrapped in veal farce and filo pastry with Cancoillotte mash & mushroom sauce. Crispy buttery filo pastry wrapped around meaty veal farce enveloping delicious chunks of sweetbread. Pretty obvious we loved it. That mushroom sauce was also moreish. Tasted like it had wine in it. Mopped the plate clean of the sauce.

Pretty good grilled lamb leg with spring vegetables and lamb jus. Meat was relatively tender with a good bite and a little bit of fat for that lamb-y flavour. That harissa on the side was spicy and bitter. Also made sure none of the sauce was wasted by getting extra bread.

The sourdough mop.

Finished with a Paris Brest and a bitter black coffee. A satisfying lunch.

Foie gras, ris de veau et steak au poivre at Saveur

S'been quite a while since we were last at Saveur. Prices here are on par with some of the French bistros these days but we've noticed they've also upped their game somewhat.

Pain. Not pain. 😏 Hot and fresh tasting.

Decent foie gras terrine and grapes with enough acid to cut through the richness. Brioche needs more butter methinks - it's okay and not memorable.

Pretty impressed by their sizeable pan seared ris de veau. Sweetbread. Tender and succulent with a bit of creaminess. On top of that, morel mushrooms! Granted those weren't huge or plump or both, but I take what I can get. Just so that no wrong ideas were gotten, they were delicious by the way.

They also have a pretty delicious steak au poivre. We got a textbook medium rare today. 😬 Woohoo! Decent cognac and peppercorn sauce. Wouldn't say that the sauce was memorable but we were happy with the steak and the sautéed green beans as a whole.

Date pudding was so so. Wasn't a bad dessert. Just wished it was much warmer like how they do at PS. Cafe. I'll leave this as something I wouldn't get it again.

Tomato tart, lamb rump and tartare de beouf from Le Bistrot du Sommelier

Recent dinner at Le Bistrot du Sommelier. It's been a couple of years since our last time here.  

(un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix, onze, douze).

A salade de tomates typically sounded mundane. Not something I'd usually pay attention to. Le Bistrot du Sommelier's salade de tomates was outstanding. Tomato was well chilled, salted and then drizzled with olive oil - very refreshing and nice pairing with the rich creaminess of burrata. Came with a slice of tomato tart which was suitably buttery and pleasantly flavoured by the porcine sweet savouriness of Bayonne ham. This was so good. 👍🏼

We had tartare de boeuf. This item has remained consistent since we've first had it here. This beef tartare has similar seasoning flavour profile as the one at Atout. 

Marrunga lamb rump with grilled celeriac, black garlic purée and coffee infused lamb jus. Nice creamy sweet tanginess from the black garlic and lovely coffee lamb jus. Those grilled celeriac were smokey tasting. 👍🏼

First time getting sorbets from them. The lime is nicer than the apple. It's more refreshingly robust with the citrus in comparison to the apple which also started to taste less like apple after a bit.

Atout's Autumn

We were here for the Autumn specials at Atout (un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept).

What caught our attention were stuff like their French fig salad with Mimolette.

Figs were tender and sweet.

They made ankimo/monkfish pate this year which was also "escabeche-d" with vinegar. So it's not very different from the cod liver that they normally have nor was it far from the anikmo ponzu from Japanese restaurants because of the vinegar.

Ankimo made a good spread over their sourdough.

Wine infused risotto with radicchio salad & aged Parmegiano Reggiano. Not bad tasting. That being said, I was hoping that there was at least half the amount red wine in it like I was imagining. There wasn't. That be my only gripe.

Roast pigeon was delicious. So was the jus. Said jus has a savoury rich sweetness that was a consumate pairing for the bird and also the sweet chestnut puree. That velvety chestnut puree...🤤

Ended with conference pear soufflé because we love conference pears. And also that this was the first time we've seen them used in their soufflé and we were curious. 

There's puree/compote and chunks of cooked pear in the soufflé. Soufflé was a sweet & eggy cloud of moist fluffiness. While the flavour of the pear came through for the dessert, it lacked a rounded aroma/taste. Still like the soufflé though.

Bitter black to close.