Venue by Sebastian, Shenton Way

The name of the restaurant refers to Sebastian Ng, former chef of the defunct Ember. Venue (#01-02 Tower 1 Downtown Gallery, tel : +65 69049688) is his current place - a venue (yeah) that's more casual and ambiently clinical. The menu has diversified/restructured compared to the more traditional setup at Ember and I suppose I could say that it's also more aligned to what people like from the perspective of portions.

That's the breaded lamb cutlet with romesco and some balsamic. I found the lamb flavours a little weak. I'm getting some of them from the fat and not so from the meat. Otherwise this would've been quite tasty. No excessive grease from the frying and no complicated flavours contending with one another.

The Jerusalem artichoke soup was good. Creamy and sweet. Also nicely paired with the crispy duck bits that also served as the salty counter to the sweetness of the soup. Good for returns.

We had these things called lamb riblets which are kinda like satay. Flavour is very Middle Eastern and the meat was very tender. As non-descriptive as it may be, I'm going to say that it's nice. 

Great angel hair pasta with shaven bottarga and mentaiko. Those eggs provide a salty/savoury/umami accent against the main flavour profile from the sorrel pesto. The noodles aren't green themselves but seem to be well coated in the pesto - which tastes quite like shiso. Tangy and refreshing. I'd eat this again.

For those of you who have been to Ember, might recall that they're pretty well known for their pan seared Chilean seabass with truffle yuzu butter sauce. The good news obviously at this point is they've brought that into the menu at Venue. The dish of firm and flaky seabass was as delicious as I remembered it.

The mushrooms with toast were supposed to come earlier. Due to an order misinterpretation, they came after the seabass which was incidentally a good thing since we now have bread to mop the yuzu butter sauce clean from the plate. These mushrooms were chopped up, doused with truffle oil. No idea what kind of mushrooms were used.

Here's grilled octopus on a bed of pureed bean and some burnt butter with capers. I'm running out of adjective so it's nice. The tentacles had a bit of bite which I thought was a good thing even though I too enjoy the very tender renditions.

Burnt cabbage with shaven Parmigiano Reggiano and chive oil. Our token greens/fibre for the meal.

And finally the dessert which is called apple "pie". It's more like caramelized apple in some crispy pastry. Filo maybe? With crumbles and an eggy tasting rum and raisin ice cream. The latter was quite good. Could definitely get that rum and alcohol flavour. As a whole, I liked this.

Hitsumabushi to hotaru ika from Man Man

Spring has arrived in Japan and the firefly squids are finding their ways into the nets of fishermen and eventually into the market or a restaurant. Man Man has whipped up a seasonal bowl of hitsumabushi with the hotaru ika. I tasted some shiso there with the squids.

Satay babat and nasi ayam sambal at Geylang Serai Market

That's a mix of tripe (babat) and chicken satay up there from Geylang Corner Food Stall. Those tripe skewers were tender and tasty. 

I followed the queue on this for a tray of nasi ayam sambal with ayam lebih. The stall was simply called Nasi Ayam Sambal (#02-129). The sambal, which seemed to be a signature of theirs was a little nutty, sweet, spicy and salty. While it was quite atypical of Malay sambal and stood on its own merit, the flavours were overwhelming on the rice which was already pretty tasty on its own. I thought the fried chicken was passable but also atypical of most ayam goreng, the meatier parts of the bird are a little dry. I'd pick Mat Noh & Rose for nasi ayam over this anytime.

PS. Cafe, Ann Siang Hill

PS. Cafe has been around for a number of years now. I remember it used to be just a cafe at Project Shop Blood Brothers. Besides the setup at Dempsey, this (45 Ann Siang Road) is the only other location amongst the branches that one can actually consider to be a sanctuary by virtue of location. I can't say that I'm a fan but occasionally, we end up here. 

They do Bloody Mary here. This one was made with some lapsang souchong infused whisky and the thing that suckered me into ordering one was the bacon and blue cheese stuffed olive. Yes, just one olive and I couldn't even tell it was blue cheese. Bacon was oddly dry and grease free. No lapsang souchong flavour as far as I could tell. Sometimes these wannabe fancy editions are just that. Wannabes. Yes, I'm measuring this against my yardstick.

There's a section for Asian food on the menu. Ordering Asian here is akin to doing so at the old Island Cafe or Chatterbox. The rendition one gets will never be the same as the hawker centre/coffee shop. It will be spruced up. And it will cost easily several times more than the "street value" that many would consider exorbitant. 

This was an oxtail nasi goreng. It's a Malay styled fried rice with a chunk of oxtail. Like I mentioned earlier, one will be hard pressed to find this outside because there is no such dish. There is nasi goreng and there's oxtail whathaveyous. But not as one.

I'll trim further verbosity here. Oxtail was not bad. The nasi goreng was a respectable fried rice and not just an attempt at nasi goreng. What really impressed me what their house made achar. There was enough acidity from the pickling. The flavour was reminiscent of those that my grandma used to make and there's even string beans in them. I've never seen string beans in achar before.

Their hae mee here was exceptional. The broth had a rich depth of crustacean sweetness. Flavour was impressive and the bee hoon has all that captured in its collective strands. The bowl contains more prawns and thinly sliced pork than the "street rendition" and was honestly much tastier than most of them. There's quail eggs and lots of kang kong. I'd eat this again.

We had affogato because this was a pleasant hideout and we wanted to avoid going back out into the sweltering heat so soon. The espresso for their affogato was thick, bitter but not so aromatic as coffees go. So it kinda works with the ice cream but doesn't quite work for me as a coffee.

Steamroom with The Pillar and Stones, Orchard Central

The name is definitely unusual. Steamroom with The Pillar and Stones (#03-08 Orchard Central, 181 Orchard Road, tel : +65 6592 0571) is a retail and restaurant business. I can't see any connection between the both of them. We were just here for the food which the restaurant described as borderless. I can understand that. In another time, it would have easily been labelled fusion.

We had a petite looking and pretty tasty steak tartare. Most of the flavour came from the mustard dressing and chives and the truth is, it's not just pretty looking. It's also pretty tasty.

Steak tartare came with sourdough. These were pan fried with olive oil and butter just before they were served. God damn - these were good. The restaurant volunteered seconds for us which we readily agreed as it would have been a disservice to say no.

There's a lobster bisque based fregola that came topped with an onsen egg. The flavour on the pasta was excellent from the bisque and the fact that there was a soft boiled egg for that additional richness, this was really really good. Lots of the crustacean flavour and a little peppery heat along with quite a bit of minced crab meat.

Here's be some gratuitous egg porn. 

That's the coal smoked red snapper. At least the menu says it is. I thought it was pan fried. The fish was very good quality and very nicely done. Skin was crisp and meat was firm. Underneath was broccolini and parsley risotto. The latter was delicious and I tasted generous portions of butter that made it delicious. 

Those artichoke chips and pea blossoms on top were simply overdoing things. Absolutely unnecessary and I couldn't help but smell the blatancy of the attempt to look good - which failed. Those chips didn't even taste good. What the menu mentioned as saffron bisque which I'm guessing is that sauce thing which didn't register any saffron flavours.

The flavours and quality of the base ingredients were exceptional. I think fish, broccolini and risotto would have sufficed.

Some dietary fibres which included heirloom carrots and sweet tasting asparaguses.

The only thing we ordered that we thought they screwed up quite spectacularly was their hot chocolate. That was a little surprising considering that they did pretty well with the food we had ordered. Not so hot and not very chocolate-y. It tasted like cocoa flavoured warm milk with too much milk. Starbucks makes much better hot chocolate. Strange thing was, it came with some sparkling water. 

Oxwell & Co, Ann Siang Road

English/British fare by and large isn't so common here for some reasons. In spite of the fact that this island was once a British colony, the only culinary legacy Her Majesty's people left behind, and not by design, was Hainanese western food. 

I never knew Oxwell & Co (5 Ann Siang Road, tel : +65 6438 3984) served English food until this visit which was admittedly triggered by watching fish & chips being consumed in Broadchurch. That got a craving going on.

Pea soup was delicious. The pea-y tasting soup had a sweetness, was savoury at the same time and also a little smoky - filled with bits of pulled ham hock. 

This was their fish & fries chips. I suppose on a technicality, it's fries and not chips. Those fries were actually pretty good eating though. There was a house made tartare sauce that had dill so that kinda wins. The menu stated that the fish was Pacific ocean perch. Honestly I'm not very good at telling the difference. All I knew was that there was something about the texture that set it apart from cod or haddock. The crisp batter was salted, flavoured with something and was quite tasty.

We ordered their honey glazed carrots on the side. Not sure if that was buttermilk or sour cream or a mixture of something similar - those carrots tasted good with them together with the honey that pooled at the bottom of the bowl. By the way, that honey mixture with the carrots was also an awesome dip for those fries. Butt kicking kind of awesome. You heard it here first.