Tauhu goreng – fried bean curd on a bed of julienned cucumber and bean sprouts, topped with Vio’s signature peanut sauce. “Vio” plays fairy godmother to the bean sprouts and cucumber who, let’s be honest, have as much individual gustatory swag as the kids from the AVA and Gardening Clubs…
Breakfast waffle with maple syrup, fried egg, choice of streaky bacon and added smoked salmon. The waffles were essentially McDonald’s hotcakes who accidentally walked into a waffle iron. They were buttery, salty and slightly crispy on the outside. The twirly pig meat was an appealing mix of chewy and crispy,…
Prawn and bacon aglio olio with mushrooms and chilli padi. If this pasta were human it’d be a feisty, earthy and well-bosomed farm girl. The aglio olio is aggressively fragrant, smelling smokily porky with a strong hint of mushroom. The bacon here isn’t the crispy sort but of the chewy…
Rose yogurt panna cotta with fruits and raspberry coulis. The rose yogurt panna cotta was like a subdued Bandung pudding who didn’t wash its mouth after indulging its Llaollao cravings. If you top a spoonful of pudding with the lychee and try it with the raspberry coulis, it makes for…
Spicy chicken nanban. A Singapore-exclusive item, and essentially the concept of “dish localization” executed to perfection. The spiciness doesn’t just dwell in the sauce – it looks all creamy and harmless but oh, boy – but also in the chicken’s marinate. Thus, it’s spicy inside out yet restrained enough that…
Crispy chicken skin. Essentially the best bits from fried chicken minus the tedium of having to actually finish off the meat. Each individual piece is darned crispy and comes with a bit of meat and just a bit of fat, so it’s less KFC and more Har Cheong Gai-esque. Worthy…
Grilled salmon served with mashed potato, corn, carrots and broccoli. Moist and well-cooked, with the most delectably crispy and salty skin. However, the mashed potato ought to invest in some good body lotion instead of slathering itself with butter as a quick fix for smooth skin. For the picture, the…
Passioné – passionfruit and a blend of cheeses on a sponge and coconut sable base, served with cocoa nibs. The cake was smooth and rich, with no bitchy upstaging drama going on – the passionfruit dominates for the first few seconds in your mouth but eventually cedes to the cheese…
Deep Fried Stingray with Mak Bibik sauce. The stingray tasted very chewy, like a tough chicken who made it to command school during NS. The titular sauce was like the soya sauce you get with steamed fish during Chinese wedding dinners, only slightly saltier and with a badass spiciness from…