Cocotte - 22nd June 2012

Collin Cheong had made an interesting choice for this week’s BML. Cocotte, which serves rustic French cuisine is an eatery housed in the charming wanderlust hotel near the serangoon road/jalan besar area. I suspect it must’ve been because he rummaged through the dining treats and discounts offered on the various credit cards he owns. I’ve concluded that Collin has an “auntie” side to him, just like Dann, with the multitude of credit cards just to squeeze the last couple of bonus points, air miles, grocery rebates and dining discounts and deals.

So, upon our arrival at the venue, we were advised by Collin that we are all allowed to order the more expensive executive set lunch. In fact, we were “ordered” not to order the cheaper standard set lunch at S$29++ for obvious reasons. In fact, with his DBS credit card, we needed to only pay for 6 sets and our 7^th would come free. So without going into the math, Collin clearly stated that we will all order the executive set and he will further throw in a couple of Ala carte dishes to juice up the meal experience for the members.

For the set lunch starters, we collectively ordered the Frisee & Lardon Salad, the Rosette, the Escargot and the Foie Gras. For the mains, we had the Stead Tartare, Moule Fritte, Steak au poivre and the Seared Chicken Breast. And finally for dessert we had the lemon tart, crème brulee and 2 types of homemade ice cream, one being the citron flavoured and the other peanut butter and jelly.

Collin then requested for a few additional items from the ala carte menu, but was told unfortunately that this was not possible as the establishment only served set lunches during lunch. At this point he freaked out for a while knowing the financial penalty of not being able to breach the minimum spending, and after the fiasco of MG at Osvaldo, the club has already agreed to certain “steady” rules to avoid a repeat of the MG “I’d rather tell the restaurant don’t give the discount lor” syndrome. I offered a suggestion to Collin to consider opening a bottle of fine red wine in place of the ala carte dishes, but he decided against it (knowing that it will be costly) and begged the waitress to consider if some of the ala carte starters could at least be ordered. Lucky for him, the establishment agreed to let us order 2 pork rillettes and a fried tripe starter. These 2 orders thus allowed Collin Cheong to breach the danger zone.

Proceeding with the starters, the escargots in pastry were a little unusual. The texture of the snail was much softer than the chewy version you usually encounter with oven baked snails which are a more common preparation for escargots that you find in other establishments. It was not a bad starter in terms of the overall taste, but texture is quite an important aspect to consider when eating snails for me personally, and I do prefer a chewier escargot than this. Having had this dish for the first time, I was not sure if it was meant to be a hot starter or a cold starter as it was right bang room temperature, which was a little weird.  

The Frisee and Lardon Salad was a simple dish of salad greens with special smoked bacon bits that had a rich smokey flavour, topped by a perfectly poached egg. There is nothing surprising or exceptional about this dish, as what you see is what you get. A little addition of cracked black pepper would have worked well, but we forgot to ask for it.

The Rosette was a nice starter if you like cured sausages. The sausage had a good balance of flavours, neither too salty or porky or oily. It would have been perfect with a glass of white wine actually.

As for the foie gras, (we always order it, cos every darn restaurant makes it…. Arghhh), the liver could have been pan fried a little longer for a crisper outer layer. But the cherry sauce that it came with was a perfect match. Overall we felt that this foie gras dish was better than the one we had at il Lido but not quite the standard of Saint Pierre’s version.

The fried tripe was quite a treat although there were some amongst our party who were comparing it to the fired intestines they had a few weeks ago at the old airport road market. I reminded the fools that tripe comes from a cow’s stomach and the intestines we had that were fried were the small intestines of the pig, so making such comparisons is like comparing beef tongue to fish eyes. Overall, I thought the fried tripe was battered and done quite well; it was tasty and not overly oily. But being fried and being tripe, you can’t eat a whole bowl of this alone, unless you have some wine or possibly beer to accompany it.

The pork rillettes was a good dish, it was oily, meaty, and slightly salty, and as with most good rillettes, absolutely wonderful with toasted bread. However, some in the party commented that it was not as good as the complimentary rillettes that were offered with bread at Le Nicholas. It was possibly true, although I think both were close in terms of taste and quality. The best rillettes I’ve tasted in Singapore so far though are the ones served by Le Bistrot du Sommelier in Prinsep Street.

Moving on to the mains, the Steak Tartare was prepared well. The meat was fresh and lean and the condiments gave the beef added flavour, with the raw egg adding to the smoothness of the texture. The fries that accompanied the steak were very tasty as well.

As for the Moule Frite, the party agreed that the mussels were of high quality being really fresh and fat. The cream sauce was tasty and not overly heavy, although I personally prefer mussels steamed in white wine and parsley, this was good for a change especially if one likes cream based sauces.

The steak au poivre was given a so-so response by the gang. There was nothing special in the way it was done, and neither was the cut any special as well. The sauce was ordinary too. It was all round ordinary, not far improved from a steak you get at some of the better western stall joints in some hawker centres.

The seared chicken breast with black trompette mushroom cream was not too bad, provided you like cream based dishes. The breast was not overly done and so was not dry and the generous cream sauce did have a good infusion of mushroom flavour. It was a good pairing overall.

For the desserts, the crème brulee was so-so in my view. I don’t consider myself a crème brulee expert, but most of the group felt that they’ve had better tasting crème brulee’s. Somehow, I felt that the custard had quite a bit of kaya taste to it. I actually thought it was kaya infused crème brulee when I first took a spoonful.

The lemon tart was something different, and was lemony with enough tartness. It was a pretty decent dish although Dann pointed out that it was a far cry from the lemon tart which we had quite some time back as a dessert set lunch at Au Petit Salut, which we all agreed.

Finally, the homemade ice creams, i.e. the citron version and the peanut butter version were both good. The citron version was refreshing yet creamy, and the peanut butter version was rich and creamy. 

I personally preferred the peanut butter one which I chose, although I somehow felt that the jelly topping they added is not quite the perfect accompaniment to the peanut butter ice cream. In fact I felt it got in the way. It would have been better to have the peanut butter ice cream on its own or possibly with some chocolate or maybe even hazelnut sauce. I think it would’ve been perfect.

So having finished, we were all sitting around admiring the ambience of what is quite a warm, friendly and eclectically decorated restaurant, whilst waiting for the bill. When it arrived, it was at this moment that Collin started to rummage frantically through his wallet. He then realised that the auntie in him absentmindedly left the credit card at home despite his best efforts to take it out specifically from his multitude of cards and paraphernalia that was probably stuffed in his drawer. He then looked anxiously (knowing his odds were poor) towards Dann to ask his fellow Auntie if he had a DBS credit card with him, to which Dann gave his standard customary answer… “I did not bring my wallet with me”. Immediately the anguish in his face appeared like so many of an auntie defeated at the NTUC checkout for forgetting to bring the link-points card or wat not, although in this case the damage to his personal treasury for such a mistake amounted to about 50 bucks.

Total damage was about S$435 although Collin was probably aiming for S$385. Overall the food at Cocotte is fairly decent given the prices they set. The best options for lunch were probably the pork rillettes, mussels and peanut butter ice cream. But if you were to pick only from the set lunch starters, it would probably be the cured sausage if you had wine to accompany, if not then the foie gras.


By: Club Scribe

il Lido - 14th June 2012

Our party was generally looking forward to lunch organised by Businessman at Il Lido, which we were all expecting not to be one of those lunches that was just enough to make it pass the minimum spend + just a tad better than MG’s tragic choice of hosting BML at “chef daniel’s” so as to avoid a “samolah”. Secretly, I was quite surprised by Businessman’s choice as I had an inkling that Il Lido was amongst the more pricey Italian establishments in Singapore.

As we now had 6 members to ferry (Businessman is supposed to ferry himself), deciding how to make our way to the venue was proving to be a challenge. Jon agreed to do the driving together with Dann (as he is the designated driver when Businessman is paymaster) in light that this is the first outing since Erap II’s admission into the club and we have yet to rejig the new agreed logistics. Businessman tried to pull an under-table deal with Dann offering him a free dessert if he could take a free ride with Dann since there were to be 2 cars. However, being the wolves that we were, we could smell a rotten deal the moment we saw one, and so questioned point blank on why Businessman should be getting a free ride since he was supposed to go it alone logistically for all lunch engagements. We then realised it was not a free ride per se since Dann was getting an additional dessert on the quiet. To that we countered that all other members should be given equal privileges if he were to hitch a ride. Businessman countered that he would rather take a cab then, and so off I went together with Joe in a cab with Businessman.

Upon arriving at Il Lido we were greeted by a rather stunning view of the deep blue sea basking under the immense sunshine. It reminded me a little bit of having lunch at some restaurant in Italy or Greece facing out into the Mediterranean, provided you could remove the dozen and a half large commercial vessels that were floating in the waters, which marred the picture and brought your thoughts instantly back to Singapore. The waitress asked us for our reservation, which I thought was rather daft since we were the only guests and the only 7 pax party for sure. We were guided to a private corner which provided a ship filled sea view.

Upon seating, Businessman immediately asked to double check on the 50% off offer on the ANZ platinum credit card. Ha! I knew it was too good to be true for Businessman to select Il Lido without some special deal or offer to offset the cost! We were told that the offer was for 50% off but only for bills of up to $300. So based on this, Businessman instructed all members to order up to a gross total of S$67 per pax. Although this sounded like a fair amount, in actual fact it was not. Most of the mains (excluding pastas) averaged close to the 50s and most of the starters were around the low 30s. So it was a real crappy number that we had to play around with.

Making the most of the budget, Jon decided first by selecting the daily set lunch and managed to convince Businessman to allow him an excess of S$3 on his “budget” (on the pretext that he is the club president…. real lame reason in my view, but he managed to pull it off yet again) and so selected an additional goose liver starter. Most of the other members selected the goose liver for starters or the lobster cream soup. I however selected the parma ham with burratina cheese. 

For the mains, the selections were for the saffron risotto with wagyu beef cheek and asparagus, the spaghetti chitarra and an off menu item selection of spaghetti carbonara (by Businessman). Jon’s main for the set lunch was beef cheek & mash. For dessert, only Jon had what seemed to be caramelized figs in cream, as the rest of us had run out of budget. 

We started off with the customary bread, which came with a choice of either olive oil + balsamic vinegar or butter. No complaints here, but nothing out of the ordinary as well. 

We were then served a pre-starter of what I would describe closely as rock melon gazpacho, for which Jon immediately surrendered his portion to me. He mentioned that he does not drink soup that is not hot, thus exposing the Philistine in him. I readily slurped up what was quite a decent puree of rock melon which was lightly seasoned; I suppose this could possibly be a southern Italian creation which works well in hot weather. 

Following this, they served us a fried rice and cheese ball, which was crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside. You could describe it as pommosette’s (you know the frozen potato balls that you could readily find in supermarkets decades back) with cheese on steroids. I liked trashy pommosettes, and so this was quite a treat for me.

Then came the starters. I would not even bother to waste typing time on Jon’s salmon starter. 

As for the goose liver, there was all round disappointment after last week's blow out foie gras in old port sauce that everyone enjoyed thoroughly at St Pierre. The liver was pan fried well, and was tasty, but it just did not meet the standards of St Pierre both in the quality and technique in handling the foie gras. As for the accompaniments to the goose liver here, all I can say is that it was a pale comparison to the stunning old port sauce that along with the foie gras at St Pierre. The only other comment I would say is that the fried pumpkin slices were rather delicious.

The lobster cream soup however was done well and had a rich lobster taste and was slightly creamier than standard lobster bisque. The soup has bits of lobster flesh and all in all this was a very decent soup. 

The star amongst the starters however was the parma ham with burratina cheese. You can look at this dish either as a success or abject failure for il Lido. I suspect that the cheese was probably purchased from some gourmet deli, and so was the parma ham. As such, this was a dish that was assembled with the exception of the cooked peppers that formed a small bed below the cheese. So there was little skill involved in preparing this dish aside from the skill required to select the produce. Nonetheless, the selection was magnificent. The cheese was soft, fresh and delicious with a rich milky flavour, and the parma ham was also of high quality, exhibiting a rich but not overly salty flavour with a deeper red colour.

As for the mains, the spaghetti chitarra was well cooked but flavourless. It was mostly pasta and chives from the mouthful I got from Erap II. This was not what I was expecting from an Italian restaurant like il Lido. Thoroughly disappointing for a main pasta dish. 

Jon’s beef cheek was so-so, the meat was tender and well braised, but the flavour was not great. The beef cheek at Osvaldo was probably better and much larger as well. 

As for the saffron risotto, this was probably one of the better dishes. The risotto was cooked well but overall was still a little starchy and gooey.  The beef cheek pieces that accompanied the risotto was tasty (better than Jon’s), but I felt that cutting it into such small pieces was probably not what I was expecting. 

Finally, Businessman’s carbonara was probably the best main dish. It was a well-made carbonara done the traditional way without cream, but alas the party came to the conclusion that it was no match for La Strada’s carbonara.

The sole dessert (Jon’s set lunch dessert) which we had was quite good. The figs were probably cooked and caramelized slightly which made it soft and sweet. The added cream sauce was light and went well with the figs. I thought it was a pretty good dessert although Jon disagreed and felt it was not good. I would give it additional points for being a rather less common dessert. But as with all establishments, you always have to deal with the unsophisticated and barbaric sort of customer (look in the mirror Jon, yup… that’s right, but please do not think you have the body of Conan.…only the mind) who claims to want something different, but deep inside always wants the same thing like tiramisu, or panna cotta or worse… cut fruits with ice cream from a tub! And so when served something less usual, complaints that it is not good and would rather have ice-cream or what not.

We were served some decent complimentary sweets together with the bill, and the damage came to S$391 after deducting the S$150 discount that came with the ANZ platinum card.  

The best combination would probably be the burratina for starters and the spaghetti carbonara for mains. All in all, I must say that it was a disappointing meal, and il Lido is definitely a place we would probably not return to. The only justification you could get for paying such a price for such food quality would be for the ambience and view (provided you could get the ships to move out of view). Having just returned from the UK, I must say that the state of Italian dining in Singapore leaves plenty to be desired. The price we pay for good quality Italian dining is astronomical and yet, the quality is sometimes patchy. You would get far more consistency with arguably better taste and quality at Italian restaurant chains like Carluccio’s or Jamie’s Italian in the UK at a fraction of the price we pay for an equivalent meal here. I cannot wait for the day they arrive here in Singapore.

We left the venue in 2 cabs, and I asked Dann why he did not drive. With a black face he mentioned that he was done in by some goons as usual who convinced him it was cheaper to cab than to drive. I suspect that they knew it was cheaper to drive, but did not want to walk the 500m each way in the hot sun from the office to the car park where Dann’s car was parked. Dann! You should have known better! Next time ask me! ;)

PS. Followers, if the photos are not up to scratch this time it is because CC the cameraman screwed up and so we had to use his Samsung Note as the stand in camera for this meal. We have yet to decide on whether to enforce the penalty. 


By: Club Scribe

St Pierre - 8th June 2012

New member lunch debut

Following the climatic end to the 2011/2012 English Premier League season, which saw Manchester City wresting the EPL trophy from Manchester United in the final last gasp minutes Hollywood style, led some (mainly Man City supporters) to believe that this may be the dawn of a new age…

Back in Singapore, our ever so prestigious club (after a short hiatus to replenish the wallets and work off the belly) has also witnessed the dawn of a new age! The inauguration of our newest member to the club, Joseph Festin aka “Erap II”! Owing to our extreme candidate selectiveness akin in difficulty to getting into Harvard, MIT and Stanford simultaneously, Joe is officially only the 10^th person to have joined THE club! (*cheers all round J*)

Joe had originally planned for Au Jardin after deliberating for 2 weeks on where to hold his inaugural meal for the club, but was done in by the restaurant having booked Friday lunch for an event. Eventually, left with a dwindling number of options, time running out and with pressure all round, Joe selected St Pierre for his BML debut venue.

As with tradition, Dann fired the first salvo via email on the venue being a SLASP (despite apparently not being able to attend due to “customer lunch”), which gave our newbie a bit of da jitters! In any case we proceeded on our customary Friday to lunch.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by Dann arriving first at the venue (apparently customer lunch was cancelled…. what crap!) Quickly grabbing our menus, we were presented with a choice of 3 modes of selection for the set lunches. After much use of our customary haggling and pressuring on the paymaster to be generous and rip open his wallet, Joe eventually agreed that everyone is entitled up to the value of $52++. Following this, some of the more blood thirsty among us (basically everyone except myself) further attempted (though unsuccessfully) to request for a bottle of wine to be thrown in, in order to celebrate this auspicious day and to have a toast to our new member.

Collectively our selections were the foie gras and the pork belly carpaccio for starters, the Miso cod, Pan fried chicken confit and Seabream for the main, and a chocolate cake and one cheese platter for dessert.

Following our order, we were provided with the customary bread, which was accompanied by St Pierre’s very own Hazelnut infused butter, which was rich, unsalted, but not particularly hazelnutty in flavour. 

We were also served two pre-starter dishes (if that’s what it’s called), namely a really small salad dish with a slice of cheese and a cube of raw marinated salmon, which was a rather delicious morsel.

After Jon’s gobbling of his 4^th portion of bread and 2^nd helping of butter (my guess is he won’t live past 70 at this rate), our actual starters finally arrived. The pork belly carpaccio was tender, without any strong porcine flavour, and was appropriately accompanied by a rose apple sauce and pieces of crispy pork skin. My only complaint was that there was too little pork skin. 

This starter was however far exceeded by the pan fried foie gras which sat in a sea of old port sauce. The foie gras was pan fried perfectly, but the real star of the show was the old port sauce, which had an extremely rich and complex flavour that was a great combination of sweetness, saltiness and umaminess! Jon correctly ordered another round of bread to soak up the last drops of the sauce, which was worth every calorie.

Moving on to the mains, the chicken confit was given a mix review by the party. Compared to a good duck confit, the skin was not as crispy, but being chicken, the meat was tenderer, and the overall flavour was quite good. However a valid complaint was that the leg was a tad on the salty side. 

The Seabream selected by Businessman was very much so-so and was given mostly the thumbs down by the party, as it was nothing special and the fish had a bit of the muddy/sandy flavour that sometimes accompany freshwater fish. 

The real star of the mains was the miso cod. The fish was extremely fresh and had just the correct amount of miso seasoning. Too much miso might have resulted in an overly salty fish, but in this case, St Pierre applied just the right proportion, that is, enough to taste the miso, but not enough to overpower the delicate flavour and richness of the fish.

We then proceeded with the dessert and collectively gobbled down (a tiny forkful each) Dann’s flourless chocolate cake. The cake was good but not particularly spectacular considering the quality of quite a number of chocolate cakes you can find in many of the more upmarket pastry shops these days. 

Following our 15 second demolition (BML style) of the cake and another 5 minute interval, we were presented with the cheese selection. 

We were allowed 4 choices of cheese and thus selected one blue cheese, one golden cheese, one soft cheese and one other cheese selection which I cannot remember. This platter was accompanied by some dried fruits and crackers. The comments from the members were along the lines of “whoa taste of my socks” to “like my sweaty shirt after playing soccer” to “smells like a wet dog”. Suffice to say, strong mature cheese being a bit of an acquired taste, there were few cheese connoisseurs amongst us. The first items to go in the platter were the dried fruits, followed by the crackers, and then the bowl of salad leaves, and finally, I had almost half of the cheese platter left to myself. Having the reputation as the club rubbish dump, I had little choice but to upkeep my reputation and finish the platter. My particular preference was for the soft and blue cheese.

Lastly we were served what was excellent coffee with shapely sugar squares to end the meal. The damage for the meal came to S$435 which was well within the spending floor as set by the club rules. Overall, the party was unanimous on the decision that the best combination for eating at St Pierre would be to select the foie gras and cod fish and skip dessert altogether.

 As a parting note, Jon our current president mentioned that Festin had the characteristics and was possibly a worthy contender as a future potential club president, much along the lines (although not really quite yet) of our Shanghai and HK presidents, Sheng Lung and Gilbert. To this we agreed and decided to confer him the nickname of “Erap the second or Erap II” in line with his semi Pinoy (that’s Filipino for those of you philistines reading this that do not understand) heritage. Erap by the way is the nickname of the infamous ex Filipino president Joseph Estrada. So Philippines may have been unlucky to have had President Joseph “Erap” Estrada, but we hope we’ll be lucky to have President Joseph “Erap II” Festin as our club president one day! We look forward to your future generosity and would not mind becoming your midnight cabinet (Estrada style) one day!

By: Club Scribe