Dinnering at The Lokal

I just realized that the last time I was here was almost three years back. In retrospect, we were glad that we came for dinner because we liked the food.

What did we like? Pretty much everything we ordered this time. Starting with their creamy chicken parfait with lots of bread to go around and caramelised onions to pair with. There's even house cured pickles.

This was just called fried pork belly on the menu. There's also blue cheese, obviously some radicchio, quinoa, some delicious beetroots and prunes. While it might not be apparent from appearances, the pork belly was pretty tender underneath that crisp skin. Like the chicken parfait, portions were hearty and the food was delicious. Much bold flavours going on for this plate.

Here's cauliflowers three ways - fried, pickled and pureed. Tossed with watercress, ricotta and skinned almonds. Can you imagine that? Skinned almonds. All whipped up with some nice olive oil. Tasty.

The only main we picked up was their lamb chops which came with some spicy couscous, pomegranate and yoghurt. Served on a Staub, no less. Each rib was small, tender and grilled to a nice medium doneness.

Octopus pizza and tagliatelle alla bolognese from 2it & drink

My first octopus pizza. One with olives and potatoes and a little bit of parsley. I don't understand potatoes on pizza but I can't say that this wasn't tasty. Double negatives! O_o Would have been great if there were more of the octopus though.

Alla bolognese is something I generally avoid for reasons that I'm not going into in this post. This particular one from 2it & drink was actually kinda nice. I liked that the ragu was actually beefy rather than too tart from too much tomato concentrate. In all probability, I'm never getting anything close to my grail for ragu in this country but I honestly don't mind having another plate of this.

The Butcher's Kitchen, Suntec City

I have mixed feelings about this place (#02-472 Suntec City Mall, 3 Temasek Boulevard, tel : +65 9616 0111). But let's start with a positive note. I liked their Hawaiian pizza. It had thinly sliced fresh pineapples rather than the usual little chunks of the canned variety and the ham that they used was of a much better quality than most if not all the other Hawaiian pizzas. The crust was thin and light, not Neapolitan styled, but had sufficient crisp and I enjoyed it.

This was where the good feelings about the place kinda diffused. The restaurant presented themselves to be a specialist for meats. The various cuts that they were offering had their origins listed on the menu and it did look to be a proper grill joint. But we were given butter knives to work with the meat. Their rack of lamb, decent quality by the way, was doused in a brown sauce. I'm sure it's not just me but I would think that a meat and grill specialist would treat their produce with a little more respect by having the sauce on the side. Even Aston's knows better.

Chicken rice and Hokkien hae mee from Chatterbox

I've finally tried the much talked about chicken rice from Chatterbox. I think the taste was okay. Okay as in passable quality and flavour but not outstanding kind of okay. Chicken came in pretty generous portions for something that's single serving. It'll be my first and last time because I expect much more out of $27 than just decent. 

We tried their Hokkien hae mee. I'm going to call it not bad at all. The plate of noodles was slightly saucy, properly stir fried without any sogginess and we're seeing lots of ingredients in there. There're scallops and huge prawns which one will never find in the hawker renditions as well. The chilli that they provide on the side was pretty good. This costs as much as the chicken rice if anyone's wondering so while I kinda liked this, I don't think I'll be having them with any regularity.

Pancake Boss, Bugis Cube

The portions that Pancake Boss (#04-15 Bugis Cube Mall, 470 North Bridge Road) makes for their martabak were unexpectedly large. Fillings were much more generous than the one from JTown Cafe but something was off from the way the prepared these. The chocolate rice and cheese shreds barely melted even though this was freshly made on order. I need to go back to JTown again to be sure which is the better.

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.