Botanico at The Garage, Botanic Gardens

Someone(s) out there spent a lot of time, money, blood and sweat to build this restaurant (Level 2 The Garage, 50 Cluny Park Road, tel : +65 9831 1106). And then they built a website that they thought it deserved to introduce it to the world. Which is why I won't be doing it. Here's a link.

But here's what I think of it. Their ideas are good. Execution is in my not so humble opinion, not so. 

oyster | avocado jalapeño emulsion | smoked salmon roe

Oysters with avocado puree would be what I would call it. Not getting any smoke from those puny portions of roe or the jalapeño. Was hoping for the shellfish to be more chilled. I'm not an expert on oysters so I'll just say they're not bad. 

pork belly | charred pineapple | sherry glaze

Their pork belly was a sweet, savoury and fall apart tender kind of nice. But for what they charged, I was hoping that it would be outstanding rather than just nice.

lamb tartare | capers | mustard ice cream

I liked the idea of lamb tartare because I generally like lamb and I thought this might be on to something. While it was obvious that it's meat, I couldn't identify what meat it was. Too much marination perhaps. Not traditional tartare in terms of spices but the creamy mustard ice cream worked. Not getting the smoked olive oil too. As a dish, it was fine. As lamb tartare, this was forgettable.

Those cheesy crackers that came with the lamb were nice though.

roasted pigeon | risotto | walnuts

There was a roasted pigeon with risotto made with pigeon jus, onions and mozzarella cheese. The rice had a flavour that reminded me of French onion soup. Which was not surprising considering that the soup was essentially a beef stock, onions and some cheese. I liked this. The bird was nicely roasted to a medium doneness and properly salted. Possibly the only impressive dish we had.

carabinero | saffron mellow rice | pork crackers | pine nuts

Those carabinero prawns were tasty. Crustacean-ily flavoursome as one would expect. The rice was sweet. Loads of sweetness coming from some crustacean stock and from what we were tasting, totally devoided of salt. So only the prawns were nice.

jalapeño ice cream | bacon financier | Sarawak pineapple | coriander

Ice cream was not bad. Tasted that jalapeño flavour through the creaminess. Not sure what's the deal with the bacon financier thought. It would seem that Botanico isn't very different from a bunch of other restaurants in town; attempting to slap up some interesting combinations of ingredients and flavours on the menu without any responsibility of having to live up to what they have claimed. 

malt ice cream | 70% dark chocolate | Guinness stout | thyme

Couldn't taste the malt in the ice cream. That's just sad right? They've probably wasted the Guinness as well in whichever item that was suppose to have stout. I'm getting the thyme and chocolate though.

I thought it was a pity that the food didn't quite work out. There was a pleasant outdoor seating that even had air conditioning which I would have wanted to try if there was a possibility of returning. They even pour a nice moscato that was less overpriced than most others by glass.

Trippa from Saizeriya

Saizeriya has tripe on the menu. Must have been a recent thing. No it's definitely not the best or even one of the better one around. Sadly. But one doesn't come here looking for great quality. The flavour from the tripe was a little lacking, however the tomato based broth packed more than a little bit of heat. With a generous application of their powdered Parmesan cheese and some pepper, one can also pretend it's almost a trippa alla Fiorentina with chilli.

A Diwali brunch at Zam Zam

So we spent our first meal of Deepavali at Zam Zam (697-699 North Bridge Road).

We've never been able to get past their mutton murtabak. The mince crusted texture and flavour sufficiently defined that I could eat this without gravy. One of the things that makes Zam Zam better than most if not all of the rest is that they don't get lazy with the onions. Those onions are diced small enough and sufficiently sweated to a pleasant sweetness. Something that I find most of the stalls making murtabaks never figured out for some reasons.

They've a nice creamy kurma on the menu too. Mutton was a dusky pink and fork tender. A good rendition but definitely not the best around. 

What do we have here?  A briyani it appears to be.

Fish briyani. It's fried mackerel with a tangy gravy that's flavourful with onions and a moderate heat from the spices. There was much more of that gravy than there was enough rice to go around.

Very little beats a milky sweet teh tarik to wash down all that food.

Noo Cheng Adam Road Prawn Noodle, Zion Road Riverside Food Centre

For quite a while, I could never figure out if this stall (Stall 4, 70 Zion Road) was Noo Cheng Adam Road Prawn Noodle or if they were simply call Fresh Taste Prawn Noodles.

There's a batch of big assed prawns on ice at the front of the stall. That's a preview of the kind of prawns one can possibly get with their bowl of prawn noodles. Needless to say, the cost of the bowl is commensurated by the size of those bugs.

This was a $16 bowl. It came with two of those large prawns - each half of those makes two mouthfuls of springy prawn meat. There're braised pork ribs and pig skin and the bowl is topped with fried lard & shallots. The broth was delicious. Flavourful, spicy and heart warming.

Amò, Hong Kong Street

I remember reading somewhere about Amò (33 Hong Kong Street, tel : +65 6723 7733) - about them being by Beppe De Vito and the Il Lido Group. The first thought that came across my mind was that they're probably expensive. But we ended up visiting anyway.

No bread, but we got olives. Stuffed with garlic I think. Pretty salty and it succeeded in getting us to order some of their Moscato d'Asti which did little to quench our thirst. But we enjoyed the floral sparkling white anyway.

We had a starter of zucchini flowers. The menu described mortadella, pistachio and lemon honey. Some of those pistachios were sugar crusted. I'm assuming that they meat mousse in the flower to be the mortadella. It's nice. Luncheon meat and salted egg in a mousse texture kind of nice. Kinda pricey too.

Pizza was passable. This one had wild garlic pesto and anchovy salsa verde. And bone marrow which we couldn't quite taste. And sliced baby beets and some pink stemmed leaves that lent neither texture nor flavour to the pizza. I'm pretty sure plain old arugula would have worked better.

The outstanding item we had was their grilled sea bass. A fresh fish without much to distract from the flavours. Very competently done and very enjoyable fish. The greens on the side were tossed with olive oil and salt so that scored some points because it wasn't just token or decoration on the plate.

The fish came with what was described as a mint casserole. Which didn't taste like it had mint except for a tiny sprig on top. This tasted cheesy/buttery; had artichokes, fava beans and tiny strips of guanciale I think. Not bad, but the mint casserole name seemed out of place.

Chow Kee (秋记), Tiong Bahru Food Centre

I have never noticed this stall (#02-37) before, but then again, I don't come to Tiong Bahru FC often enough to have remembered every one of them. Anyways, they do hor fun, sang meen and mui fan with either sliced beef or seafood. Here's a look at their sliced fish hor fun. The gravy that they ladled over had cabbage flavour; which wasn't something I had expected. The entire plate was light on salt. While it wasn't anything to write home about, I thought it was pretty edible. Went down easily with those pickled green chilli.