My question for you is

So what's fine dining anyway? A fancy restaurant, several waitresses attending to you, nice tall wine glass and a piece of half seared tuna the size of a nickel on a plate the diameter of Shaq O'neal's foot. Yeah well of course they made the plate look full by drizzling sauces all over it and placing one or two funny looking vegetables at the side, all this for an exorbitant sum. It's the entire experience, they'd say. I'd say, Go ahead, kid yourself.

Now how about this. Imagine fine dining in a different way; situated in the heart of Singapore, located on the streets, with passer bys and soaking in the hot, humid heat with cars whizzing by meters away from you. Hey, just treat it like al fresco dining aye?

It's special in a different sense, allowing you to really soak up the asian street vendor kind of dining and it feels good every once in a while. The place in question? Basil Aclove located on the sidewalks of Fortune Center and the chef I've read about from a few blogs is Xander.



I haven't spoken to Xander personally yet but i think the food is quite good and price is quite reasonable. For starters, take the Grilled chicken caeser salad. Now, this really caught us by surprise as we were expecting some kind of white chicken chunks in some average caeser salad. It actually turned out that the chicken was really seasoned well and grilled and there were ALOT of them. The bed of lettuce was also generously sprinkled with cheese and coated with tasty dressing. It was also brilliantly balanced with raisins which did gave it a different touch.



Mmm! Not bad for $7++ but I only wished he had eased on the dressing. It turned out to be a little too much and cloying [too jelark lar]



I ordered the chicken with avocado cream priced at $7++ but I didn't really enjoy the dish. It's pretty dissapointing that the chicken was deep fried and ended up really oily. Although the seasoning was good, thhe oil pretty much spoiled everything. One can only take in so much oil in one night right?

But alas, the avocado cream and salsa was refreshing and the cream was really tasty with none of the raw avocado taste. Sides were french beans which I totally lurrrve and mashed potato with chunks still in it [Oola!] and infused with a buttery taste.



Dad ordered the duck breast dish which came in medium done and accompanied with some red wine vinaigrette. Medium cooked duck breast? This is the first time I've heard of such a thing and medium cooked poultry is somewhat a little.. disturbing. But since Dad said that duck meat is technically red meat, well, my Dad always knows best ;-)

I still prefer my duck well done and soft and tender in braised sauce [I know lar so typically Chinese] and the only implication in having it medium done was that it was really chewy. Still, it quite creative (for a sua ku like me) and went well with the vinaigrette.



Mum and Qin ordered the cod fish which was really nicely served. The fish was [Mmm!] fresh! and it was served with a side of pink cream which tasted slightly sweet and buttery. I think it was made of beetroot is my memory serves me correctly. The salsa with mashed potato was also a good combination.

The food here is not bad considering its prices. However, it still needs a little bit of tweaking and a little more getting-right which I hope can be done in the future. Desserts will also be a nice welcome to end a good dinner. If so, the "restaurant" will start seeing larger crowds of people coming to try the food.

Address:

Basil Alcove
190 Middle Road, #01-07, Fortune Centre
63361318
Open 12pm to 10pm
Closed on Mondays

Miss Clari-who?

It rained cats and dogs yesterday [not literally because that would be scary.. and freaky.. and kind of dangerous], which kinda spoiled our day since we decided to get off our butts and shop a little. So we ended going to Raffles City where we passed by the famous donut shop. And I HAVE to say, anyone queuing up for those donuts.. gotta be nuts. Look at the darn queue! Are any donuts THAT GOOD to command such a queue?!



Maybe yeah, but I wouldn't queue up for 2 hours for my favourite min jiang kueh.. [or maybe I wooould..] I'm quite amused at the insanity of people and the see-queue join-queue syndrome which is especially prominent here in Singapore. But who am I to say right? [Predicting the flight of many donuts to his face]

Raffles City has got quite a few new restaurants, none of which interested us so Miss Clarity it was! Previous good experiences led us there again and again but alas, this time they missed.

For one, the restaurant was quite deserted, considering they were just featured on a foodie TV show just the week before, something smells fishy.



I like the $3 add-on for set meals which can get you a salad/soup, drink and a dessert. Its really quite worth it. We had the escargot which I have never eaten in my entire life. Served on a bed of sea salt, it reeked strongly of butter and it was damn oily. I'm sure escargots taste good, if cooked correctly, but I plonked 1/2 into my mouth and I thought I was gonna get hypertension. Where did those snails come from, the Dead Sea?! It was seriously salty to the max and there wasn't much flavour in it.



I ordered chicken ballotine before and it was quite good so I had it again. This time though, it wasn't stuffed with shitake mushrooms which was such a disappointment. I feel cheated. The chicken was also overcooked and was baked to almost rock hard at the ends (imagine the mushroom turned crunchy and crispy) but the sauce was the same ol good sauce was goes well with the vegetables and meat and taste a little like braised sauce. Okaaaay, I suck at this. I'm sorry I failed all my compositions okay! Just kidding. MOVING ON!



The baked rice looked unappetizing the minute or second it landed on the table. The rice looked dry and there wasn't enough cheese and sauce. To give it credit, the rice had been fried with butter. The sauce, to put it frankly, tasted horrid and sourish and was just like canned tomato sauce. The chicken, although served a generous portion, wasn't that good and had the frozen chicken taste (read: not fresh). So BIG thumbs down for this dish.



Alas, the bread and butter pudding was still Miss Clarity's saving grace. Its heavenly and thats all the description you need [but you JUST want more don't you]. The bread is soft and soaked with some kind of altered carnation milk which isn't cloyingly sweet and has a subtle taste of cinnamon. throw in a few soaked, juicy raisins in it and you've got a damn good dessert. Its just soft, warm, sweetly soaked bread with raisins that just mushes in your mouth and releases the slight milky and cinnamon-ey flavour and slides down your throat into the dark abyss called your tummy. Good enough? I thought so.

Miss Clarity attracted us in the past because it served good food at reasonable prices. It USED to be cheap but after its prices increased, I don't find it particularly cheap compared to other restaurants. In order to get back its customers (namely us), it has to start working on the quality of its dishes and people (us again) will start coming back. So, till then, Adios!

Aston

Cheap steak! But is it reaaally cheap? Good steak! Is it reaaaaally good?

Well, apparently not.

I was down at Aston's Chomp Chomp branch last week with Qin and her brother to try out their supposedly famously economically-priced steaks which aren't really economically priced as the cheapest (a sirloin) was priced at $9.90.

Cheap? I don't think sooo. Yeah sure it's cheaper than a restaurant's but the portion is notably small. Besides, we can always find good steaks at the same price in a kopitiam which reminded me that Aston's at Chomp Chomp was located in a kopitiam.



The man over the counter was quite friendly which unfortunately didn't help in the doneness of the steak. Medium turned out becoming almost-rare which was SUCH a surprise considering the thin-ness of the steak. Maybe they didn't want to overcook it. Maybe.



Chicken chop was good though. I had the BBQ chicken chop with hickory sauce which was the only thing that caught my eye. Well, actually when I saw the word hickory my mind went like "Get the hickory dammit, get the hickory dammit, get the hickory dammit". I seriously believe that I've been tastrebud-washed ever since I ate hickory sauced steak at Hog's Breath.

Hickory was yummay! Errr, which left me undecided whether the chicken was good or not. Acceptable and quite juicy I guess.



The other chicken chop with mushroom sauce wasn't that impressive with the sauce rather mild.

Oh but I have to talk about the sides. They have quite a number of sides including vegetables, salad, coleslaw, potato salad, pasta salad, baked potato, mashed potato and fries.

The coleslaw and mashed potato were quite good andddd, they were quite good anddddd, I don't know what else to say. Alas!

I don't know about the quality at the REAL Aston but this one didn't make a good impression on me.

Perth, Northbridge, Hog's Breath Cafe

The first time I had steak in Hog's Breath Cafe, I was blown away. How could a medium rare piece of meat weighing 300 grams be so soft, tasty and yet not bloody? Unlike other "medium rare" steaks which always have blood oozing out of them, the steak in Hog's Breath Cafe is so well grilled that you get the medium rare softness without the bloody affair.

Well, the reason is most probably because Hog's Breath slow grill their steaks for up to 18 hours and char them just before they are being served, causing the meat to be tender yet having that subtle charred taste. If I'm not wrong, there are two branches here in Singapore but I never wanted to try them because I'm afraid the quality will be different.



There you go, nicely done with hickory sauce on top. You just got to try it. They also offer to sides of either mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, fries, salad or vegetables. You also have an option of changing the sauce.



Look, nicely done.



Besides, they have a very kick-ass caeser salad.

Alright, I may not be an expert on steak and there may be other better steaks out there. But this place is a MUST VISIT everytime I'm in Perth. Besides, take a stroll after your dinner and enjoy the nightlife in Northbridge which is filled with other pubs, restaurants and clubs.

Perth, Fremantle, Fish n Chips

Alrighty, here we go! One place you should never miss out when visiting Perth is Fremantle. Fremantle was once a port but has since transformed into a tourist attraction with loads of restaurants, pubs, shops and of course the Fremantle Market, Automobile Museum and the old Fremantle Prison.

But one thing that Fremantle is surely famous for is it's Fish n Chips.

Ooh, it's good, trust me.



In this place called Ciceralla, you get a sit down by the jetty, enjoy the view while having a tray of freshly fried Fish n Chips. Or if you prefer the shade, sit back and relax inside where you can enjoy looking at various sea creatures swimming happily in their tanks.





Besides being fresh from the market, the fish is also not any plain ol' dory but a thick piece of snapper fillet. Yummy. Oh did I mention you can also change it to Barramundi (Seabass)? Other than Fish n Chips, Ciceralla also offers grilled items, other seafood items like mussels etc, seafood platters, and it does have a neat array of cakes and it's own gelato ice cream bar. Not bad huh?





And after you're stuffed from all the food, simply take a stroll around the place, visit the fantastic market, or just sit back on the green grass and relax which is how I like it. ;)

Simply Ridiculous

I'm pretty amazed by how a simple appearance on the television can propel an average foodstall to instant stardom. Take for example the latest foodie show "Where the queue starts" by Bryan Wong. In a few episodes back they went to review a stall at Ang Mo Kio Central which sells normal chinese rice dishes in silver hot bowls (I'm not quite sure what they're called). Well, I haven't tried the dishes there before but it looked pretty average and there wasn't any crowd to start with. After some "advertising" on the show, however, Boom! It was like the whole of Ang Mo Kio was lining up at the stall creating queues as long as 10m! They even put up temporary railings for the queues, I ain't kidding you.

Sometimes I wonder if these foodie shows really justify their good reviews? Don't get me wrong, no doubt there will definately be some gem in the masses, but I generally feel that the overwhelming media related food reccomendations have unintentionally created a feeling of falseness in their claims. I personally have eaten at a few of the "advertised" stalls and found their food to be just average. Look at the amount of advertisement we have! First we have Makansutra, then Makan Places Lost and Found, followed by a "Hao Chi Qin Bao" with Slyvester Sim on the cover and after "Where the queue starts" end, a foodie show featuring Fiona Xie is airing soon! Do we truthfully have that much good food places?! *Shrugs*

Anyways, I shall start writing my review on this place called Uno Beef House which was introduced in the latest episode of "Where the queue starts". It actually resides in a Kopitiam but occupies quite an amount of space with a fairly large amount of seating space. Upon reaching, we wanted to try the steak and black pepper chicken which included a special potato ball instead of the usual fries said to be popular among customers. After ordering though, you should have seen the ridicule on my face when the person told me that we had to wait for an hour. An hour?! For a plate of black pepper chicken in a kopitiam?! Dude, comon, you don't know how ridiculous you sound man. But since we already came so far, we decided to order and take a walk in Toa Payoh Central and come back after an hour. Since the show also featured this rojak stall in the HDB hub which looked promising, we went to get a bite. To my aghast, (yes, notice the strong word) the lady told us the minimum waiting time was an hour. OMG! What the hell was happening?! It is simply unbelievably ridiculous! An hour for a plate of rojak?! How good can it be?! Okay okay I should stop freaking out.



Back to Uno. The beef tenderloin was indeed tender and sufficiently marinated while the black pepper chicken was really very well marinated. Priced at only $5, the chicken chop was also quite a good deal. The steak however, only could only boast of it's freshness and tenderness and there wasn't a hint of red wine which there was supposed to be. The potato ball was also quite a unique replacement of the usual fries. What I suspect was that they added butter to the mashed up potatoes and deep fried them in bread crumbs giving it a very crispy soft combination with a slight buttery taste. To sum it up, the food served can be said to be top class kopitiam western food. To wait an hour for it though, I would say take your chance somewhere else cause it's probably not worth it. And regarding the rojak... I'm still finding it ridiculous.





Address:
Toa Payoh Lorong 5
Blk 51
Uno Beef House