Saveur, East Coast Road

Edit : Saveur has moved to Purvis Street!

Nestled inside a small coffeeshop along East Coast Road (same side as Awfully Chocolate) - more famously known for tau kwa pau - is a new stall offering cheap French fare. Upon spotting this on HGW I knew we had to make the trip and take a chance with impossible parking to try this!

Parking's always a bia*ch at this area!

It's sort of tucked away towards the back next to a Filipino food stall. Was quite strange seating in a kopitiam, awaiting Duck Confit, Chicken Roulade and Angel Hair Pasta with glasses of iced liang teh, and noisy intersection traffic in the background.

We awaited alright. And waited. And then noticed a table of diners next to us who were also waiting (they shortly ordered har cheong kai and noodles from the Chinese stall, presumably to fend off protesting tummies). After about 20-30 minutes (I had somewhat reluctantly maintained that we should not taint our palettes with other miscellaneous nibbles!), we were told that our dishes were "coming now".

I was so hungry I was about to keel over - I gave in and decided to order some tau kwar pau first but was promptly told they were sold out - it was pushing 830pm and I was HUNGRY.



Let's just say it took another eternity 10 minutes before an apologetic lady brought our mains..

I had the duck confit ($8.90) - seriously, $9 for duck confit? Well time to dive in!

A semi-regular sized duck leg over a bed of extremely mushy mashed potatoes, citrus and some mushrooms. The mushrooms were alright, the mashed potatoes were ultra creamy which was good, and I detected a hint of sweet potato inside (?). Might be hallucinating from hunger but still ...

The duck itself was not too shabby. It is a smaller portion, but for the price I wasn't about to complain about portion size, but the meat wasn't tender enough IMO and the outside was a tad dry - which shouldn't be the case since duck confit is all about duck fat! I also felt that the duck hasn't been cured well / long enough, and so tasted a little closer to normal roast duck than duck confit.

Chicken Roulade ($8.90) was meant to have foie gras stuffing and crispy outer skin. Both, sadly, were unapparent in this dish. Granted, I should align my expectations to the price - but I was expecting a little bit more character out of this. How about a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper? Or a bit more colour?

What I did like though was the rice. It's just regular ole rice bathed in a kind of mushroom-creamy sauce, with just the tiniest hint of what I guess would be herbs. But it had more flavour and moisture than the chicken. Overall for me this was an 'okaaay' dish (said with a slight scrunching-up of the nose)

I felt the chicken roulade was exceedingly normal!

Now our starter arrived just right after our mains, but no complains here because this Angel Hair Pasta with Kombu ($3) was out of this world! In the best way possible I mean! Seriously this was good sh*t, and *almost* made all the waiting worth it. Such a pity though this bowl only contained like 4 forkfuls. Later when we chatted with the two chefs, we suggested making this a main course by itself - this pasta is that good!

Oh now this is some serious shit - this small pasta portion was heavenly. The thin angel hair pasta perfectly al dente, tossed in just enough (assumably) olive oil with konbu and dried shrimp. Fwa, so simple yet the flavours came out really really strong, the konbu wasn't as much the star as the dried shrimp was, giving it that extra chewy fragrance. If I'm paying $3 for this amount, I would pay $18 for 6 times this amount no doubt about it!!!

I guess the place does serve decent food, though it isn't much more a French restaurant than a restaurant that uses French recipes. The mains were nothing to write home about, the angel hair pasta was heavenlyyyy, but they need some serious work on their service. Granted they're very newly opened (one month), and the personal sincere apologies by the (very very young) chefs was a good gesture.

Still - basic service here - if food's gonna take 40 minutes to arrive, please let us know?!?! And if food's gonna take another 5 - 10 minutes to arrive, please don't say it's coming 'now'. Oh and one more thing, the foie gras ice cream wasn't on the menu yet, and yet was marketed as one of their specialties - disappointed!!!

HGW Link: http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/Saveur/
Rating (out of 4):

Two Fat Men, East Coast Road

Managed to get hold of a DSLR this weekend to play with. Joy!

The name of this place serves no indication whatsoever as to what kind of food would be on the menu - but 's cousin recommended Two Fat Men for their burgers. A quick background research also (strangely) showed great Thai food as well.

I was a wee bit disappointed when we were not, in fact, greeted by two fat men.

Determined to try the good stuff, we first ordered this Grilled Pork Neck with Tamarind Spicy Sauce ($8.90) which is apparently a Must Try on the menu.

I had imagined horribly fatty chunks of pork with a slather of sauce - so when this arrived I was a bit relieved. Pork was sufficiently charred and not too fatty/oily - with a side of flavourful, slightly spicy tamarind sauce.

I was quite surprised by the portion to be honest!! $9 gets you like, one frickin' neck, was slightly chewy and nicely charred. The sauce was pretty awesome.

This actually went very well with..

Basil Chicken Fried Rice, topped with one fried egg ($6.50). Wasn't as fragrant as I had hoped - it was lacking fresh basil (we'd fish out maybe 2-3 dark pieces of leaves). Still, this went superbly with the more vibrant tamarind pork.

There's no way around it - this dish looks boring, it's like orange egg on rice - can't really complain for $6.50. Rice itself was really good actually, moist and strong in chilli and chicken flavour. But I really, really, really could not taste any basil whatsoever - should have renamed the dish Chilli Chicken Fried Rice. Eating it with the tamarind sauce and pork was pretty vanderful.

Decided to try their burgers which I heard was good - still reeling from portobello last week, I decided on the bacon & egg burger - signature juicy beef burger topped with cheddar sauce, bacon and a fried egg ($11.20). Other reviewers were right about food being almost literally thrown on your table to be honest! Thankfully it didn't come with fries or we would've been stuffed silly D:

First bite - the bacon was sooooooo crispy, it literally cracks in your mouth. And the beef patty was slightly salty too, which gave the whole burger a rather pronounced saltiness. However after a few bites ... I realized both the patty and the bacon were too charred. While I do like them well done, I do not enjoy eating carbon - if I wanted to eat carbon I'll have a pencil buffet thank-you-very-much. The patty was also still wet and loosely packed, it started falling apart midway. All in all it was ok but the graphite really put me off completely.



Food here is semi cheap and I'm sure their finger food e.g. their pork neck would go well with beer over a soccer match. Though I wouldn't make a special trip for the food.

I think my greatest takeaway was that DSLRs are DAMN HARD TO USE, and that a macro lens is in order! (Photos were taken with a Nikon D90 with a 35mm f/1.8 prime)

HGW Link : http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/two_fat_men/
Rating (out of 4) :

Tonkichi, Suntec City

Signing up as a Pokka member does make monetary sense - for a $30 annual fee, you get an immediate 10% discount on whatever you're purchasing + $40 vouchers for any Pokka food outlet. Little did we know that Rive Gauche (cake), Tonkichi (japanese), and Domani (italian) were all owned by Pokka @.@ The latter two gets additional discounts on some wednesdays.

So thusly armed with a 20% GSS discount and $40 vouchers, we sauntered into Tonkichi for some amazing Tonkatsu (or so we read).

We didn't think we'd use up $40 of vouchers on Tonkatsu, but damn these Tonkatsu sets are expensive!! After much deliberating we placed our order. First to arrive was this thingamajig ...

... which we later found out was a norm at Tonkatsu places. Grind the seeds in the mortar and pestle for the nice roasty aroma, then introduce the element of Tonkatsu sauce for ze dippin.

I had the Kurobuta Kata Rosu Set - deep fried black pig shoulder loin ($32.90). Seriously, $33 pre-tax-and-service-charge for tonktasu?!?!?!?!?! Well ... the cabbage rice and miso soup are free flow, but still ... anyway. A rather generous and thick portion of tonkatsu came seated on a metal grill (presumably to drain the oil?), huge clump of cabbage, tomatoes, some mustard, pickles, miso soup and rice. Took a bit of the tonkatsu and ...

... well it was simply put, bloody fantastic. The crumbly exterior wasn't too oily, thick or jelat, and was surprisingly light and very crispy. The pork was a thick cut, and my kurobuta slightly chewy and flavourful. And the layer of fat under the skin ... melts in your mouth for that fatty bacon sensation. Yum! And I learnt that mixing the mustard into the sesame / tonkatsu sauce makes it LEAGUES better.

Curious about the "layered " variety, I chose the Kasane Katsu ($26.90). I really liked the texture - slightly less dense, and doesn't feel like you're eating waay too much pork, especially when it's already battered and deep fried. Although I must say the crumbed bits were very nicely done! Didn't feel there was too much of it to render the pork loin irrelevant, and wasn't too oily to make one feel like this - D:

Personally I felt the shirobuta (white pork) was a little bland compared to the kurobuta, though the kasane was very very very soft to the bite whereas the kurobuta was more chewy (closer to well cooked beef). Regardless, dipping the kasane into the sauce made it AWESOME - I preferred white pork.

Just a little side-by-side comparison of the pork diversity.

Relevant:

While the yummy pork may be a star attraction here, I do feel Tonkichi is one of those 'package' places - meaning you get amazing food AND warm service. Waiters were genuinely pleased to serve (either that or they're too new in their job to be truly jaded, lol) - one dude kindly explained how to crush the sesame seeds and even offered suggestions how this can be mixed into the sauce.

I thought the spicy tomato salad dressing was imba too. But ... was the service great? Yes. Was the food great? Yes. Would I pay $30 for a Tonkatsu set? Probably not.

HGW Link : http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/tonkichi_suntec/
Rating (out of 4) :