Gattopardo

Bread basket

Seafood stew
Angel hair pasta with Roe and Sea Urchin

Squid ink pasta with fried eggplant and swordfish

Bruchatta Cheese Ravioli with asparagus and watercress

Chongs came over to SGH and from KPT we departed to Gattopardo (this vs Cuban at Customs) but we're glad we took the drive to Fort Canning. Amidst lovely shrubs, we made our way from the empty carpark down to The Legends where Gattopardo (11 Canning Walk Fort Canning Park) is. The restaurant is in an uncompleted Hotel Fort Canning, a very quaint place that is still undergoing renovation. Chongs says its a lovely place but creepy...

When we entered the restaurant at 645 pm it was empty and for a moment the restaurant belonged to us; it had a very intimate setting. Unlike Gunther's now the catches of the day are on the display at the bar counter (altho the table next to ours had the catch brought to them).

Firstly the bread - love the soft fluffy herb slice, whilst the thin crisps of flat bread was a little to spicy for Chongs. And when we asked for butter it was the hardest slab of butter ever but it melted in my mouth.

We had the seafood stew to share - came with chunks of fish and mussels and bamboo clams (which wasnt popular with Chongs so i had both). Loved how the broth didnt have a lobster bisque kinda flavour - it was light and tasted of saffron - but it was a wonderful combi with the seafood, complementing the flavours. We both loved it and dunked our bread into it.

Next came the 2 pastas we ordered - the Squid ink pasta (which Chongs was so gian to try after hearing about the Skinny Pizza that I tried) had a queer herby/sour taste so we sent it back to the kitchen. As the noodles sat longer on my sharing plate Chongs felt it had a more sickly greyish colour instead of a deadly staining jetblack colour lol.

Angel hair pasta with roe and sea urchin was fantastic! It had a cheesy taste, and salty and loved the consistency of the pasta.

We traded the squid ink pasta with the one we originally wanted to try - the Buratta Cheese Ravioli with Crab meat sauce, asparagus and water cress. This was a gross green - but turned out to be so very delicious. We were quite sure that we will miss our meats so so much in this dish, but its such a rich dish with shreds of crab meat, the taste was quite phenomenal. And i loved the cheese within esp.. very moreish.

We love travelling on our own so so much tho C dislikes the feeling of homecoming (but I do). Cant wait for my next leave so we can do a trip tog!

Brussel Sprouts

Its the end of the month (July) and handover took loonnng after the reg's meeting and the exit thereafter. Pek came back after her post call to meet us at 73 and we were waiting for them till past 7pm (a ridiculous for dim), when we then set off to Brussel Sprouts (Robertson Quay) courtesy of Norene.

We had an al fresco table for all of us, and it was packed. Presoccer time I suppose.

Everyone loves the cheese platter, crackers and fruits. Love the soft smelly cheeses!

Tempura prawns were not coated with crispy batter as I'd have liked

These portabello mushrooms were Norene's favourite.

Mussels in Lobster Bisque was the favourite of the night - everyone was scooping it out, and eventually I was dunking my fries into the broth. Yummms. Almost wanted to ask the chef to add pasta into the broth and re cook the whole lot (or jia1 mian4, as the Chinese calls it.). Greg's dare.
Mussels in white wine was the closet drinker's favourite lol

Gratinated Mussels were also very cheesy and yummy!

Between Yiks and me we polished 4 buckets of thick cut fries . Its FREE FLOW!

Wanted to head down to Laurent's but it was a workday and every one was to shag to stay any further so off we dispersed. Gonna miss the banter and imitation of the king of hid rejections so much! no more specific tables/lifts/columns anymore hahahaha.

Relish

Todays Monday and cos Sunday turned out to be too much of a goner for me, I met Carol today to celebrate her bd, and cos we were intending to go somewhere nearby James we asked him too.

So after dropping car off at J's I started my way down bt timah, cos My Little Spanish Place was closed on a monday, the Swiss butchery next to Coro was closed, Roast by La Petit Cuisine closed down, Tierney's Cafe was not really appetisingly inducing, so we ended at Relish ( Level 2, Cluny Court) (after simply bread was not so enticing too!) . I last came here 2 years ago with Z and I'm glad I made it back for a re visit!

Firstly - more burgers on the menu! There is also a new lamb burger - previously it was a lamb patty in a wrap.

Secondly there are fries with burger now - it used to be only hand cut chips (the type in potato chips- served at burger bench and bar).

Thirdly - the pasta menu is much more expensive! there was a hebi pasta that sounded interesting.

Fourthly, the desserts has also expanded!

I feel like im sounding like SKC..

My Beef burger with Poached Peer and Blue Cheese. Awesomeness all in one - i must say that its one of the most interesting burgers i've had - sweet salty and ...... pungent. Yummingly pungent.

Carol's Black cod burger. Huge chunk of breaded fish fillet it was quite a tender meaty one.

Wild Rocket burger - James'. I had this once two years back, and again at Relish with Kelly last year and its still as good a burger as ever.

Quite interesting cos we had two teachers behind us as well, pouring out similar woes!

I had to run to Liana's house to pick up my convo stuff whilst Carol had to run to get dad too. Cant wait for my treat back =)

Huber's Butchery, Artisteq

It was a day when I slept in but Chongs was restless to go after her unaccountable post mort meeting with kdr so we went off for brunch at Dempsey. Sadly House doesnt offer brunch on weekdays (it was a bright cheery Tuesday morning) and so we circled around. There's a new section at Dempsey and we happened to spot these two interesting cars.

So after almost exiting Dempsey, we spotted Huber's Butchery (Dempsey) and so we decided to take a chance. Im glad we did!

Gnocchi in Blue cheese is one big artery clumping chunk of happiness. Extremely dense pasta loaded chunk in smooth cheese, it was yumms!

My veal stew - was extremely tender and delicious. I substituted the mash with fries. Signature fries in fact but they tasted like macs actually.

Xue's beef burger. Equally good burger. Expected since its essentially a butchery so meats were extremely fresh.

This place is extremely pocket friendly but be prepared to sit in the heat.

The cow basks in heat the whole day long...

We browsed around Mandarin Gallery before the movie Monga and found this eerily amusing..

Popped by at Artisteq (Mandarin Gallery)... We really had too much time before Monga but we are not complaining...

We had an ice coffee with the dark chocolate icecream and we LOVED the ice cream! really dark and dense and delicious.

Iced Earl grey tea with ginger ice cream - this was less impressive than the one above. We wished more of the ice creams were available- we would have loved to try the vanilla champagne ice cream.

Monga is a smashing movie - i just love how colourful the characters and background is- the underworld is amazing, the dynamics of it. I also love how aggressive yet hilarious the hokkien language is. Esp now that i utilise it at work so often =P I shall rent it for home, i bet gran will love the movie loads!

The Queen and Mangosteen, Awfully Chocolate

Was going to sch to submit and picked chongs up from sch to head to Vivo. Our options were the tapas at Spruce (lunch weekdays only sigh), the sushi at Klee, or the very noisy Vivo which has the Cellar Door.
We went all the way to vivo to find that the Cellar Door (Vivocity) there has no lamb burger that i wanted to try!! Should have not been so lazy and checked that place out whilst it was still at Bt Timah.
So we ended at the bar seats at The Queen and Mangosteen (Vivocity Level one). And our strategic spot right in front of the tv was in vain cos it switched off 5 min into the game =/...
Still the breeze and sights were good, and of cos, we had another sighting we wanted to tag too =P okay shan't be evil haha.

What did us in ( I mean, led us into the restaurant) was the fries in curry crab dip. Oh well, nothing beats Yella Fellas!! as you can tell we had plenty of bar food. no drinks, just bar food.

Crabcakes doused in a very yummy fruit sauce. Chongs says the crab cakes don't beat those she had in the states. Oh i'd have loved to try those authentic meaty ones.

Bread with Shredded Duck dip - its dunked in plenty of mayo and our neurons got challenged cos it tasted so much like tuna somehow. Had to remind ourselves in between conversation it was duck not tuna.

A sighting before we left (not sure if we were heard!), we left for Toys R US to get cel's bd pressies. We had fun with the boing hammer, and rockhard jewel disney box, before we settle for those lovelies for cel. Really hope she likes it (tho our ultimate sofa will be her wedding gift!)

That bar food was nothing, so we went to have round 2 - desserts. Found Awfully Chocolate (L1, Vivocity) to be fully refurbished, with so much more to offer. We tried the Cold Poached Chocolate - basically it was truffle chocolate and cream shaped on a cold pan, topped with alot of cream and a flavour of your choice- here it is butterscotch. There were other alcoholic flavours but they were not available that night.

Had the Hei icecream which is as good as ever. Chongs had hyperglycemia halfway so i ate her scoop and most of the cold poached chocolate. I'm not complaining haha. She needs her dose of fries stat..

Anyway cos I left my cam here and i didnt realise till dinner at Keisuke the next day (when I was gonna use it to take of my ramen =P), had to rush here stat after Keisuke's dinner. No fun worrying about where it was esp being scared that it was lost in zouk where we went later on.

We walked to GV but no luck with shows (only nightmare on elm st no way), walked to St James but it was dead, hence we headed to Velvet which had a SATC event, and with our reds we were catching the match and were around Mambo/Phu for awhile when the sleepyness set in. Guess I deserved what I deserved towards the end of the week despite a great call on fri (3 admissions!!1 c/s only!!1 gxm!! no port c/s!!). Weekend was concuss time. Next week lagi concuss...such is the life!