Sunday, July 24, 2011

Charly T's, NOMU @ Handy Road

Had a long overdue lunch appointment with me cousins and we headed to Charly T - one of those seemingly typical western cafes at NOMU (next to the Cathay along Handy Road).

As my Sis put it this place serves pretty damn good chicken - rotisserie style rather than grilled like Nandos or Barcelos. Apparently it's well-marinated for a long time in herbs and roasted for an hour before serving, but despite the nice crispy skin and the juicy chicken, I didn't think it was anymore extraordinary than alotta of the roast chickens I've had in my life.

Chicken was.. nice. Was moist inside and had a semi charred skin around, so not too many complaints from me. It did somewhat lack flavour, but I suppose the selection of sauces helps here.

{ ... Chicken } Comes with 4 sauces and 4 sides ($42)
In fact the meat itself while tender was lacking in flavour, strangely @.@ Comparing chicken to chicken, I do prefer Nandos' if only because of the spicy peri-peri sauce which gives every bite a nice kick. And in fact I would prefer Barcelos over Nandos' only because I liked my grilled chicken not too juicy - a little dry and charred. Might be terrible cooking in Barcelos to produce chicken like that, but I liked it, so yea.

If smorgasbord is your thing, you'll like the smorgasbord of side dishes and sauces available in Charly T's. You can choose from a selection of 5-6 side dishes, ranging from german coleslaw to mac n'cheese to salads and bacon-topped potatoes, but to be honest nothing really stood out.

{Chimichurri (the black), Roasted sesame (the brown), Charly T special sauce (the red) }

10 different kinds of sauce to choose from, and while sauce at Nandos or Barcelos is free flow, you get a set number of sauce saucers (ha!) and you gotta pay for more sauce (50c per saucer). Granted the sauces are rather interesting - roasted sesame, kampung amber, ginger lemon soy, Charly T's secret sauce etc. but I didn't really fall in love with any of the sauces served at our table and I found the combination a little off.

The desserts were a tad better - the chocolate coconut pecan pie, unfortunately did not taste of chocolate at all, although it was still really good - rich and very nutty.

The warm chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream - the lava cake wasn't quite a lava cake (no flowiness when it was cut upon) - it was more of a light brownie, but still verrryyy decadent and absolutely divine when eaten with the vanilla ice cream.

They also serve filled waffles (waffles with chocolate chips etc. inside the waffle batter o_O) which were great as well.

Desserts were my favourite part of this (any!) meal! The pecan pie was so-so and lava cake not particularly lava-like.. I say skip that and get the waffles with ice cream!

{Chocolate coconut pecan pie | Chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream }

Besides rotisserie chicken, they do serve a large selection of interesting international foods like Spanish Omelettes, Hawaiian Kahlua Pork, Italian / Moroccan / Japanese skewers etc. Strange selection? Definitely. And from this to the strange selection of sauces and the strange selection of side dishes I must say this restaurant has no real identity!

Honestly I didn't give much thought or attention to the food in general - was too busy laughing my ass off from the conversation we had amongst our group. On retrospect I guess it's.. decent overall, but I wouldn't necessarily pick this place out again to come back - not for the chicken at least.

Food tasting event with a pretty intensive coverage on the foods they serve : http://www.gourmetestorie.com/?p=7795

HGW Link : http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/charly_t_s/
Main website : http://www.charlyts.com/index.php
Rating (out of 4) :

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