(oomph)atico's

There's a reason behind the title of this post, or rather, why this post is spelt this way. The place is called oomphatico's, but there is no oomph. Not in the least bit.

I've been to oomphatico's before, about a year ago and thoroughly enjoyed my nice breezy lunch. A year later, I visited this place again, this time much to my chagrin. They changed the menu and the food there is quite nasty now.

Props to them for decor though. This cafe is extremely pretty, with rainbow chairs and funky signage like this. It is difficult not to feel cheery just being in the cafe. There's indoor and alfresco seating, and the place is generally bright, sunny, chipper and pleasant. This place is designed with the fairer sex in mind and it shows.

Lok at the cute "saucers". Talk about eye-CATching.

ok, bad pun, sorry.

The chicken caesar salad was not that bad, the egg was a tad over-cooked but nonetheless it was a very laudable attempt. It was almost just-right, just that underneath that glorious golden runny outlook, the yolk was unfortunately a bit powdery.

*Sharon, on the other hand, says that it is very easy to cook the perfect egg. She says, just give her 5,6 tries and she will get it right. It's either, 2, or 2.5 or 3 minutes depending on the size of the egg. (talk big only la she)

The croutons were fried to a gorgeous crisp and tasted fabulous. The chicken was beautifully roasted and very fragrant. It tasted a bit like barbeque chicken. :) The vegetables were fresh (but also uncut and huge and difficult to eat.)

The salad dressing though, was ghastly. It did not taste like caesar dressing at all. It was acrid and not palatable at all. I like tart-tasting food and I didn't like it. I only had it because the salad would be too dry otherwise. Pui.

The farmer's club sandwich. The rye bread had only a faint aftertaste of rye and otherwise tasted like normal wheat bread. The texture was nothing like bread and instead more like an extremely dense teacake.

The chicken was very very tough and much too dry for my liking. It tasted gamey and nothing like the chicken in the caesar salad. I have only one reaction to it. pfftttttt!

The only redeeming factor was the grain mustard spread. However, they were stingy with it and the sandwhich ended up exceedingly dry and unappetizing.

The chicken and the sandwich was so bad Sharon ended up eating only the avocado.

Another grouse is that while the description said chicken, tomatoes and avocado, the sandwich came in three mini sandwiches of chicken and tomato sandwiches on the sides and a plain avocado sandwich well, sandwiched in the middle. We had to deconstruct and reconstruct the sandwich ourselves. (Sharon: I did not pay $18 to make my own sandwich ok)

Where's the oomph in oomphatico's?

Oomphatico's!

Tanglin Mall

#01-03 & 01-35/36

163 Tanglin Road

black angus

Black Angus is one of those places I always remind myself to come back to but hardly ever do. I think Black Angus is one of the better steakhouses in Singapore and serves up great food. It's not exactly cheap (be prepared to spend $50 per head for dinner) but the food is definitely above average.

Went there with Gabrielle, Shally and a few others for dinner today. Their entrees are pricey but they all come with salad or soup so that kinda salves the pinch right?

The mushroom soup was too salty and not thick enough. This was a let-down. It did not have the aroma of mushrooms but tasted like Campbell meets Marmite.

The baked potato soup looks really appetizing. It looks like a baked potato!

It even tastes like baked potato in puree form, except they do have solid potato cubes in it. Think baked potato drowning in baked potato puree. It's not bad, but I found it a tad too jelat.

Shally had the Stuart Steak Soup. It is nothing to look at and tastes like salty beef stew. Shally found it decent but I think its too salty for a soup.

This is my favourite Honey Mustard Salad, chicken breast, diced eggs & tomato, croutons, orange slices on fresh lettuce. It's a big salad, definitely not starter size.

The honey mustard's flawless. It's sweet and tangy, the way it should be. It dressed the salad wondrously, any parchness gone in a flash with the miracle balm. The chicken was a bit dry but the honey mustard made it all better. I particularly liked the orange bits that were served. They were an invigorating touch. The crisp juicy sweetness complemented the fresh lettuce perfectly. I just wish they were more generous with the amount they gave. Two measly slices are hardly enough.
I wish I could eat it as a main. It's so light and crispy, bountiful in flavour and tastes so good it should be sinful. What glorious greasy goodness!

The steak was very well-done. Not over-cooked well-done, but excellently executed well-done. It had that carnivorous thing down pat. The flesh was astoundingly marbled and tender, so soft and chewy and sapid. A sensational piece of meat.
The Top Sirloin & Salmon Combo comprised of a slab of steak and a portion of salmon, both proper meals in themselves. The steak was good, as above, but was less marbled. But of course, how can you compare a top sirloin to a nice fatty oleaginous ribeye cut? The salmon however was overcooked. Nothing worse than an overcooked piece of fish. It was dry, even though salmon's an oily fish. It was not fresh and the fishy odour was overwhelming. It was bad.

Shally had the Rib Sticking Baby Pork Ribs which was so bad. It was dry and tasted like turkey with generic barbeque sauce. The meat did not fall off the bone, the way it's supposed to be. I think these are the WORST ribs I have had. I don't know if this was a bad night, but it was definitely bad. You can get better ribs from Cafe Cartel.
The Pan Fried Black Cod was a lot better than its salmon counterpart. It looks a whole lot better too. It's light, clean-tasting and very tender. It's not rave-material but it's decent.

Stuart Anderson's Black Angus

Orchard Parade Hotel
#03-21, 1 Tanglin Road
Singapore 247905

trusty marmalade pantry

It's a long story how we ended up at Marmalade Pantry. We wanted to go to Superfamous but the reviews were so bad we decided against it. We then wanted to check out the Moomba but it was raining and we didn't feel like braving the torrential storms for a cold sandwich. Finally, we decided on VietCafe. It was closed. And since Sharon could only spare about half an hour or so, we went to the Marmalade Pantry since it was close to her office.

It's really quite a pretty place isn't it? All that crisp whiteness and understated elegance? Anyone noticed that all their servers are (rather) good-looking? Even their servers' all white attire spells casual-chic comfort. Although I must object to the quality of their tshirts. Even my secondary school PE tshirt is better quality than that. It looks like it will stretch in the washing machine after just one wash and it's so thin! Apparently, they are designed by Song+Kelly. If so, I'd say defunct for a reason.

If they used better quality tshirts, I promise the servers will look so much better; and confident.

Their signature white chrysanthemuns at each table, with white salt and pepper shakers on white tables with white chairs and white placemats. Everything's so pristine and bright, you feel shy to even laugh loudly. It's definitely a girl's place, for girls to feel like cherubic princesses.

My crab caesar salad. I normally order the crabmeat linguine with tomato chilli and pinenuts. I fell in love with this dish at Wild Rocket/Relish and despite Sharon's insistence that Marmalade Pantry offers a better version, I insist on Wilin Low's version. I'm fiercely loyal to the Wilin Low Empire like that. (But honestly, I really do prefer the Wild Rocket version)

So anyway, my salad was pleasurable. I was a bit disappointed at the obvious lack of food-porn quality, the food looked bland and unappetising. It was just romaine lettuce with crabmeat and toasted bread with their own caesar dressing. Boy they weren't kidding when they said crab caesar salad. It was expensive too, at $22!

To be fair though, they used real crab meat and the dressing was really good. It reminded me of how the Caesar dressing at The Line, Shangri-La used to be. Really thick, creamy with a distinct zing to it.

Sharon ordered her usual grilled pesto chicken wholemeal wrap with oven roasted butternut. This was even better than usual. The chicken was impossibly moist today and it was extremely well-seasoned. It was not fatty at all so some may find it not luscious enough for them. But I felt that the creamy pumpkin in the wrap compensated for whatever lack of fat perfectly. The smooth consistency complemented the meat's firm texture and the sugars in it accentuated the chicken's succulence.

The wrap was quite nicely done too. True, it wasn't exactly flavourful but the taste was definitely not flat. It wasn't too limp or too thick and gooey, and you could actually cut through the wrap without everything falling apart when you do. This is actually a neat wrap!

I particularly liked the sweet potato and tapioca chips that are served as a side. They are oh-so-crispy and oh-so-toothsome. And they are cut so fine, they are light to boot! I could eat 1kg of these and not be sick of them.

Marmalade Pantry, not exactly an exciting dining experience, but count on them to deliver consistent quality food.

The Marmalade Pantry
Hitachi Tower
16Collyer Quay
#01-04
Singapore 049318

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