all-day brunch @ relish

I like Relish, I like brunch, so when I heard about Relish's all-day brunch menu, I was just dying to try it. Somehow, we only got down to it on Sunday. We went with Shally and Gabrielle. I was mighty excited.

Relish is such a bright chillout place. Everytime I am there, I feel transported away from Singapore. It's high walls and white beams, graffiti walls and chalkboards, how can you not love this place?

Gabrielle had the Eggs Wild Benedict, wild rocket, toasted muffin, poached eggs, bacon and of course, hollandaise. I was quite disappointed with this. The eggs were overdone and slightly powdery on the inside. I like my eggs to be runny. The kind which oozes and melts so decadently in your mouth. Even better than runny is near-runny, it's soft its wet but its not gooey.

I thought that this dish was a bit bland, to be honest. It's probably because I didn't eat it with the bacon because Sharon says that it is a lot better with the bacon and she says the bacon was really well-done. But I thought that the hollandaise was not very well-prepared and didn't provide any winning touch or consolation in this case.

On the bright side, the sauteed potatoes were excellent. They were diced into tiny potato cubes and fried to a magnificent brown tan. These darlings were crisp on the outside and moist on the inside. Very nice..

My breakfast burger, home-made apple and pork sausage patty, emmental cheese, layered omelettle, baked beans, sauteed mushrooms. Now this dish really hit home with me. At first when it came I wanted to run away from it because gawd-the-mushrooms-stink. Shally and I did not want to be near it. The mushroom smell is overwhelming. But Sharon convinced us to try the mushrooms. They were mmmmmm. Need I say more? Possibly the best mushrooms I have had in a long long time. So chewy, so savoury, so delicious.

Now for the real test. My breakfast burger was so good. It tastes like sausage mcmuffin but so much better. When you dissect the patty you can actually make out the pieces of granny smith apples and sausage bits. You can taste the sweet-sour tang from the apples. The sausage was extraodinarily satisfying. The omelette was nicely done, runny the way I like them. The cheese was like icing atop a cake. The muffin was toasted to perfection. I'm sorry I'm gushing but Relish really knows how to do a burger well.

The only thing is that it's quite pricey and you're paying 10times the price of a sausage mcmuffin for an improved version of it. (very much improved I must add, though).

3 words. I ADORED IT. mmm.

The ONLY thing I can fault this burger for? It's crazy-tall! If Relish burgers were difficult to eat in the first place, these are insanely arduous. What a pretty sight when it is presented to you, but it is definitely NOT a pretty sight once you start tucking in.

Shally's open striploin steak sandwich, minute steak, truffle aioli, caramelised onions, baby spinach, fries. The onions were wondrously caramelised but the beef was tough and not well-seasoned. There was also not enough cheese. Sharon felt that the bread:meat proportion was too skewed in the former's favour and that severely compromised on the sandwich's taste. Shally swears she can smell the yeast in the bread (everyone repeat after me, nose of a hound..).

Sharon's pancakes were not fluffy enough and a bit too dense. I liked that the edges were a bit crispy but she doesn't like it. She likes soft fluffy pancakes that are moist right through the edges. I liked that the batter was even and was not clumpy but that was about it. The blueberry sauce was not rich enough. It might have been better if they had beaten blueberries into the pancake batter itself. Then the pancakes would have "double blueberry power".

Oh yes, not a first-date choice. It has the same effect as squid ink pasta. Your teeth, your lips will be stained. Unless your date likes a joke, stay clear.

These are the two desserts that were given on the house. The first was the Wild Rocket Strawberry cheesecake. I don't like cheesecake so I didn't partake of this dessert but they loved it. Shally particularly liked the digestive biscuit base although she did admit to liking anything digestive biscuit.

This is new, the ice-cream burger. Two crisp waffles enclosing on two scoops of chocolate ice-cream and kiwi slices. This was quite nice. The waffles were really crispy and nicely toasted. The strawberry-kiwi sauce that came with it was simply excellent. Sharon claims that the sauce literally fizzes in her mouth like coke, the taste reverberating and exciting the tastebuds so that you taste the sauce even after it has glided down your throat.

My only quarrel is that it's not special. The ice-cream, the waffle, the strawberry-kiwi sauce, they tasted store-bought. The chocolate ice-cream was not rich and creamy enough. The sauce tasted artificial because it was unnaturally sweet. The waffles, well, let's just say we have a suspicion which brand it is. ;)

Nonetheless, it was definitely tasty. Whether it's value-for-money, well I don't know. Afterall, this is something you can put together at home.

All in all, brunch was uneventful and sadly quite a let-down. We must add that this menu is still in its experimental stage and they are still trying to figure out how to make this work. This means that many of these dishes are still being tweaked. Hopefully, when the new FINALISED versions are out, I will be able to recognise the Relish-standard once again. Till then, brunch@Relish is average with more misses than hits. I expected better.

Relish
#02-01 Cluny Court
Singapore 259760