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.

Set Lunch at Menotti

Menotti has a set lunch from 12p.m. that offers a pasta, dessert and either coffee or tea at $19.90. Met up with an old friend Gweezer for lunch so decided to check it out. This will probably be my last visit to Menotti in a while. No, I'm not picking on the food.

I have a couple of nice shots of the squid ink ravioli from the place so I decided that both should be in here.

The portions aren't too big, so it's not as filling as I would like it. The ravioli is stuffed with shredded cod and dressed in some creamy saffron sauce which while wasn't terrible, was also nothing extraordinary as a cream sauce. I generally enjoy cod as a fish with it's taste and texture, so having shredded or smashed cod doesn't really do it for me. I mean, drenched in all the sauce, I could hardly tell the difference.

The Bavette is a seafood pasta (squid, clams and prawns) in spicy tomato sauce. I usually avoid tomato based sauced because I find them the least exciting, but for today's instance, it did reveal itself to be a better option which I think I would have preferred.

Knowing that the ravioli wouldn't suffice to do the trick for lunch, we got a Crochette (crabcakes) to share.

I think I've mentioned acouple of times that these are one of the best crabcakes I've had even though I haven't had it at that many other places. It's also been mentioned to be a tad saltish, but I personally find it to my liking. One of the noted difference between this dish here and Riciotti is that the orange & basil mayo looks completely different. Here it comes as a light milky peach sauce while the latter looks like regular mayo.

That's the Soffiato, the dessert I picked for today's lunch. It's a warm dark chocolate cake, dusted with icing and a scoop of chocolate chip ice cream. The slightly crusty exterior breaks open to reveal a rich sweet chocolate sauce which will spill forth like molten lava. Kinda reminds me of Morton's signature chocolate cake which comes warmer, a bit larger in size, taste a little better and cost a lot more. Chocolate lovers will probably like this.

Of rotis and tissues and milk

This was a post-dinner snack with tea.

If you're acquainted with roti paper, it's a thin crisp prata drizzled with condense milk. The texture of the pastry is light and crispy and generally appeals to those with a sweet tooth. Much as I may be stating the obvious, it can require some finesse to eat. The roti crumbles easily being crispy and all. Utensils aren't really necessary since they're probably more unwieldy. Learn to love your fingers a little. Share the sweetness.

Taste of Thailand, Sembawang Shopping Centre

The funny thing about the Taste of Thailand was that it tasted totally local. Lol. These guys were the typical cze char which operated at a fast and furious pace that I found astounding. I mean, the dishes pictured below came under ten minutes after orders were taken and the place was definitely packed. They must have had a pretty big kitchen manned by an army of cooks that can cook en mass. Anyway, Taste of Thailand graduated from a regular stall with a strong following in the old food court in the basement to a restaurant. I know that because I've had dinners with my family on numerous occasions in the past before it was what it is today. Says something about how successful their business had been. The food was reasonably priced. The place is currently located at the 4th floor of Sembawang Shopping Centre. The photo off to the left is how it looked like at about 6.30pm and didn't diminish at the time after we're done with dinner and left. They look like they've literally robbed the food court currently located on the same storey of most of their business. And no, they don't take reservations.

pineapple fried rice (with a generous topping of meat floss)

Spicy egg bean curd

sambal kang kong

Fried cuttlefish legs (a popular signature dish here for a good reason)

Sweet and sour fried sliced fish

Kung pao chicken (6" ToT remix.....lol)

Close up on my portion of the fried rice with the meat floss

As I said before, they're atypical of local cze char stalls. The only difference was that the kung pao chicken tasted different from the regular ones that we're used to eating. The chicken was fried before getting stir fried with the sauce - which didn't taste as rich or delicious as the regular ones. Also, there was very little spiciness in the dish. The above dinner plus another 2 bowls of white rice came up to $35. Lime juice at a dollar each.

Lawry's, Paragon

Dinner with Junie. You can obviously imagine this was about prime ribs. There's more though. Lawry's from Beverly Hills is located at the 2nd story of Paragon. The restaurant has downsized physically to about half of its previous real estate and now looks to be relegated to a corner unit. This expensive and supposedly top notch prime rib place was put under some intense scrutiny today (it's all in my head, that's all) faced with the likes of rival purveyors like Morton's and Hog's Breath.

Since this was a first time, impression counted much. The service was overrated and needed work. Yes, I am basing that on a first visit. I don't think a restaurant that charges their customers such premium can afford poor service. Anthony Bourdain once said that chefs need the iron discipline of consistency because that is what customers return for and what new people come to experience after having heard through word of mouth. I'm thinking this needs to be applied onto service as well.

Personally, I thought that the server for today was slipshod. Her speech and attitude implied rather explicitly that she was just doing her job, not doing it very well and couldn't care less. We were not being difficult. The experience from the start was rocky - marred by the wait staff that did not seem to understand when inquired about doneness of their prime ribs, incapable of coherent pronunciation of the words horseradish and au jus and the rather careless dropping of a salad fork. Geez. I'm not talking about rocket science or Olympic gymnastics here. Just asking about the meat.

These were their bread. We were totally unimpressed. It was neither warm nor tasted fresh. I had expected better out of these little things that made the meal here. We had assumed that the bread was kept between napkins to keep them warm - which was pointless since it wasn't even slightly warm in the first place. We left most of it unfinished which was not the usual modus operandi for hungry me. I'm normally quite happy to use them as an excuse to eat all the butter. I don't remember the last time I returned a bread tray with occupants.

Orders of prime rib came with their signature Famous Original Spinning Bowl Salad which was really a gimmick. Yeah, I said it. That salad tasted very ordinary. Was presented with the flair of a half hearted and mediocre circus act. What basically happened was the waitress that spun the salid in a bowl of ice while having their sauce (I thought it tasted like Thousand Island dressing) drizzled on (lettuce, shredded beets, minuscule amount of egg bits and croutons). After that, it was tossed. I'll credit them for a little originality, but I didn't think there was very much in terms of taste. The lettuce didn't look particularly fresh and I was sure that was not just a personal opinion. The most tasty item in it were probably the croutons. Now I think that's really sad.  Don't expect anything exotic or wondrous from the spinning bowl salad.

The highlight at Lawry's was of course the prime rib which comes in their "silver" carts. The meat was carved at the table side and served in various cuts. Their Lawry's cut was as they explained, the most popular. 280g. For those who scoff at such daintly portions, there's a Diamond Jim Brady cut which weighs an impressive 450g.

So there it is, the medium rare prime rib, Lawry's cut and deliciously juicy pink resting in mouth watering au jus. The meat was accompanied by Idaho mashed potatoes and Yorkshire Pudding. It was good as I was hoping for. The Yorkshire pudding did a good job soaking up the savoury au jus. Freshly made, it was crispy on the edges and soft on the inside. There was a particular taste of something that eludes me now, but ultimately was delicious soaked up.

We had the Nova Scotia Broiled Lobster Tail. Lightly charred, the meat was quite tasty although absent of any seasoning. Cooked the way they did, the natural sweetness was somehow not apparent. Also wasn't juicy. It was actually dry like over-grilled prawns. At $26 a pop, it was also an expensive 2 mouth affair. Yeah, it's that small.

We ordered a creme brûlée to share after hearing that it was was exceptional. It looked rather mundane but was actually the best creme brûlée I've ever tasted. Lawry's rendition had an amazingly light custard and was smooth and milky. The charred top was a light crisp shell. Whole thing paired very nicely with the fruits. This was so enjoyable that each spoonful was a dilemma of "fruit or no fruit this time?".

Turkey Cranberry sandwich @ PS. Cafe

Was pretty surprised (pleasantly) by the turkey cranberry sandwich from PS. Cafe. Turned out better than I had imagined. Still pricey for a sandwich in my opinion, however it was also enjoyable. Good enough that I'll think of getting it again the next time I'm here.

The fillings between the toasted bread were smoked turkey topped with grilled cheese, bacon and some cranberry jam with mayo. Good thing there wasn't too much mayo. Grilled cheese was nice touch being slightly charred. One the side were a small salad of boiled asparagus (and some other greens) drizzled over with cranberry pumpkin seed pesto, crushed almond and sunflower seeds.