The White Rabbit - 20 January 2012

It was our club’s first outing since the updated constitution was put in place, and it was none other than our club’s namesake himself that had the good fortune of experiencing the new rules in action. Originally, the lunch had been scheduled for January 13th, but apparently for some reasons related to dancing, Businessman was obliged to postpone the lunch by a week. Lucky for him, with the new amendments in place, he could invoke his one free postponement pass without penalty or prejudice.

Owing to the usual poor communication between driver and party, the prezzie, cameraman and I were left waiting aimlessly at the lobby for our ride. Thankfully, businessman offered his BMW640 as our ride, and we figured that all the important members (i.e. paymaster, prezzie, cameraman and writer) were present for the lunch to proceed.

Our polished flashy white car arrived at the white rabbit in playboy-esque style, although cameraman and I were rather contorted during the rider at the back of the car. For anyone taller than 1.60m, you have to spread your legs WIDE in order not to have your legs hit the back of the front seat, and according to Jason Lau, there may be some intention in this (and I figured he bought the car for this intention as well). So ladies reading this blog, a HOT TIP! Please be aware, all attires are ok for front seat passengers of BMW640s, but pants and jeans only for back seat ones (midgets are excluded of crse). If however you were unlucky enough not to own any of such items in your wardrobe, extra effort in choosing the right set of underwear will go a long way.

We proceeded to wait for our table to be prepared at the bar area which provided a magnificent view of the interior of what was once a chapel. 

 After about 10 minutes of gazing and vegetating, we were ushered to our circular booth seats at the far corner of the restaurant. 

We were provided with both the ala carte and set menus, and at this point were promptly reminded by the paymaster that notwithstanding this was the eve of the eve of the eve of the Chinese New Year, there was to be no unusual extravagance beyond the usual BMC standards. Amazingly at this point MG and Dann suddenly appeared like rabbits out of a hole just in time for lunch. I decided to throw in my 20 cents worth of table talk by reminding Businessman of the new minimum spending rules, and subtly mentioned that 6 set lunches at S$38++ won’t get him there.

Given the limited selection made more limited by the fact that they were not serving oxtail for the starter or main, our aggregate orders more or less selected most of the rest. I was rather disappointed with not being able to try the oxtail as I consider myself to be quite adept at making a mean oxtail stew (with white wine rather than red… somehow it tastes much better with white although red usually comes to mind when u experiment with red meat). Businessman also offered up 2 extra starters from the ala carte menu in order to meet the minimum spending rule.

As with most European/modern European restaurants, our meal started off with a choice of ciabatta or olive roll, for which everyone promptly chose both (seems to be the standard club order these days), and for the greedier amongst us, both and both again. Unanimously everyone agreed that the ciabatta was nothing to shout about and the olive roll was clearly the better of the 2. The butter provided was also flat out ordinary, so no point sacrificing cholesterol points here.

Of the starters that we had, the tastiest and least common was probably the baked camembert parcel. The camembert cheese went well with the sweet roasted red capsicums.

The tuna Carpaccio was so-so and at the initial glance looked more like salmon than tuna.

The rustic mushroom soup was not well taken by the party. I personally felt it was okay, but these days, most people who have been fed on the thick puree like version of mushroom soups owing to the added cream, may find this rather consommé like soup more eastern than western style.

The other starters that we ordered were the escargots and foie gras from the ala carte menu. The escargots were a disappointment, but the foie gras was respectable, although cameraman confided in me later after lunch that after swallowing a huge chunk of the liver, he felt rather sick (boys…. so you know how come there was so little to go around during lunch!).

On to the main course, we had the Spinach Tagliatelle, Mac and Cheese, Poached Seabass and a sirloin steak which was a replacement for the oxtail that was not available.

Overall the Spinach Tagliatelle and Seabass were agreeable, but the Mac & Cheese and Steak were a disappointment.

For desert, we had the warm sticky toffee pudding, Baked Alaska as well as valrhona chocolate tart. I would say that desert is the white rabbit’s best suit. The pudding I had was nice and warm with the right texture and gooiness which went well with the ice cream. 

The baked Alaska was also sweet and tasty, although there were complaints from some quarters on why the torching of the meringue was not done on the spot with a blow torch (luckily an improvisation by MG with his lighter was done on the spot).

And finally the Chocolate tart, which was also decent, but would have been excellent had it been accompanied by a good cup of coffee.

The final bill came to S$342.51, which based on the prevailing EUR/SGD exchange rate of just over 1.65 was comfortably within the club’s new EUR180 minimum spend threshold.

Overall, the white rabbit, whilst not a SLASP, is also not a likely candidate for a return trip, except maybe for desert and the ambience. The service however was excellent as we experienced this first hand. A ponding like rainfall took hold just as we finished our meal and owing to a lack of a porch, we were escorted to our car by the waiters.

Thankfully it was Dann’s E250 which took us back, as it was definitely more spacious at the back especially after a heavy meal!

By: Club Scribe

BMC Presidential Inauguration - 6 January 2012

So after a long and arduous journey, resulting in many a broken wallet, exploding waistlines and the witnessing of much subterfuge, the club and its 6 esteemed members have finally concluded the race for the newly elected 2012 BMC president, and the winner is none other than …….. Jonathan CHOO Jon Neng, aka Juice or Merc E350. (But now demanding that he be referred to simply as Prezzie or if u must use an acronym, TKY)

And lo and behold, as with all good traditions, much like the significance of wearing the yellow jersey in Tour de France, or the smashing of a bottle of champagne at the launch of a ship, the party made its way to what is now legendary hallowed ground….. SKCR (pls see pic with the 2 goonsters who are respectively now club P and VP) for the inauguration.

As with tradition, and as a show of presidential magnanimity, all club members are allowed to eat their fill to their hearts content for all food items served not only at the SKCR stall but also from any stall in the Mei Chin Food Centre, save for one condition, which is there be no wastage of food ordered. Should there be any food left over, the person who made the order will have to pay for the order.

So being the hungry beasts that we all were, the orders were made fast and furious. But some mistakes were bound to be made, and Jason Lau aka Businessman, as usual had to order his carrot cake (its like a religion for him) and in addition, 2 bowls of fish ball soup (at the instigation of Maigai who agreed with Jason that there should be some soup) and was of course left having to eat up whatever he ordered since no one else wanted to help out, except for Maigai who sheepishly helped out with the soup but not the fish balls.

I then proceeded to order 2 whole chickens, 6 plates of rice (+ additional 2 bowls), 3 plates of vegetables, and a fried grouper from one of the other stalls as SKCR had ran out of Yu Sheng.

Having polished off the entire meal save for some scraps of carrot cake and the bulk of the fish balls (poor businessman had to pay…. in my view he definitely was NOT practicing our club motto of “avarus non bardus”), we proceeded to take a healthy stroll of no more than 20m to a cleaner table to have coffee and trash out the new terms and amendments to our club constitution as proposed by the new Prezzie.

To be fair, our newly elected President, Jon came fully prepared for his proposed amendments to be made towards the club constitution. Whilst not quite on par in insightfulness with Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, or as charismatic as Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, we were still all ears to what he had to say.

First off, Jon started off by clearing off all the easy amendments, which provoked no significant negative responses. These are that -

1.  All BMC Lunches aka BML (save for presidential winner’s address at SKCR) had to be in an air-conditioned location.

2.  The respective paymaster for the week is allowed to bring a friend, subject to the paymaster being responsible for his friend’s tab.

3.  That the presidential title will be held for a period of 1 year, and following this, the next election cycle will begin.

4.  That the minimum spending per session will be fixed regardless of how many members are in attendance.

5.  That the minimum spending will be changed to as follows: 

a.    Spending will be set at a minimum of EURO 30 per member.

b.   Since we have 6 members as of the date of this publication, the minimum spending is set at EURO 180 per BML session.

c.   Verification of minimum spending condition being met will be calculated based on the prevailing EUR/SGD FX rate on our I-phone Bloomberg app (or its equivalent) as at the point of payment.

d.    There is a dual level knock-out feature (personally I think this is rather daft, but I could not get a unanimous agreement from all other members to oppose this measure). Should the EUR/SGD trade above 2.50 or below 1.00, the minimum spending condition will lapse and we will collectively agree on a new formula.

6.   That should any of the overseas members of the BML club (namely the HK president, Gilbert Chong or Shanghai president, Oon Sheng Lung)  be present during our BML, that they be offered to join us for 1 sitting - gratis, and the minimum spending for that session be raised by an additional 30 Euros.

7. Every member will be allowed one free pass to postpone his BML session to another designated date, with no questions asked. However every subsequent postponement will be at a cost of 50 Euros each to be added to his BML session’s minimum spending criteria.

Having warmed up, Prezzie then moved on to the following more dicey amendments -

8. That Dann Sim will be the official driver for all BML sessions. Jon however (wanting to cultivate the aura of magnanimity) offered to be the club driver for 2 out of the 6 sessions, for which one will be to drive Dann when he is the paymaster (in order not to be in breach of the original constitution), and for a second session of Dann’s choice. This however had to be pre-determined as Jon is of the view that Dann being a flip flopper, (oh my car is being polished today so cannot drive / will have a meeting in Tuas at 11am so no time to reach back to get the car in time / I decided to take public transport today cos I wanted to check if Lui Tuck Yew is doing his job etc etc). And so, after nearly 2 weeks, and as at press time, Dann had yet to finalise which member he wanted to designate to Jon to do the driving for. (It was Veg, then became Collin and so on and so forth).. Should the designated driver not be able to provide his vehicle for whatever reason, the driver will then be responsible to provide in full the taxi service to and from the BML location for all members.

9. That Collin Cheong is designated as the official camera man and BMC blog manager. For this he will have to ensure that a fully functional minimum 10 mega pixel camera be present at every BML session (there were some rumblings in the background that the minimum should be a DSLR camera, but that was dropped). Using a camera phone was strictly unacceptable.

10. That I (the club vegetable), had to be the designated BMC writer except during the turn when I am paymaster where Maigai the club VP will be the writer.

11. That the blog must be updated regularly and as such Club cameraman will be given 48 hours from the date of the BML session to provide the photos to the Club writer who in turn will be given an additional 14 days to provide the finalized content back to the Club blog manager (in this case also the cameraman) for his uploading within a further 48 hours.

It was at this point that Dann Sim - looking dazed for quite a while (pls see pic) after having seemingly felt how the winds of change had short changed him, and that looking back he should have seriously considered fighting on for the presidential title with more vim, vigour and $$$ - suddenly saw and pounced on an opportunity to up the ante for the Club writer and cameraman. He requested that a penalty of Euro 50 be imposed should the deadlines for updating not be met. My response together with CC was just as swift and we pointed out that if the club driver failed to drive (which is very much in his control since he drives to work daily), the penalty of the taxi fare for all members would not amount to even SGD 50 to and fro let alone Euro 50. His proposal was thus spiteful and not in the spirit of our club culture. Eventually, it was decided that the penalty be set at 10 Euros.

12. That Maigai other than being the club VP (we did not touch on the possibility that if something calamitous happened to Jon, would that mean that MG is prezzie?) is also the official Club Entertainment Officer for the club, and will be the back-up for the Club cameraman and writer during either person’s absence. His rather light responsibilities was a result of him being a so called “worthy opponent” during the title challenge, which resulted in him holding the second highest BML bill on record and in actual fact the highest total spending throughout the title challenge period. (It was definitely not his original intention to spend the most and not be a prezzie. It’s just that I think MG’s overall planning is sloppy and his mathematics is not so good)

13. That Businessman aka Jason Lau will NOT be allowed to take a ride in either the E250 or E350, since the maximum allowable limit per car is 5 persons. He will be responsible solely for his own transport to and from the BML location for all 6 sessions.

Following this, we ended our inauguration and left as a party of 5 (Jason had to go find his way back as Jon said that the new rules were immediately in force). The total bill spent by Jon at  Mei Chin Food Centre amounted to just $100.10

By: Club Scribe

Nicolas Le Restaurant - 16 December 2011

We had a decent meal at Nicolas Le on Friday afternoon. Nevertheless, the restaurant is cosy and unpretentious, a great place to unwind after a long morning at work. Service is competent and non-intrusive because by the time I reached there, my buddies had already order my set lunch of their choice! The decor and service is simple and parking can be a bit of an issue (saying on behalf of our driver, Dann).

Nicolas Joanny's cuisine is traditional French but interpreted in a lighter, delicious contemporary way. The meal started off with his homemade duck terrine (with the right amount of oil to give it a lovely all-round smoothness) with crispy bread which really served to do its thing which was to whet our appetites. I don't like bread that is baked till it's dried and crispy but with the pate of fish (I say it's tuna, but can't really tell), it was brilliant. The pate had no taste of fishiness at all, and the slight saltiness of the meaty pate complimented the hardness of the sweet bread.

I did not note down each of the courses and frankly can't remember everything I ate but suffice to say each course can still please both myself and my (fussy) dining companions.

Our photographer took a photo of the menu. My dining companions had ‘Four Tasting of the Sea’, which consisted of crunchy blue prawn pastilla, confit scallop and iberico chorizo, crustacean ravoli and chukka wakame and Iranian saffron infused asari clams soup.

They order for me quail egg “au plat” with white truffle essence. The egg had truffle oil in it, which brought out the flavour of the egg and took away the eggy staleness of the lingering taste which caused bad breath. However I still prefer Ya Kun’s egg anytime.

As for main course, most of them had Tasmanian rack of lamb with ratte potato espuma and provence style spelt risotto. The lamb is a bit hard and the taste is not to my liking. 

I had Atlantic sea cod fish with crusted with masago, caponata, taggiasche olive beurre blanc. That's a whole lot of strange names. Chorizo is the Spanish version of lap-cheong. The fish was firm to the fork but melted completely in the mouth, so smooth and soft and sweet like snow. If there is any food here that will entice me to return, this is the one, the only one.

At last for desert, we had three sweet tasting deserts which we can't wait to finish and go to the coffeeshop opposite the restaurant to have some breads and eggs. We were still quite hungry after this French set lunch as each portion looked deceptively small. 

Signed Off

Businessman