Lunch @ Jaan, Swissotêl The Stamford

This place probably looks a lot more prettier at night when the hours after dusk dims the details of the cheap looking walls and the not so posh looking decorations of the restaurant. It doesn't look bad in the day, it's just a lot more dull than I was led to believe from pictures I've seen. Jaan can be found at the 70th floor of Swissotêl The Stamford in the Equinox Complex. The restaurant looked like a small dining room that sits maybe about 40-50 (?). The entrance is connected to the elevator via a small passageway on the main landing of the complex and reservations I believe are necessary. The Murano "Wave" chandeliers in the restaurant are unique looking rows of glass lightings on the ceiling which are shaped remotely like....waves. In the day, it looks quite dull and cloudy but I suppose the attraction of them comes in the night when it is actually lit and when one is already and partially mesmerised by the scintillating skyhigh view of the city to notice the non-flattering details. 

Did lunch with fatpig. Equinox offers a 3 course lunch package at $35+++ (or was it $38?). Food was really good although it came in fine portions. If it were larger, I'd probably sink into lethargy and that's not good for a work day. Lol. The service was what I would describe as sculpted marble. Carefully shaped and doesn't emit warmth. If you're on a schedule or like your food to arrive fast, this isn't the place to be. I spent approximately 2 hours here.

We were served bread and water approximately 15 minutes or so after we've made our orders. I'm not sure what took so long but to venture a guess, it's probably to give time for the butter that is already placed on the table shortly after we've ordered to soften. Jaan serves a small variety of bread ranging from walnut loaves, wheat and honey ones, regular baguette and a pretty tasty and triangular sesame covered bread which was pretty fragrant and looked like a small Lembas bread. Feel free to ask for more to tide the waiting time because this place does leisurely lunch. The walnut loaf however was quite dry and tasted like reheated loaves instead of fresh ones.

Appetizer was a Pastilla of Confit Duck Leg with Sweet and Sour Raspberry Jus, followed by a petite sized main of ribeye with pink garlic crème and truffle parmesan rizoni.

Pastilla of Confit of Duck Leg

Ribeye

Pastilla as I've learnt recently is like fried poh piah. A pastry fried skin which wraps around minced meat fillings. The filling of minced confit of duck leg was delicious and juicy. The raspberry jus worked wonderfully with the dish and made it more appetizing. I wonder what that token handful of greens on the top really meant to the dish. A poorly conceived decoration or because vegetables are good for you. Because if it serves the latter purpose, we need to have more than that small handful.

Jaan did a very delicious ribeye. I have two gripes with it. Firstly, it is puny as a steak. Secondly, medium rare does not seem to be in order and I vaguely recall that the last time I had such an experience, it was in another French place. The doneness was more like medium. Despite that, it was rjuicy with a good beefy flavour. Against the recommendation of the server for Red Port jus, I picked pink garlic crème which I thought was a good choice. The truffle parmesan rizoni was nice. Me being a sucker for cheesy things. All in all, it was an enjoyable steak that should have been much bigger.

Dessert was a marinated pineapple in vanilla with dry figs, blood orange granité and tomato foam. I swear the foam tastes nothing like tomato. Doesn't even look remotely tomato-y to me. The combination of the figs, granité, foam and pineapples did make interesting textures in a mix of smooth and granular sensations padded with a foamy citrus feel. Not bad.

So lunch at Jaan is pretty good. A little hefty in prices for lunch, but enjoyable.

Dessert @ Garibaldi

This Italian eatery located along Purvis St. has been a landmark of sorts for Italian cuisine. I have unfortunately not had the opportunity to eat here, but doing desserts is I guess a good start. Lol.

Panna cotta

Tiramisu

I'm not generally big on panna cotta and have only had it in a couple of occasions in recent times, so I can't really talk much about it. I don't even know how an authentic one is suppose to taste like. Garibaldi's rendition of the dessert comes in a firm jelly like texture and a slight hint of what I thought to be citrus. The tiramisu here like tiramisu elsewhere stands on its own standards. The difference here is that it comes with a dark chocolate shell filled with more...dark chocolate. In liquid form. I had originally thought that the cream colored sauce to be just plain vanilla, but it tastes exactly like the panna cotta. The hollowed chocolate ball is again, dark chocolate, but is filled with Baileys. Which is a small but pleasant surprise.

Yet Con, Purvis Street

I've always thought that this restaurant down at the Beach Road end of Purvis Street only sold chicken rice since it was the only thing that's visible from the shop front whenever I happen by. Apparently they're also known for their steamboat. Not so common for a chicken rice/steamboat place. Judging from the crowd the place seemed to be pretty popular. From what I've gathered, this establishment has been around for a really long time. The setup of Yet Con was an old styled coffeeshop (marble top tables still) with air conditioning. On several of the tables are the gas piped steamboat cookers along with chicken rice condiments like the chilli, ginger and soy sauces.

What theh had were pretty average tasting steamboat items which were affordable. The chicken rice was quite decent, though the meat was dry. Original Hainanese style? The chilli sauce here was flat tasting and only mildly spicy. I do mean mildly. No complains otherwise though. The steamboat had a broth that tasted like chicken soup. Wasn't too impressed with the offerings of the steamboat but didn't actually explore if they had better options to top up. It came with a small portion of assorted meat like cockles, squid, chicken and beef with a couple of eggs and some vegetables which have seen better days. I was told that the steamboat is popular here?

The verdict was that this was nothing exceptional. It's average tasting food at affordable prices. Maybe it's good for nostalgia.  Dinner for 3 which constituted chicken for 4 persons, 2 bowls of rice each and a serving of steamboat and drinks was about $38.

Waraku, Starhub Centre

The last time I visited Waraku was last September. Today's visit also marked my first at the restaurant that isn't in Marina Square. And they have new items on the menu which I haven't seen before like spinach cream udons.

I ended up with something which is rather mundane because it looked pleasing on the menu. I know I shouldn't be trusting those Photoshopped images. Here's the Sakura set, mentako yaki and some fried vegetable & squid thingy which I have forgotten what it's called .

sakura set

mentaiko yaki

The Sakura comes with a bowl of creamy soup udon and scallops, a bowl of rice with shredded egg and salmon roe and a side of pickles. This is one of those occasions where I didn't finish up because there was too much to be had. The carb alarm must have gone off and somehow, I missed it. Rice, udon and that creamy soup..... . Between the rice and the udon, I actually think that the former was tastier with the salmon roe injecting flavor into the rice and eggs. As for the bowl of udon, the main draw for me was actually just the scallops. I found the udon much to chewy and thick. Which probably is a preferential thing as they're not poorly done. I just don't think I'm an udon person.

The menu describes the mentaiko yaki as burnt cod roe which seems to be pretty accurate of how the roe was served. The skin of the roe was dry with some char marks. In the department of taste, I've run out of interesting descriptions. It's salted cod roe that's been slighly charred. I'm sure one can imagine how that would be like. Unlike the one at Aoki which was not fully cooked, the roe here held it's shape firmly when pressure was applied. The texture of the eggs were however more grainy. The fried vegetable & squid cake tastes exactly like how it looked.

Aoki, Shaw Centre

Named after the restaurant director Kunio Aoki and designed by a Japanese interior architect, this minimalist designed yet stylish Les Amis restaurant is located alongside the parent Les Amis and sister La Strada along Shaw Centre right beside Pacific Plaza. Fronted by a the sombre dark exterior, the interior furnishing of Aoki is largely done in wood providing a warm sanctuary of zen like enclosures which separates dining booths for the visitors of the restaurant.


The dining areas of Aoki are separated into three main sections. First of which are several alcoves of private space shielded by wooden sliding doors along the main passage after the entrance. The same corridor also leads via a short flight of steps to the bar counter where one can watch the chefs in their dangerous knife art. Behind the bar counter are more private dining rooms which I did not get to explore. The restaurant was manned by a host of very polite and attentive staff, a portion of which are real Japanese. What I had really appreciated about the service in this restaurant was that their wait staffs, while attentively observant and barely out of sight were also not intrusive by keeping a distance. This made the eating experience here a largely pleasant one

I had lunch today in one of the hauntingly peaceful (the weather helps) booths by reservation with courtesy of sinquanon88 of HWZ. These booths were just the alcoves of private dining space which I have mentioned earlier with the shielf of sliding doors that separates the said booths from the main corridor. The walls of the booth facing the sliding doors are of a fogged glass which, when catches daylight creates a ethereal wall of impenetrable mist; the illusion of a permeable backdrop with bamboo silhouettes just behind the wall of opacity.



Aoki does lunch sets and has an accessible menu from their website. Their lunch sets are priced ranging from $30 to $60. We went with the Mazechirashi and the Shokado sets and decided on some add ons. These came in the form of fermented sea slug intestines, spicy cod role and uni sushi.

Fermented sea slug intestines

I didn't have any idea how these things would taste like before today. I didn't even know how a sea slug looks like. I was assuming that they would be small sea cucumber like mollusks and it would hence require quite a few of them just to get sufficient intestines for the dish. The taste we noticed was also strongly masked by the use of very salty soy sauce and a raw quail egg. I could imagine that without the use of those, the long semi-rubbery intestines would have a rather overpowering fishy flavour. Pretty thankful that the portions were tiny.

mentaiko

These spicy cod roe were soft and heavily salted and had noticeable heat. It was with sheets of dried seaweed which was used to wrap the roe along with sliced strips of zucchini; presumably for the offset of the saltiness of the roe. The skin of the mentaiko was soft and the eggs misshapen when pressure is applied to them.

Uni sushi

The uni sushi here costed $24 for two. It was pretty good, but surprisingly not even Akashi good.

Shokado ($38)

Mazechirashi ($35)

Their Mazechirashi came with very generous portions of cubed raw fish toppings. Salmon, mackerel, tuna, tamago, sliced zuchinni and other fish which I've either forgotten or cannot identify. On the side, grated wasabi. Underneath the bed of raw fish were also fine strips of seaweed which blanket the rice at the bottom of the bowl. I was really quite pleased with how this turned out. I had thought that lunch was usually not a good indicator of how good a restaurant could be. Apparently inn Aoki, there was considerable efforts made in their lunch sets. Each of the lunch sets came with a side of pickles, a prawny miso soup and dessert.


I mentioned prawny miso soup earlier because the soup does in fact come with a prawn head. Besides surprising unwary drinkers there is actually a rather robust flavour of prawn in the soup. In fact, that prawn flavoring was probably greater than that of the miso. Another pleasant surprise.


Dessert from lunch came with a delicious pumpkin custard pudding topped with a raspberry, a scoop of melon sorbet and plum jelly. It was so good that I wished there was more, but I suppose these good things are usually better in small portions. Lol. The melon sorbet was very flavourful, but it didn't taste like any melon which I knew of. That plum jelly which was also rich in the flavours.

I was really pleased with this lunch at Aoki. This was probably one of the lengthier write ups I've done on lunches which meant that it left a pretty deep impression for me to say what I had to say. Be advised that it doesn't come cheap.

I visited the washroom before leaving and noticed that they had an interesting wooden basin with dry towels on the side. Nice.

Buko Nero, Tanjong Pagar

Bummer! No photography was permitted by Buko Nero. I was informed that they have in recent months started disallowing photography of the food and the restaurant. What's up with that? I was hoping that since a picture is supposedly worth a thousand words and I could save myself from typing stuff that'll be stinging at your bleary eyes as you read this in the dead of the night.

Consolation was that I had managed to snap a few shots before one of the owners, Tracy came to inform of their policy against photography. I've waited almost a month for this seating after numerous frustrating attempts at calling the place with no one picking up the phone.

iPod Nano mounted onto speakers

A table's eye view

A peek into the kitchen

Pink guava juice

tableware

Buko Nero is a tiny family restaurant helmed (haha!) by it's tonsure baring chef Oscar. The space could seat what I estimated to be about 20 or so. The waiting time for food here was excruciating. Reservations was made at 7.30pm and by the time we hit the main course, it was about 9.30pm. I understand what it is to take the time and enjoy the food and I'm aware that this place isn't exactly well staffed. Still it grated. Be sure to bear in mind that good company is of the utmost importance at Buko Nero.

The menu didn't look particularly interesting and I was not sure what I was expecting either. So I ended up with the set dinner for the night at $38++, swapped the pasta main for a bacon & steak with blueberry sauce with a supplement of $16 (wtf!) and shared their oft mentioned Buko Nero Tau Kwa Tower with fatpig. I was told that it was possible to do dinner here for $40 so that was pretty much what I expected to pay, thinking that it was rather reasonable. My portion of the bill came up to $70. Kinda pricey.

Buko Nero serves a nice bread. It was small, hot and a little oily. But also nice. And free flow. Beats bread from many other places. The starter was a "lemon juiced" beef carpaccio blanketed with pomelo and topped with alfalfa with a smear of balsamic vinegar. It's a smear because the vinegar came literally as a smudge on the bowl, which meant that there wasn't much of it to go round even with such delicate portions. It was ordinary as carpaccios go

Following that was a pumpkin and crab soup with mint. The sweet pumpkin soup was served in a bowl the size of a Chinese teacup and had succulent crab meat. We also had a palate cleanser of a mango and lime sherbet which tasted weak and diluted.

The Tau Kua Tower appeared like a small tau kua pile. For $17, was expensive. If you're familiar with the squares of tau kua that can be bought in wet markets, you'll be getting a slice of that. A slice which was probably a quarter to a third of a whole block of it.


This steak wrapped with bacon was pretty decent. To the credit of the chef, it arrived at a proper medium rare. It however lacked the juiciness which I was hoping for. The blueberry sauce did not have much flavour we ended up tasting more bacon.


Dessert was an impressive chocolate and coconut cake with gula melaka coulis. This was one of the best application of brown sugar I've had. In spite of appearances (yes, the poor photography was to be blamed too), the hot crusty surfaced cake was soul warming. It's on the regular menu apparently and I would recommend it.

In all, a passable meal with very good service. Which still didn't quite make up for the waiting time and the considerably pricey bill. Could have had dinner at a place like Sage. However I just don't see myself going through the trouble of doing another reservation again for the prospect of a really small menu.