canele

Have you ever wondered what a canele is? Here's what I found from Wiki:

A canelé is a small French pastry with a soft and tender custard center and a dark, thick caramelized crust. The dessert, which is in the shape of small, striated cylinder approximately two inches in height, is a specialty of the Bordeaux region of France but can often be found in Parisian patisseries as well. Made from egg, milk and flourflavored with rum and vanilla, the custard batter is baked in a mold, giving the canelé a caramelized crust and custard-like inside.

For more trivia, look up canele in wiki, there's a story behind it! Here's what a canele looks like.

I love Canele. I think it is my favourite dessert place. I love their kalamansi sorbet. I love their strawberry shortcake. mmm.. I like how their desserts are not overly-cloying. Of course I don't like everything on their menu and frankly I'm not really a dessert conoisseur but I do like Canele.

I wonder why, though, we don't go to Canele often. We like their crepes a lot and we always talk about them but somehow, its been nearly a year since we went to Canele. Sharon had a craving for their nougatine crepe today so we went down to the outlet at Shaw Centre.

I tried their Salade Concorde, which was made up of roasted chicken breast, frisée, tomato and mixed salad with mustard vinaigrette.

It is very difficult to find a salad that I genuinely really like. Most of the time it is passable but hardly ever something I will go home and reminisce about. The last salad I was so fond of was the Caesar salad at The Line, Shangri-La. But they have since tweaked the salad "recipe" and well, let's just say I'm no longer a fan. Another salad that I like is at Black Angus with chicken and orange.

This salad at Canele was very well-done. I did not expect it at all. To be honest, I thought that Canele would not serve good food-food. To my surprise, they were very generous with the cracked black pepper and it was scrumptious. The chicken was succulent and tender, unlike other salads where the chicken is bone-dry and gloomily bland. Excellent job, Canele!

The vegetables were fresh and the tomatoes were bursting with sappy goodness. The vegetables were seasoned, not just the chicken, so that every bite had that provocative peppery punch. The dressing was a bit too sour for my liking; I think they went a teeny bit overboard with the vinegar there, but it was still good, I definitely enjoyed it. I would go back for it!

Sharon had the Croque Madame, white toast bread with ham, cheese, with a sunny side up. Well, what can I say about this dish? It is notoriously difficult to photograph. All the pictures came up horrible. These are the best ones, check it out:

I don't know what came over the camera, the photos were all blurred and off-focus. The colours were all wrong. Snapping a respectable picture was so arduous. Trust me, the actual sandwich looks a lot better; these pictures do not do it justice. Luckily, Sharon displayed a burst of photography flair at the very end and we managed to take at least one presentable picture.

Tastewise, I didn't really like this one. I thought that the ham overpowered the sandwich because it was so salty. It's pretty decent, just not gourmet material. Then again, I wasn't expecting Canele to serve good mains anyway. Sharon, though, quite enjoyed her meal because it resembled eggs benedicte and she adores egg benedicte.

After ok-mains, we were looking forward to the fantabulous Canele desserts we had come so far for. This was not to be.

First, we wanted the nougatine crepe. They told us the kitchen was closed. (They didn't even bother asking us for our last orders) Then we wanted the kalamansi sorbet. They were out. We eventually settled for matcha cake and nougatine ice-cream. We also asked if they would allow us to eat MacDonald fries at their premise. THEY SAID NO.

I was gianing fries and since their kitchen was closed, and Macs was just beside it, I figured they would let us eat Mac fries there. I mean, it's not like I didn't want to order fries from them, their kitchen was closed! Besides, we had two mains and were ordering two desserts. I don't see why they didn't allow it! We even told the manager that if anyone wanted to bring 'outside food' in, he could then report it to us and 'scold' us. And honestly, at 11pm on a Monday night, how many customers were there at Canele?! Besides, it's not like they are really such an atas establishment that bringing outside food in would shatter their image or whatever. I don't get it.

We decided to eat at Macs instead and forego Canele's desserts. See how silly the manager was? He was throwing business away because it was 'against company's policy'. Come on now. We were willing to order 2 desserts from you! I was genuinely ticked off by the service standards at Canele.

So we went over to MacDonalds and ordered a Oreo McFlurry and large fries. The guy was quite funny. When we ordered the McFlurry he asked "Oreo?"

"What other McFlurrys do you have?"

"Err, only Oreo."

Sometimes ah.. We need to evaluate our service standards. But other than that, service was impeccable. He gave us the Wasabi shaker powder even though we did not order it. He also gave us water in a regular cup instead of those pathetic tiny plastic thimbles. See, even MacDonalds has better service than Canele, part of the Les Amis group. Tsk to Les Amis.

Ok, I don't like Wasabi. I don't like Wasabi flavoured stuff. But this was really good. I have always liked shaker fries and this was no exception. It wasn't extremely salty, in fact it had a startling sweetness to it. (We confirmed this because sugar was top on the ingredients list of the wasabi shaker powder.) The wasabi did not shoot up my nose and threaten to make my eyes water. It was tart but not acerbic; even a Wasabi non-fan like me took to it.

I foresee a lot of trips to MacDonalds now.

Canelé Pâtisserie Chocolaterie
Shaw Centre
1 Scotts Road, #01-01A
Singapore 228208