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