The Song of India - 2nd March 2012

Despite the non-discriminatory, democratic, and open minded nature of our club, amazingly for all of its history, this is only the second time we have picked an Indian restaurant for a BML! (first time was at Vansh) Nope, we are not racists; it’s just that some amongst us are slightly allergic to Indian food. But since the reign of the dictatorial regime of Jon “TKY” Choo, all pleas such as “huh Indian food for BML?” or “Can try something else or not” have been broadly swept aside, and his democratic offer for those dissenting is simply “it’s ok, don’t force yourself to come if you don’t like!” (done grinning and laughing with pleasure …..just like the devil)

On some level, I had to agree with Jon on his choice this week as well as his offer to those not wanting to come. I personally like Indian food quite a fair bit, and just like some who practice being vegetarian once in a while, or fasting once in a while, for me it’s Biryani more than every once in a while.

As with tradition (being the poor planner that he is) Dann could not make it back in time (despite knowing – in advance for the rest of the year - that he is the designated driver 4 outta 6 weeks almost every Friday!) and we thus had no choice but to flag a cab to the venue.  The restaurant is wonderfully set in what I suppose you can consider as period housing. Dann was already seated as the 4 of us entered the restaurant. Shortly after, businessman arrived and complained about the shitty state of parking affairs for this establishment as he had no place to park his beautiful brand new charcoal grey 4.7l/434hp monster of a Maserati GranTurismo S, but to go valet at Sheraton hotel just down the road.

We proceeded to order for starters the Murg Paprika Tikka and Adraki Chaapen, which is the chicken pieces, marinated in yogurt and grilled lamb chops infused in a mixture of spices.

Both were excellent, with the chicken remaining succulent, juicy and tender with a mild yogurt flavour, and the lamb being a real treat with a robust but not overpowering lamb flavour, which went very well with the spices infused in the meat. Despite the somewhat dry look of the lamb chops when presented, the meat was actually very tender, although some bits of meat was difficult to reach or was stuck to the bone.

And just like a party of Mughal princes, for the main dishes and dessert, we ordered the following –

(Please note that the sumptuous orders was more a symptom of the fear of under-spending by Jon Choo due to a 25% discount available on the Amex card, rather then any special generosity on his part)

Seafood:

Malabar Fish Curry

Chettinad Prawn Curry

Lobster Moily

Meat:

Chicken Tikka Masala

Nalli Ghosht

Vegetables:

Baingan Bharta

Paleek Paneer

Starch:

Plain Naan + Garlic Naan + Mushroom & Truffle Oil Naan

2 x Saffron Rice

Dessert:

2 x Malai Kulfi

1 x Alphonso Mango Kulfi

For the seafood, the Prawn Curry was a total waste of our order. For this, we have none other than Dann to blame as he was looking forward to ordering something that someone else does not eat so that he could fulfill his dream of feeling what it felt when we ordered beef.

The Malabar fish curry was however quite decent, with the fish pieces being chunky but not dry. The curry was also creamy with a little bit of spice. The lobster moily was again another order which we could have done without. (Again Dann’s fault as he wanted to make sure Jon’s wallet takes a heavy blow) There was nothing wrong with it, except that it was a tad over-cooked and whilst the accompanying creamy sauce was tasty, the whole dish was just not worth the S$50+ price tag.

For the meat dishes, the Nalli Ghosht was wonderful. Our party was unanimous is agreeing that the lamb/mutton dishes were the specialty of this establishment. The meat was tender and fell off the bone, and the gravy was rich and tasty. The chicken tikka masala (apparently a british favourite when I was still in London) was also well cooked with a mix of chopped vegetables. The meat was well marinated, tasty and very tender.

For the vegetables, the eggplant (Baingan Bharta) was so-so. The eggplant was finely chopped, but lacked texture. I suppose such dishes were invented also because they were a good complement to naan.

As for the palak paneer, this dish was well made, with fresh cottage cheese and lots of ground spinach. You could taste the richness of the spinach, which is sometimes lacking in other palak paneers I’ve had where there is too much ghee and other additives added, which gets in the way of the spinach. The only criticism I have is that it could have done with a tad more salt. 

The naan breads were oven toasted to perfection. Thoroughly cooked with none of the doughy bits you sometimes have in undercooked areas, and despite this, it did not suffer from over burnt corners. The quality of the flour was also good as the taste of the naan did not give off any of that starchy powdery/floury taste, which I dislike.

The saffron rice was also fantastic. Grainy and fragrant, it was rice at its best. The unfortunate thing however was that our main dishes would have gone well, or maybe even better had we opted for plain rice rather than saffron rice as the combination of the main dishes with the saffron rice was almost too rich. My advice would be to stick to plain/garlic naan and plain rice if you are likely to have many gravy based dishes. We actually ended up wasting a fair bit of the gravy, for which I believe a lot of cooking effort had gone into, because the flavourful rice and naan’s we had reduced the need for much gravy.

Coming to dessert, we ordered only 2 portions of their house kulfi and 1 portion of a mango kulfi to share. Kulfi is a bit like Indian style ice cream, and The Song of India’s version is definitely one of the better kulfi’s I’ve tasted. Very creamy and tasty yet not overly sweet. The mango version resembles a hybrid between a popsicle and ice cream, and is apparently made with Alphonso mangoes (which are one of the favourite mango varietals amongst Indians). A real treat, especially in our hot/humid weather.

Our bellies were at the point of bursting by the time we called for the bill. Total damage was a mere S$353, which was a steal considering the copious amount we ordered and ate. Of course this was thanks to businessman’s 25% discount card courtesy of Amex, which saved Jon a massive S$105 if I remember.

Upon leaving the restaurant, Jon (high on curry and spice) decided to attempt at replicating a Hindi movie “dance around a tree” move with one of the pillar’s at the front entrance. He obviously failed badly as his moves looked more like an old uncoordinated pole dancer in Patpong.

Whilst Collin was busily filming Jon’s less than elegant dance moves, Dann was faced with a small predicament as there were 5 of us that needed to be ferried back. Hoping for lady luck to be on his side, he asked businessman if he would be so kind as to ferry the club president back to the office, since as president he should have the opportunity to ride in the new maserati. Unfortunately for him, businessman was not going back to One Shenton, and so Dann had to live with the consequences of his poor planning and pay for 2 cabs back to the office. The result of his poor planning led to a total damage of S$30+ for Dann, and lots of time wasted waiting for cabs for the rest of us.

I dare say I was full right till dinner and even then I could not stomach my customary portions during dinner. The Song of India is definitely one of the better Indian restaurants in Singapore, although there is much more Indian cuisine that the BMC must explore before we can conclude on the best.

By Club Scribe

La Strada - 3rd February 2012

This is our club’s 3^rd visit to La Strada! The first was by ex-President Sheng (now president of the one-man shanghai branch) and the second was by Gilbert (now president of the also one-man HK branch).

Having had the utterly poor foresight to join the club late, Collin Cheong was unfortunate not to have had the opportunity of the earlier La Strada visits. So with the establishment finally re-opening its doors after some renovations which has seen the place halved in size (the private room which we took during our previous visits has now been turned into a Viet restaurant), CC decided that it was time for him to try out for himself, what can plausibly be considered one of our club’s favourite Italian joint.

As per the agreed driving roster, Jon was the designated driver for the day. Along the way, MG enquired if Dann would be so kind as to consider deferring his BML scheduled next Friday till the following week as he would be up in HK for a wedding and as it so happened to be, to also collect his HKD 6,000 cash grant by the HK government. Dann in his attempt to be accommodating considered the request and asked if such a deferral would constitute a consumption of his free postponement pass. To this, Jon and I deliberated extensively for about all of 2.5 seconds and retorted … YES! So Dann in his further pretense of trying to help MG out asked if he would pay for the EUR50 penalty should Dann really need to make a further postponement, to which MG replied instantaneously (without deliberation)… “Of course not la!” Jon and I then added fuel to the debate telling MG what a cheapo he was. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and in this case MG was obviously trying to attempt at achieving the unachievable. We pointed out further that why not he request for a postponement of the wedding in HK, or for that matter, since he was going to receive HKD 6,000 that he should consider throwing in at least a SGD30 sweetener (since the value of his meal is at least EUR30) for Dann and the club. To this MG claimed that he was going to pass the HKD 6,000 to his dad (To Mr Cheung Senior, if you are reading this blog please add a comment to confirm the claim by your son on your receipt of the HKD 6,000. If you did not and would like us to slap him more than a few times for telling a lie, please add that as well) and so had no real monetary benefit going to HK.

The argument concluded with Dann deciding not to postpone, and MG fuming and leaving Dann and the rest of us with a “its ok Dann, dun wanna postpone right? I’ll remember….” warning.

We arrived and got down to the business of ordering. Thanks to the spending requirement, we all opted for the 4 course set lunch. Collectively we chose every dish in the set menu, except for the Gnocchi which was not available and the replacement for the day was their lovely carbonara.We wolfed down 2 helpings of the tasty and warm complimentary bread that was offered, although Jon mentioned that he remembered the old La Strada offering a much wider variety of bread for starters including their pizza bread and bread sticks. 

Moving on to the starters, we agreed the soup was so-so. For comparison, you could say it was a superior version of Campbell’s alphabet soup without the alphabets (used to love it as a kid). 

The capellini was light and fresh but a tad bland. 

The star dish for starters was really the grilled calamari. It was grilled to perfection. Someone mentioned it was possibly partly torched to achieve such a result. The flesh was tender and juicy although you could still smell and taste the grilled smokiness. It went perfectly with the sweet caramelized onions.

For the pasta course, I foolishly chose the spaghetti with mussels and tomatoes whilst the rest chose carbonara. Foolish because that meant that I had to let all 5 of them try my dish whilst I got to try only 1 of theirs! This is another sneaky unspoken strategy of all club members. Much like sitting in the middle is preferable to sitting at the edge as you would have the best access to shared dishes and all. All future BMC wannabes do note that topographical and geographical advantages extend to the dining arena as well!

The mussels were fat, juicy and absolutely delicious! The tomato sauce was not too thick, sour or overpowering, and just right to go with the shellfish. The pasta though was somewhat ordinary. 

As for the carbonara, it was hands down delicious, and in my view still the best carbonara in Singapore, to which all the other club members agreed. It is done the traditional way without cream and La Strada’s style is generally much saucier than other non-cream based carbonaras you may find elsewhere. The artery clogging yolky sauce combined with crispy ham, parmesan cheese shavings and topped up with a poached egg yolk and truffle oil on top of a bed of pasta is mind blowing. Impressive as each ingredient may be on its own, the synergy of combining it all together in one dish shows a result that is simply astounding! The only complaint is that the portion could be bigger.

For the meat course, Businessman was the odd man out choosing the salmon, to which he lost a third of his fish within seconds to other hungry forks. The fish was cooked perfectly leaving it ever so slightly undercooked in the centre keeping it moist and oily. 

The osso bucco was decent, although the meat was a tad dry, but this was compensated by the delicious marrow which was fully intact in the bone cavity. 

The star dish for this course was the roasted pork rack. The pork was tasty, flavourful, somewhat crisp on the outside and yet not at all dry. Collin mentioned that it was pork that did not really taste like pork (personally I could not figure what that meant, but from the look on his face, it was definitely a thumbs up for the dish).

For desert, the tiramisu was the best dish, and one of the better tiramisu’s you can find. 

But for anyone looking for some texture, the Iced nougatine is quite a treat as well. It is an iced and creamed version of nougat with a coulis of berries. The crunchiness of the hazelnuts with the sweetness of the nougat and the tartness of the coulis combine nicely. 

As for the apple tart and gelato, it was given an overall so-so grade by the diners.

Whilst finishing up, Dann casually mentioned that for his turn next week, he think he had made the pledge of an additional S$100 bonus spend over and above the minimum of EUR180 (owing to his poor performance at Jade restaurant), to which we were all smiles with the exception of MG. We even re-affirmed by reminding Dann that we had proof of his commitment to the additional spend should he forget.

Final note...the lower photographic quality is partly due to the use of our back-up cameraman as our actual cameraman, being the paymaster was relieved of his duties.

By: Club Scribe

AOKI RESTURANT - 14 October 2011

The race for the Presidential Title is still on.

Some say this week's paymaster is a professional wallet ripper and has read all the books in the National library. While others say he is a dumpster who leave no food to waste and will eat anything so long as it is digestible. All we know is the paymaster has chosen Aoki Resturant and we should address him as Mr 菜 ....oops......I mean Mr Choi aka Guru

Living up to his reputation, the Guru has already hatched a scheme to get the best deal. During the week leading to this lunch, he has incited psychological warfare to the members and managed to garner monetary support from undisclosed members. Our spy cam managed to catch the bribery process in action, where Guru is trying to get $100 from a fellow member who use LV wallet and wears a watch with silver bracelet.

Here's another shot of the alleged ripper trying to hustle $50 from another member who also wears a watch with silver bracelet.

President hopeful MG fired another savoy and reminded Guru that he will take him on anytime even if he managed to get his unorthodox funding. In the end, Guru have to make the painful decision of not ripping others off and retreated from the presidential challenge.

And now the meal.

Starter Salad.

Starter Vegetables

Chirashi Sushi Tokusen. The orange colored stuff in the middle is sea urchin.

Chirashi Sushi Jyosen. Less premium and smaller portion compared to Chirashi Sushi Tokusen but still the sashmi  is very fresh.

Desert in a box.

The damage