L'Angelus......after 2205 days

Time sure flies. It's been about 6 years since my very first and also last visit to L'Angelus (85 Club Street, tel : +65 6225 6897). I'm pretty glad that service this time round was much better than then.

Their rich unctuous foie gras de canard was still as good as I remember. This time round, I noticed the little bits of chewy and mellowly flavoured apple compote. Against convention, that wasn't part of the tart element of the dish at all. It was mostly sweet but enjoyably so. YMMV. 

Tonight, lamb that they had served was unfortunately not up to scratch. The meat looked haphazardly sliced and was cooked to different levels doneness. The menu had described it to come with Espelette pimento that tasted like just jus and red wine - which was actually quite good. For what they were charging (this place is a bit pricey by the way), I certainly had expected better for the meat. But then again, I've also been watching quite a bit of MasterChef UK. 

The unexpected find on the menu was an andouillette de Troyes, labelled with A.A.A.A.A. and no less. It looked vulgar and monstrous. If anyone's wondering, this andouillette was a fried sausage where the stuffings are mostly pig intestines. We were cautioned that it was an acquired taste. Since we could chug down kuey chap, this didn't sound so intimidating at all. It turned out pretty good. And expensively so too. Mustard on the side was creamy and really addictive.

For unknown reasons, I had been expecting to see it come with British styled chips since it was suppose to be served with Salardaise chips. They turn out to be real potato chips. Some a little over fried.

And some obligatory side of spinach with cream spiced with nutmeg. This tasted actually quite good too. Made me feel a lot less guilty about paying $14 for them. 

Dessert was a rum baba. They used Diplomatico rum here. Nothing very unexpected or exceptional about it. It's just something about a good chilled rum soaked cake that I like.

Truffle Gourmet, Club Street

You know the places where you hold back on the bread, saving precious space for the good stuff that you know is going come. Well, this (49 Club Street) was not one of them. I think they are trying too hard to appear swanky and in the process, make up some for the lacking substance. Place is helmed by a Takashi Okuno, formerly of L’Operetta.

These were complimentary crostinis. I don't remember much of them.

And then some pan fried polenta with caramelized apple and blue cheese. The portions were puny. Each piece was probably double the size of my thumbnails and two of them probably a little less than a mouthful, but I enjoyed the flavors. The corn from the polenta, the tart sweetness from the tiny chunks of apple and the pungent blue cheese worked. But.....I wouldn't pay what they were charging to eat them again though.

This is grilled tomino cheese with truffled honey and jamón ibérico. Pretty penny charged for the cheese which was pretty tasty actually. But this isn't exactly any showcase of what the restaurant could do since it was pretty much the ingredients that spoke for themselves. Frying cheese doesn't require so much skills.

That's their uovo fritto. Breaded and fried half cooked egg with black truffle cream sauce. I didn't quite like the fact that they had to emphasise that they had added truffle crumbs (they actually called those shaven truffle) on top of the truffle cream that's suppose to be in the dish. Especially when those truffle flavors left some to the imagination. But the egg was rather nicely done.

The tajarin with truffle left even more of the truffle flavors to imagination. The rest of it was pretty much butter and sage and the pasta was unforgivably limp. I understand that this place was rather new. But it's been a month since they've opened and if they cannot do this pasta in a month, they'll never be able to do it. Overpriced and waste of money.

Fortunately, their beef ravioli was still decent. Think there was truffle oil in there too. Couldn't really be bothered any further at this point. 

Here's a first and a last visit.

More lupinity...

This was suppose to be just a quick stop for desserts after an unsatisfying meal at Truffle Gourmet. More of that later....maybe. So they were filled to the brim and we ended up sitting at the bar.

Since we had room for more food and didn't mind pushing back the memories of the mediocre food we had just a while ago, here's more stuff which we ended up with. 

This sharp knife was a mystery at the beginning. Later we realised that it was for the fennel. Three little pigs danced atop.

potato skins 

house-cured smoked bacon, crème fraîche

We thought that their potato skins with crème fraîche was quite nicely done and not over the top. Just that crème fraîche, bacon and I think we detected some cheese. Toasted cheese which added a little chewiness and aroma.

charred fennel

house-made goat’s milk ricotta, 

black olive oil, pine nut

Their charred fennel looked boiled rather than grilled. But the fennel did have a very distinctive and clean char aroma, pairing off nicely with the richness from the goat's ricotta. Liked.

braised savoy cabbage....again!

Nothing further needs to be said on this.

chicken hearts & liver salad 

parsley, radish, roasted garlic dressing

If I had any gripes about the food - I only wished for larger portions. This was a pretty dime we paid for a small salad with offal, but it was good. 

chocolate beetroot cake

goat’s cheese frosting

I thought the combination here was rather unusual. There was some strength from the bittersweet chocolate without creamy richness. In replacement, was that faint beetroot taste which surprised me by getting through all the chocolate. The cake was rather dense, dry-ish, offset by the goat's cheese frosting. Great that it didn't taste as sweet as it looked.

Banoffee tart

This was also quite good. It came recommended and tasted better than I imagined. Light airy cream on top of fresh bananas and caramel in a dense, buttery and crumbly base.

Bornga, Star Vista

Despite the fact that the meats were the supposed stars of this dinner (#02‐24, The Star Vista, 1 Vista Exchange Green, tel : +65 6694 4696), the majority of what we ate for tonight were probably vegetables. There were loads of it from the wrap platter to cold soups to the banchan (purple sweet potato mash is really good). And it all didn't feel heavy with just minimal carbs from the refreshingly light tasting cold buckwheat noodles.

Between the meats, it was quite obvious that their signature woosamgyup was clearly tastier. Thin sliced fat laced brisket in a light marinate that resembled tender bacon accompanied by their special dip which tasted of some fermented bean and pepper. The marbled ggot sal on the other hand were sliced a little too thick resulting in some difficulty in cooking.

The food was a little pricey for sure, but I think I don't mind giving them another go.

Gayatri Restaurant, Orchid Country Club

butter chicken

gobi 65

crayfish briyani

sabzi vegetarian briyani

It took us a few tries to come down here (Orchid Country Club, 1 Orchid Club Road, #01-21, tel : +65 6481 1112) for dinner as they were almost perpetually booked for events during the weekend.

So there were some briyani, a tangy and smokey butter chicken and crisp gobi 65; the last of which varied in spiciness in the two occasions we had them. Their briyani was quite tasty with well seeped in flavour be it the crayfish or the vegetarian rendition. The flavour from the crayfish was actually not drowned out by the sauces. But I was surprised to see a little dish of mock meat dish with the other briyani.

I wouldn't come here for masala tea again. It costs three times of the outlet at Telok Ayer and came in a smaller cup.

More from Kian Seng Seafood

This was a family birthday dinner where we ordered up a bunch of what we liked from the previous visit including a couple of  items which we hadn't tried before. One of which was the dull skinned and mildly herbal kampung salt chicken that almost everyone else seems to be ordering; which turned out to be pretty good. Apart from the mild herbal aroma, the bird was what we felt to be nicely and sufficiently salted. It reminded me of the salt baked one from Plum Village which was juicer and had the advantage of being peppery.

Here's a second go at their spinach with three eggs and superior stock. Wow, this was just a turnaround from the previous visit. The gravy was noticeably much more flavorful  from the salted egg in comparison with then. This stuff is pretty damn good.

And a delicious dry stir fried kuey teow with preserved turnip (cai por), bean sprouts and chopped bits of kailan. I didn't care much for those strips of ham that they placed over the top, but the rest of the rice noodles were a medley of textures from the vegetables with a savory char aroma. Very good with the garlic chilli sauce on the side that they've provided!