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