Gourmet Plus @ Frankel Avenue

I've been wanting to come here for quite a number of times, but some how it always
slipped my mind. So, finally, today I headed here for dinner. Gourmet Plus is sister to Pichon in Boat Quay and whips up simple French cuisine in this sleepy eastern suburb of Frankel.

Before I go on about the food, I have to mention that I was a little irritated by the level of service. Firstly when we were seated, the waiter and waitresses kept hovering around us wanting us to place our order. That was totally unacceptable as we hadn't even gone through the menu. Just give us a few minutes of unobtrusive service to let us decide on what we want! Next, when we were placing our order, the waiter (I think he was the floor manager) was terrible at taking my order. I placed my order without looking much at the menu or pointing at the menu and he looked very lost and couldn't repeat a single of my orders. So, I repeated my order, pointing to each order in the menu (and finally he got it. Gee...). Whilst I was placing my order, a huge party of about 12 persons came in and there wasn't a stretch of seats for 12. My server was so distracted by the party of 12 that when he took my order, he kept looking over and finally, he just walked off to attaned to that party of 12! That was just so wrong, can't you wait a little while, get done with my order before attending to that party of 12? What's worst is that this was the second time I was repeating the order and you suddenly just leave like this!?! (Like I said, the 1st time I rattle off the menu without pointing to it, he looked so lost I had to repeat it again pointing to the menu. So, it's not my fault he isn't apt with the menu.) If it weren't for the fact that I was with my parents, I would have just walked out with such terrible service. So the server left to arrange the tables for the party of 12 and after he was done, he came back to take the rest of my order not before collecting the whole chunk of menus from our table (how discourteous! We hadn't even finished placing our order and he just took the menus away from our table just because of the party of 12!!!!). We placed our dessert order too as the chocolate lava cake required 15 mins of preparation time and we wanted the dessert to come immediately after our dinner. Mum wanted some bread with butter which they didn't serve and we asked if we could order bread (but our server just didn't understand what we wanted he said he could give us butter. Like.. huh? And he said the menu does not have bread) I found it very odd that they didn't serve bread, but they actually do sell bread at the delicatessen part of the store. The server could have simply showed us the bread counter and asked us to choose our bread and sell us the bread and serve it with butter. But, obviously, he was not so business minded. In the end, we ordered garlic bread, the only bread on the menu.

I was disappointed when the bread came. Look at some of the sides, it was actually burnt and they had the cheek to serve it. That coupled with the terrible service was enough to kill my whole mood for dinner that evening. The garlic bread was nothing to shout out about. The bread was thin enough, but there was totally no taste of garlic on the garlic bread. It just tasted bland.
The smoked salmon salad was also a let down. The salad was mixed in vinegrette. I would have preferred if there was a stronger taste of the balsamic vinegar. Oh well...

While waiting for our mains to come, we got a chance to browse the delicatessen. The delicatessen sells some of the meats served on their maincourse menu. It also includes a variety of cheeses and sausages and the breads that they bake in house. They also have things like preserved feta cheeses, sundried tomatoes etc. Great place to get delicatessen meats, cheese platters and the like etc. etc. In fact, it's well situated in frankel, allowing the residents nearby to get access to all the food they need for entertaining.

The main courses fared slightly better than the appetisers. We ordered the arrabiata, aglio olio with mushrooms, lamb shank and pan-seared scallops. The pastas were done al-dente. Just the right texture and they were sufficiently spicy. The arrabiata was tangy and rich with the tomato base.
And, I liked this aglio olio too which wasn't oily, although I would have preferred a stronger flavour of the garlic infused into the olive oil base.
We also had the chef's special of pan-seared scallops with salad and parmesan shavings which came with a sweet underlying sauce.

The lamb shank was not too bad, it didn't have a very strong lamb taste, but the lamb was not stewed long enough so that the meat would just melt in your mouth.


So, after dinner, we were sitting around waiting for desserts when another waited came up and asked us if we would like to place our dessert order. To which we said we had already placed our order. After a while, the original waiter who took our order came over and asked us what we had ordered for desserts (gosh!) and we were so shocked like didn't he take our orders when we first ordered? We ordered it with the main course cos we didn't want to have to wait and extra 15mins for the lava cake to be prepared, so imagine our irritation! Desserts were ok, I guess. NOthing spectacular. We had the chocolate lava cake which really oozed out of chocolate, my only qualm was that it was such a small piece.

The creme brulee came with some fruits inside the brulee. I didn't exactly like it cause I like the strong vanilla, egg and creme taste of the custard instead of barring it with the slightly sourish taste of the fruits. But, really, it wasn't bad.
We also had a tiramisu, which just passable. It was more towards the dry side, no where near the one I had at Peaberry & Pretzel.

Overall the main course fared better than the rest, but there is still much room for improvement for the food. This place is indeed a gem to find in the east and it's great for a quiet saturday dinner. Service needs A LOT of improvement, but I shan't fault them because they don't charge service and there is not GST charge. Further to that there was the DBS card discount. So all in, we spent about $23 per person for dinner.

Gourmet Plus
Address:
117 Frankel Avenue
Frankel Estate
Singapore 458232
Tel: 6441 1120
Opening hours: 10am- 10.30pm

Peaberry & Pretzel

A while back, I posted that Sunset Way was one of my latest weekend haunt out spot. In particular, I really liked the environment at Peaberry & Pretzel and it was this store which made me drive from Bedok to Clementi 2 consecutive weekends in a roll. Just check out the environment inside the shop (They also have a nice al fresco dining area which is very similar to the rest of the stores along the Sunset Way area. Think: Wooden planks, some greenery, yet being in the heart of a HDB estate.)


If you know how much of a desserts person I am, you would understand why I was so attracted to the dessert display counter. The display counter had a display of mostly takeout desserts (you can't really see much from here cos of the condensation, but it did look very tempting). Each of the desserts were made in these plastic somewhat inverted pyramid-shaped (small square base with a larger square top) like container. The best part of that is that you get to see the different layers and beautiful colours that make up each dessert. The top of each dessert is also adorned with a variety of colours making the whole display very appealing to the eye.



Now more to the food. When I first visited Peaberry & Pretzel, I was determined to eat German food cos it was the weekend of Oktoberfest and I wanted to go German in celebration of Oktoberfest. So I ordered a sausage set that came with a variety of german potato salad and sauerkraut. We had about 5-6 different sausages on each plate. They were generally ok, not great, but the lamb one was really nasty. I did enjoy the potato salad and sauerkraut quite a bit though. I also got the apple crumble pie with vanilla ice cream. It was ok, but not great, cos the apples used were a bit on the sour side.

The next week when I went there I was smarter and brought my camera and had Hunter's Schnitzel (Viennese cutlet, we had it in chicken) and beef goulash. I really enjoyed the chicken cutlet (it came with creamy mushroom sauce) which wasn't too oily, tender and flavourful. Yum yum...

The beef goulash came and was up to the brim of the bowl (Very generous with the portion, maybe because they specially did the order for us as the kitchen was closing already.) A tad oily and I wished the tomato base was a little richer and there was a stronger taste of beef. It would have been wonderful with a warm bread roll and butter.
Ahhh... And how could I not order desserts? We had the tiramisu (this is the takeout portion as the normal restaurant portion had sold out, but it was a good size and it was cheaper). I really liked it and while it isn't the best I've had but it's been one of the better ones I've had in a long while. You can taste the liquor in the appropriately wet ladyfinger layer which combined really well with the mascarpone cheese. I especially like the crunchy bits at the top which I can't figure what they are.
Oooo... And I couldn't resist the chocolate pudding. The first time I was here I didn't order it cos I thought it was one of those jelly like puddings which I don't fancy. But, reading a few reviews later, i relaised that it was something like those chocolate lava cake type of chocolate pudding. So, imagine a whole ramekin of dark chocolate (ahh... my favourite!), baked till warm. What I really liked about this dessert was that the chocolate pudding was actually bittersweet! Not like the lava cakes you get outside which are more on the sweet side. And for those who don't like it bittersweet (I loved the bitterness of the cocoa), they do serve it was vanilla ice cream and vanilla cream. So, you can add it to the chocolate. For me, I was more than happy with the bittersweet pudding. Absolutely wonderful... Yum yum yum...


Peaberry & Pretzel
106 Clementi Street 12
#01-52
Singapore 120106
Tel: 6777 3477
Opening Hours: 12pm - 10pm
Website: http://www.peaberryandpretzel.com.sg/

Calendar's Carrot Cake

When I first heard of the American Carrot Cake, I never really wanted to try it. Cos, etched in my mind was the wonderfully savoury taste of the Singaporean version of fried carrot cake. I could never ever imagine how carrot cake would ever taste nice if it was done the sweet way. To add to that, some of my buddies around me do not like the American version of Carrot Cake and so I never really got a chance to order it when we were out for meals. And, if you know me, I seldom buy sliced cakes home to eat. It was not until I was at Cedele sometime early this year buying some cakes for a friend and I asked for their best selling cakes which they said was the American Carrot Cake. I figured that if other people like it, it can't be all that bad and decided to take a shot at it. Turned out that my friend didn't like Carrot Cake and so I had it all to myself, and boy was I bowled over! It was really YUM! And, since then, I've given Carrot Cakes a lease of life in my gastronomic adventures.

A while back, I was reading thebakerwhocooks blog entry and she was raving all about this American Carrot Cake from Calendar's and I just HAD to try it. But, it's situated in Pandan Loop and I had no occasion to buy it. I had contemplated buyingit for the monthly CGL meeting (where we will celebrate birthdays monthly), but I never did because i wondered whether they knew how to enjoy carrot cake or whether it'll all go to waste. SOme edging and encouraging from Mei after I told her my concerns got me to pick up that phone, make the call and 4 days later drive from Bedok to Pandan Loop (Read: West Coast!)on a Saturday morning to get the cake.

And gee... This is really good stuff! I love this cake, flavourful without the spices overpowering the cake, rich in nuts and raisins, and for a carrot cake, it is surprisingly moist and light enough... I could eat up the whole quarter of this cake if not for the fact that the calories will do too much harm to my body. =) You guys should try it!

Anyway, there is another way to get this cake instead of driving all the way to Pandan Loop and ordering a min 1kg cake. Calendar's does mainly corporate rather than retail sales and they supply their cakes (Carrot Cake, Chocolate Cake and Apple Crumble) to quite a few places like Soup Spoon ( Raffles Place and City Hall) and Cold Storage. I was speaking to the boss and he told me that there's a little cafe at the Cold Storage at Tanglin Mall and they're the ones who supply the cakes and crumble pies there. He was telling me how the apple crumble is quite similar to cobblers... So, I can't wait to make a trip there to try the apple crumble!! I miss a decent cobbler... and my yummy key lime pie.

Calendar's
American Pies, cakes & other pastries
(owned and operated by Storrap Pte Ltd)
257 Pandan Loop #04-00 Singapore 128434
Tel: 6464 0383
Email: calendars_pies@yahoo.com.sg

Krispy Kreme!!!

A very sweet friend of mine bought me a dozen donuts recently when he came back from Bali. And, me, being selfish me kept both the glazed donuts all to myself (no la, but seriously, there were only 2, I polished off one the night he brought it back and then there was one.) The rest were sweet sweet sweet. I quite like the dark chocolate one too... Not too sweet.