10 degrees of Christmas @ Basil Alcove

This Christmas marks in a way, the trial by fire for Basil Alcove which I first visited back in September - in the culinary sense. The chef with the mischievous grin, Xander Ang has taken upon himself to deliver a 10 course Extravaganza menu. So erm....I have some photos of the dinner if you are inclined to continue reading.

Carpaccio Beef

Paving the road to the extravaganza was the carpaccio of beef with cipriani sauce topped with honey roasted figs. This was probably one of the largest servings of carpaccio I've ever had. In honesty, also the ugliest. In spite of being much thicker than how regular carpaccio normally are, it turned out to be quite appetizing and edible. The treat in this dish for me were the honey roasted figs.

Trio Mitili

In the Trio Mitili, there was a trio of half shelled New Zealand mussels accompanied by diced....greens and black olive tapanade? Mussels were succulent and fresh tasting. More than one of us at the dinner though the salty baked cheese was smile etching good and the pesto packed with a robust punch from garlic.

Borscht Asparagus e Beet Cappucino

Foam seems to be the thing these days and I do admit that I'm generally agreeable with them. This beet cappuccino came with a huge dollop of asparagus foam which I enjoyed. Reminded me just a little of a cappuccino of cauliflower which I once had at Sage. In the same capacity, they were both a vehicle of an almost ethereal creamy milkiness accented with a shade of flavour of the vegetable. The cooling foam washed down with the warm beet soup was strangely arousing.

Tacchino Lampone

Most western Christmas dinners don't get by without turkey so this I guess wasn't an exception. The Tacchino Lampone comprised of slices of pan fried turkey accompanied by a cranberry, walnut and yoghurt sauce. Easily one of the favourites for tonight.

Mezcolanza Funghi

This appears to be some kind of mushroom burger. A ménage à troi of a button and two shiitakes under pink pepper sauce. Nothing dried or canned from this.

Strawberry Sorbetto

This 6th course of the strawberry sorbet topped with homegrown mint pesto was the palate cleanser. Refreshing. Rhe citrus in sorbet helped in gearing up for the upcoming duo mains of red and white meat. Actually, I wished there was more of this to go round.

Marmellata Lamb

And this as explained by the server of tonight is the toasted lamb cutlets with whale sperm. Naw...I jest. It's an orange and cherry marmalade which was nice accompaniment to the lamb. Done somewhere between medium and medium well. I thought that it would have been great to have more of the marmalade. But I suppose with restrained portions, we were given the chance to savour the natural flavour of the lamb.

Lobster Thermidor

I generally do not have much expectations for lobsters unless I'm forking out and arm and a leg for them. In Christmas, one would undoubtedly have to top it up with a few vitals just to be sure because it's a crustacean which most of us know can get quite costly. This KGB Lobster Thermidor came across as passable, compensated by the toasted cheese. It's a KGB lobster because in the shooter on the side was an almost Molotov Kalua, Granmania and Baileys. Yes, it was flaming.

Panna Cotta

Their Panna Cotta as I understood was made with pineapple but I was quite sure that there was also coconut in there. Or maybe after a couple of beers, the subtleties of flavours were confusing to me. The texture of the panna cotta was coarse; different from what I have expected. Accompanying chocolate gravy at the bottom was a nice. In this occasion, this worked in small portions. Enough to be enjoyed, not enough to make one start to grow sick of it.

Torta Fromaggio Mango

Deconstruction as I understand of the term comes into light of two applications. Desserts and architecture. The Torta Formaggio Mango is a deconstructed mango cheese cake with warm Baileys topped with a generous portion of fresh cream.

So there you have the 10 degrees of this festive year end from Basil Alcove. As much as I can comprehend, it was likely a daunting task for a small kitchen to stretch themselves for such a menu. Doable in a expensive restaurant undoubtedly but we'll probably not see the likes of anything else similar in terms of effort and delivery based on the creativity of a small family run business here.

Ember @ Hotel 1929, Keong Saik Road

There seems to be a trend of new restaurants opening themselves in boutique hotels and becoming a name of themselves. Like Wild Rocket at Hangout and Desire at Scarlet Hotel. Ember is the place where the reputation (good and bad) of the restaurant precedes the hotel it resides within. The restaurant also took up more estate on the ground floor of 1929 than said hotel's entire lobby.

Dinner tonight was with fatpig and friends. Originally the idea was to do dinner at Desire but in the arrangement, confusion brought in Breeze and by the time we managed to contact Desire, it was fully booked. That's pretty much how we ended up at this place at Keong Saik Road. The arrangement for dinner was shared appetizers and desserts along with individual mains. We were here on a weeknight and the restaurant was almost fully packed. Service quality from theor staff was pretty good. On the whole, this place felt good. The food while commendable in quality, wasn't as good as I had imagined.

Commencing with the appetizers...


pan scallops with parma ham, orange and tarragon vinaigrette - the scallops were huge. And also succulent. I saw juice squirt out of fatpig's first bite into soft shellfish. Didn't expect the Parma ham to be pan fried, wrapped around the scallops. Apart from the juicy jumbo sized shellfish, the rest of the salad was pretty mundane. I thought the oranges lacked citrus flavour.


tuna tempura with goma wakame, mustard dressing - I was initially skeptical, just a little, about the tempura. It turned out much better than I expected with the tuna being seared instead of thoroughly cooked. Inevitably, I compared it with one I had at Sage which I felt was still the better dish. This tempura batter was thin and light like no other tempura which I've had. The sauce and mustard did overpower the flavour of the fish (which was light in the first place) to the point that it overwhelmed. Just an observation, not a complain.


pan seared foie gras with caramelized apple and clove port and raspberry glaze - unanimously top performer at the table tonight. Ember made a wonderful foie gras with a delicately thin crispy surface and creamy insides that fell apart, melting in the tongue with its rich diffusive flavour. This is seriously damn good.

The selection of main courses at Ember didn't sound enticing from description. In fact, it looked quite mundane.


char grilled angus beef with fava beans - this was my main for tonight. I was thinking that there might have been something more interesting to be had but the steak amongst the other items sounded the most appealing to me. I didn't come here expecting to have steak. It was quite small. Apart from the size, there was no complains. Seasoning of the meat was a simple rock salt and coarse grain pepper without compromising he original beefy flavour. Came with a tasty side of potato gratin.

I managed to get a bite from the Slow Roasted Rack of Lamb with Tamarind Reduction. Lamb was tender in medium rare, sweet and juicy. The sweetness might have come from the sauce though. There was a finely mashed sweet potato side which I thought was quite good. The braised Stockyard Beef Cheek with Merlot that fatpig chose tasted like a Chinese pork braised in soy sauce with a hint of red wine. For $40, I didn't think it tasted good enough to justify the price.

On with the desserts...


warm vairhona chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream - this was a common dessert. Everyone's doing it. Kinda hard for me to be too enthusiastic about it. Although nice, they all taste the same.

flavoured panna cotta with chilled mango soup - this panna cotta was mostly drowned in the "mango soup" which tasted like the mango desserts from Hong Kong dessert stores. Not very unremarkable.


apple tart tartin with vanilla bean ice cream - freshly made with generous large chunks of apple. I thought this was pretty good. The pastry tasted freshly baked.


warm banana tart with homemade lavender ice cream - I picked this because it came with lavender ice cream. I've never tried it and was naturally curious. The flavour is rather interesting....brings forth more than a faint reminder of shampoo or shower gel.

The waiting interval between the courses felt a tad long for me because it exhausted conversation but YMMV. I'll probably wait to catch wind of the restaurant's new rotation of the menu before deciding if I'll return.

wham!burger, China Square Foodcourt

Checked out this burger joint today with fatpig at the basement of China Square's food court after hearing about it being mentioned several times on some web forums. Not surprisingly, the hype over the burger was way bigger than taste. The store didn't look like it had any queue in the face of the lunch crowd. The wham!burger came sized like Botak Jones' burgers, with slightly tastier patties. But those patties also fell apart easily like those in the Botak Burgers. The bread was dry and porous, reminding me of the cheap bread used in Ramly Burgers. It did come buttered. We were told while ordering that the double whammy required advance notice for the portabello mushrooms. Wtf!? At $9, a double whammy with egg and no mushrooms felt a little pricey. Well, it was not bad, it's just not great after all the hype...

So the verdict is, I probably won't be back for more. Despite my several at $16, überburger's sirloin burger was a lot heartier and tasted better. With location and the price, I don't think this wham!burger came close enough to being worth the trouble.

Noodles from the Fat Hero

I was informed by my co-worker during lunch while having this bak chor mee that Fei Xiong doesn't mean 'fat bear', but 'fat hero'. Lol. A pretty good bak chor mee the fat hero does make.

Paulaners Bräuhaus, Millenia Walk (dinner)

Came by this place previously for an Oktoberfest thirst quencher after dinner at Ten-Jyaku. Tonight, I took advantage of being around in the vicinity and decided to do dinner with a co-worker. I recalled having had their pork knuckles the previous time and them being pretty good. There aren't any German restaurants around that I know of that are accessible (I don't drive) and this was the only one that's accessible. Paulaners Bräuhaus if you didn't know is located at Millenia Walk, just across the road from Suntec City.

The restaurant section of the brewery is located on the second floor. The ground level is set up like a bar/pub that serves their own brand of brew and finger food. The last weekday I attempted to get a seat in the restaurant, it was so packed I couldn't get a space four without having endure a queue. Tonight was quite empty by comparison.

To the food. One of the neat things about their bread was that it was served with pâté - which I enjoyed. In comparison with most restaurants that provide either butter, olive oil & vinegar and even pesto. 

Commenced the dinner with a cold cut dish call Bavarian Brotzeitbrettl. It is essentially a wooden platter of different hams, liver pâté, a bit of cheese, some salad and grated horseradish which was surprisingly good. The horseradish tasted quite fresh with a mild tinge of sweetness. Like grated wasabi. Mustardly flavorful without being overwhelming. Ham seemed to be chicken/turkey based but the waiter insisted that all of it are pork. I didn't think it was worth the effort to pursue this. In all a decent plate of cold cuts which features nothing really remarkable apart from the horseradish .

The home made spätzle and asparagus looked a lot to me like fried sliced fish at first. I had no idea what were spätzles, but it seemed like they're some kind of irregularly shaped pasta of sorts. The pasta was served with melted cheese and flavoured with white wine and nutmeg. I didn't taste any nutmeg or white wine,  just the fragrant strips of fried onion and a very mild melted cheese. If not for the cheese, this dish looked and tasted Chinese. Like fried rice cakes.

The grilled pork knuckle was mostly like I remembered it from the last time I had them. It was a lot less fatty then. In fact, if my memory serves, there wasn't much fat at all under all that golden brown skin between the meat. The bed of sauerkraut was appetising, offsetting the weight of the meat/fat. The portions were actually small enough to make a hearty meal for one person.

Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao, Scotts

Dinner with Junie. I had almost forgotten about the existence of this place at the basement of Scotts which I first visited (and was introduced to) about 3 years ago. Was recommended their fried pork ribs with soup noodles and their fiery bottled peppers on the table. Today 3 years later, the quality of the food seems to have remain the same and I actually sat on a table just one away from the one I did 3 years back. This place brings me memories.

One of the things I liked about this la mian outlets of Crystal Jade was that the food here is generally quite nice and the price is on the whole, reasonable.

braised beef in hand cut kway teow

This dish came with tender braised beef and hand cut kway teow that has irregular thickness. I guess those must be hand made instead of machine pressed rice noodles. And it's quite good.

Fried rice with ham and prawns

I enjoy a good fried rice and the ones here haven't disappointed me yet. The ham in the fried rice taste like the air dried ones and there's quite a few prawns in there. It's comfort food which I can wolf down in large quantities.

Picked or sauteed jellyfish

Tofu and century egg

Xiao Long Bao

Vegetable and meat dumpling soup

Fried buns with salmon and mushrooms

There are a couple of personal dislikes I have here, one of which involves the vile herb coriander which was found in the dumpling soup. My dislike for the herb makes me very sensitive to even trace amounts of the taste. The other involves the fried buns which was suppose to contain salmon and the stuffings look to me like 95% mushroom. That to me is simply bad practice because I could hardly taste the salmon. And the name of the dish can be reasonably construed as intentionally misleading because it wouldn't have made any difference if the salmon was absent.

Apart from these couple of peeves, it was on the whole pretty good especially the fried rice which I always enjoyed from any Crystal Jade outlets. The total bill ran to $49.90 and offset by a $30 voucher from Junie. That made a pig out for 2 at $10.