Five Nines at Keong Saik Road

Interesting name for a restaurant...999.99 (Five Nines)...the reason? The owners (Japanese) were gold traders, and the highest purity for gold is 999.99 (24ct gold). They have since retired from the gold business and started this restaurant. Headed by a Japanese Head Chef Masanao Saito, the restaurant served Japanese inspired modern European food.

Seating is available at tables, as well as a bar counter overlooking the open kitchen.

For the evening meal, we had A La Carte, and ordered the following...portions were shared by 2 pax.

We started with the Burrata and tomato salad ($14)

The burata was excellent. Mild as the fresh burrata often is, this Italian delicacy was complemented very well with the tomato salad.

We also had the Seabass Carpaccio & Truffle Salsa ($16)

Nice dish. The seabass was very fresh, and lightly cured. A mild aroma of truffle lingers about the plate. And the halved cherry tomatos were sweet with a tart aftertaste which went very well with the fish. 

As it was the season for asparagus in the Northern Hemisphere, we had the White Asparagus & Sous Vide Egg ($16) 

The sous vide egg was perfectly done, as it usually is. We found the white asparagus to be full flavored, if a bit on the fibrous side. But the slices of ham were the perfect foil to the egg. Nice one.

Then to the main courses. First up, one of the more popular dishes at Five Nines. The Lobster Gratin ($29)

A whole lobster, with the meat removed from the shell (yes, the claws were empty, the meat removed and used as filling with the cheese gratin. The first 20 servings for each day is offered at an incredible price of only $19. 

We found the lobster a little on the small side, but the taste more than made up for it. The lobster was probably live, and the meat was sweet, succulent and very tasty. 

Next is another popular dish. The Smokey Lamb & Eggplant ($22)

Two chops were served covered by a glass bell filled with smoke. We were told the smoke was made from burning apple and cherry wood, and it was quite a spectacle as the waiter lifted the bell, and the wonderful smokey aroma filled the table vicinity. The meat was beautifully cooked. The lamb was well marinated, and did not have a gamey flavor, but one which is nicely aromatic with a smokey nose. The meat was tender, and not too fat, but still flavorful. This was my highlight dish for the evening.

And then some starch...Truffle Cream Risotto & Foie Gras ($19)

The risotto was a bit unusual. It was a little softer than expected, with the characteristic Italian al dente bite being mostly absent. And the truffle cream was light and did not get in the way. Nice touch by the chef to achieve this balance. The foie gras was excellent. It was cooked just right, probably pan fried till crisp on the outside, while still soft within. The fats bursting out as one presses it against the palate, exploding in a wonderful flavor that only foie gras can provide.

Then the desserts. The Tiramisu ($8) first.

Looks like almost every tiramisu in the world. But looks can be deceiving. The taste was wonderful. The texture was very light, with a good touch of cream from the mascarpone, and the alcohol. Very nice tiramisu.

But I was more impressed with the Raspberry & Chocolate ($9)

A small scoop of raspberry ice cream accompanies. The cake itself was a very dense chocolate and was excellent. A must have for the chocolate lover.

The restaurant was nearly full when we were there for an early dinner on a Saturday evening. And although they do not enforce it, two seatings are generally observed. The restaurant opens at 6pm and the second seating is approximately 9pm.

A nice restaurant, with good food at reasonable prices. If we had to nit pick, it would be that the servings tend to be a bit smaller than expected. Perhaps we were getting too used to American serving sizes...and perhaps its asking for a bit much as the prices were actually quite reasonable for food of this quality. 

Five Nines

29 Keong Saik Rd, 089136

Phone: 6221 7098 (reservations recommended for weekend evenings)

Osia Bar and Restaurant at Resorts World Sentosa: Highly Recommended!!

I will come out up front and say it...I love the food at Osia. This bright, airy Resorts World Sentosa eatery has captured my gastronomic imagination like few others in Singapore. Chef Douglas Tay is a genius in creating incredible looking and tasting dishes, and I highly recommend this restaurant.

Having come up with the recommendation up front, I also declare up front, that I have eaten a few times at Osia, and always on invitation of Resort Worlds Sentosa who have hosted the tastings.

And this incredible meal is no different. A huge tasting lunch, with numerous courses. Starting with the Seafood Ice Experience, served in a set of test tubes, with 6 interesting iced creations.

Watermelon raspberry Vinegar, Amabi; Calamari mojito with Hokkaido scallop; Sourz apple with salmon trout; coconut with Maine lobster; pineappple rum with tuna and lychee martini with oyster. I found all the appetizer ices to be very good, but was particularly impressed with the coconut with Maine lobster to be the most outstanding of the flight. Very strong, beautiful coconut flavours and aroma, complemented nicely with the sweet, firm bite of the lobster meat.

Then follows 5 appetizers, starting with the HJokkaido Scallop:

Beautiful hokkaido scallop, citrus cured on a bed of cauliflower cream, black truffle salsa and seaweed vinaigrette. The flavours are marvellous. The scallop sweet, very fresh, and the vinaigrette provided the acidity to cut into the richness of the cauliflower cream. Very nice.

The next was a Fjord trout

the trout is cooked sous vide, a la confit in a 42C water bath. Served with spiced cashews, a pineapple vanilla rum jelly and cilantro butter gell. Again, very beautiful flavours, coming together very well. The trout was mild in taste, but the other ingredients lifted it to quite a nice aural experience.

A soup of Norwegian Prawn

The very fresh prawns, deshelled and cooked in an emulsion, citrus, fennel and dill...the emulsion soup tasted very much like a very good lobster bisque, and the prawns, being very nicely fresh was crunchy and very sweet, with a very nice crustacean flavour.

A beautiful slice of turbot was next

A slice of turbot, with broccoflower, snap peas, cheddar, salted lemon, surf clam volute espuma. Very mild tasting, with a light flavour. Although the list of ingredients in seems rather long, the fish remained very delicately flavoured. Very nice.

And razor clams with Atlantic halibut and Hokkaido scallop

supported by an able cast of black garlic paste, green onion puree, potato foam, Iberian chorizo and artichoke barigoule. I found the scallops to be very intense tasting, bursting with flavours the seafood is famous for...sweet, very nice. The razor clams were also very nice. A superb texture and sweetness. I found the halibut a bit lacking in this company, but still quite nice. Delicious!

Then came the main courses, of which there were 3. Starting with the incredible beef short ribs

Cooked sous vide, a favourite of Chef Douglas, who prefers to use second cuts, as it is less challenging to cook with premier cuts of meat. Topped with a chestnut porcini mousseline, and on a bed of pulverised cider vinegar, compressed apple sauce and black truffle sauce. The meat was certainly very tender....not melt in your mouth tender...Chef Douglas takes issue with that..."beef should not melt in your mouth, it is not butter, but should have texture, and a mouthfeel"...to which I heartily agree that he has achieved. The short ribs were very flavourful, with powerful beefy flavour, and magnificently complemented by the chestnut paste. Very very good dish.

We also had some grain fed Black Angus beef tenderloin

Again sous vide, then seared before serving on a bed of creamed sunchoke, basil cepe, Aquerello rice, tomato parmesan and a red wine sauce in the small glass by the side. The tenderloin was supremely tender. The cut selected showed the characteristic tenderness, and less flavour than a tougher cut. The rice provided a textural change to the smoothness of the paste and the beef, with a nice crunch.

The marvellous milk fed lamb short loun and brest was next

The dish was served with a Swede carrot puree, Romanesco crumble, garlic cream spelt and Tawny Port jus. I found the lamb breast, shown partly on the left of the photograph to be a bit bland, but centerstage taken by the loin was brilliant. The lamb flavours were apparent, yet very mild, and barely noticable...just enough to remind one that one is eating lamb. Beautiful marbling makes for a very tender piece of meat, Very nice. Very, very nice.

Then came the desserts, the first was a pumpkin

A curious lemon mousse which went surprisingly well with the mango, goat cheese and frozen red wine. Marvellous dessert, but the best is yet to be. The Macadamia souffle was absolutely a brilliant way to cap off a wonderful lunch

Beautiful souffle. Superb! With a chunky praline, banana custard and sour ice cream on the side. One of the better soufles I have eaten for a long time...though, as long time readers will remember that my all time favourite was still the one at Chez Dumonet in Paris.

Truly marvellous cooking. Inspired. The chef, Douglas is a true genius in mixing the various ingredients to make a wonderful meal. Two thumbs up! Highly recommended.

Osia Bar & Restaurant
Resorts World at Sentosa
#02-140/141
26 Sentosa Gateway
http://www.osiarestaurant.com/home/

Gastronomy in Paris: Le Grande Cafe Capucines

Sometimes a favourite restaurant has nothing to do with the restaurant boasting of Gault Millau, or Michelin Star. Sometimes, it is just the right combination of service, ambience, and food which suits one's taste. The Grande Cafe Capucines is one such restaurant for me. Undecorated, but a firm favourite.

Right next to the Paris Opera, on Boulevard Capucines, is the Grande Cafe. I discovered this some 20 years ago, on a business trip...we were hungry, tired, and it was drizzling in Paris. My colleague and I saw this magnificent cafe, looking regal and like it stepped right out of the 1920s belle epoch. We immediately went in.

This is a typical art deco style Parisian restaurant. The tables are set very close to each other...it is impossible not to hear what the table beside is discussing...of course, if its French, their discussion remains private to us.

I love this restaurant. The service is always efficient, which is more than what can be said of many Parisian restaurants...though truth be told, they have improved over the years. These days, they attempt to speak English...and often quite good English when in the old days, even if the waiters do speak English, they pretend not to, and spoke only French. And more nowadays, they do not turn a nose if you just order carafe eau, instead of sparkling or still water.

And they were serving divine French oysters. One of the few in the 1se Arr which have a oyster booth outside the restaurant.

These were fine de Claire no 3 I think, or perhaps no 5. They were delicious. Succulent, fresh, smooth and rather fat. Wonderful with just a touch of lemon or a dash of tabasco. Marvellous.

For starters we also had some foie gras

I rather usually prefer pan fried foie gras, but they didn't have that. So we had the pate. This was a rather large serving. Quite nice foie gras...as usual, fat, satisfying...slight greasy, but immensely aromatic as only foie gras can be, and tasted very nice.

For our mains, Edward had the baby chicken in a pot

Nicely done. The chicken, though described as a baby chicken was rather large...perhaps the size of our regular kampung chicken. The meat was nicely done, very succulent, tasty. The skin is almost crisp, though not quite. A little braising liquid sat in the pot. Very tasty.

Kin had the veal chop

This was divine. Beautiful cut of veal. Nice, decent serving size. Perfectly grilled...slightly crisp on the outside with beautiful maillard. And very tender within. The accompanying jus was also savoury and very tasty, as were the morelle mushrooms. This was a winner dish. One to come back for more. Excellent.

I had the lamb shank

It was roasted perfectly. Very tender, very moist within. But the sauce, in my view was a tad too sweet...perhaps the reduction was allowed to caramalize a bit too much for my taste. The carrots and radish supporting the lamb was very nicely done. This is still a very good dish, but I did find the sauce a bit too sweet.

The portions were rather large, so for dessert, we only ordered one...a combination of sorbet and ice cream

The pear and lemon sorbet was right up my alley. The ice crystals were very small, almost undetectable...well, actually not detectable on the palate, and the fruit confit used to make the ice sorbet superb. Powerful flavours of pear and lemon. The sole scoop of chocolate ice cream was good too, but de rigeur. The scoops were mixed with very rich full cream and drops of French pastry which tasted very good...super sweet to be sure, but had a hard texture, which gave way to a slightly sticky and overpowering sweet melange. Nice.

I almost always eat at this restaurant everytime I am in Paris. We loved the package so much, we ate there twice on this 7 day trip. So for me, my conclusion is absolutely recommended.

Le Grand Cafe Capucines
4 Boulevard des Capucines
75009 Paris, France
+33 1 43 12 19 00
http://www.legrandcafe.com/

Appetite for China: Muslim cuisine in Beijing: Donglaisun

Muslim cuisine is rather well developed in Beijing...interesting, considering that Muslims make a small minority. But their cuisine featuring lamb is very popular, and have established a long tradition.



I remember eating at a shuayangrou restaurant the first time I visited Beijing in 1994. This was a hot pot, where you cook the lamb yourself. The lamb itself is sliced thinly, each slice the serving portion, and rolled up, frozen. I relish the taste...and have been looking for something like this kind of food ever since. So when I saw one Muslim restaurant right at Wang Fu Jing, and a well known one at that...Dong Lai Shun is an old restaurant, serving up good food for nearly a century.

We returned to the restaurant twice...because the first two times, it was full, and won't take us. On a nice Wednesday morning, we went at opening time...11am, and were rewarded with a table.



We ordered the premium lamb cut...the lamb rib...each portion is RMB78. And another cut which the menu calls Gold Medal cut...also RMB78. Both are for 200g.



The ribs were darker, and well marbled.

And the gold cut was rich pink in hue, and less fat



We also ordered some Chinese cabbage, and noodles



A soup base was ordered, and left to boil in a charcoal hot pot.



The fire went furiously, and soon the soup was boiling...we threw in the ingredients...

when cooked, dip in the dipping sauce...based on sesame...each shuayangrou shop in town boasts of its own dipping sauce...made from secret ingredients...



Extremely delicious. The flavour of the two different cuts of meat was apparent. The ribs were somewhat sweeter, more flavourful. The gold cut was more sinewy. Both were very tender, and very nice. The resultant soup was superb to be drunk just like that.

Excellent meal. We loved it. We thought of going back for a second round, but was distracted by another shuayangrou place in APM Mall...not as good...but I will blog about that experience next week.


Donglaishun Muslim Restaurant (Wangfujing Branch)
Location: No.198, Wangfujing Dajie, Dongcheng District

db Moderne: Second Tasting...

Went back to db Moderne again...after the signature burger...see here for the review, I thought I'd try their other dishes...



We began with the amuse bouche, which is a thin crust pizza



Quite a nice start. The crust was light and crisp. The cheese did weigh it down a bit, but was every bit as tasty as any I have eaten.

I started with the Nicoise salad...



Two pieces of fresh tuna, lightly seared, on a bed of green beans, lettuce, quail's egg, and confit potatoes. Counterpoint was provided by a few pieces of pickled white anchivies which provided a salty, sour punch. Needless to say, the greens were very fresh, as was the tuna.

For mains, I had the lamb...



Beautifully done. The lamb was tender, juicy, and had a nice flavour. Two cuts were served...the sliced rack with 2 ribs, and a kubideh...a minced lamb on a skewer, seen on the plate right. The kubideh was ultra tender...the fall apart on prodding with the fork kind...but delicious.

and for desserts, flour-less chocholate cake...



Very good. The molten chocholate oozes out at just the right speed...testament to the pastry chef getting the chocholate at the right temperature and viscousity. The accompanying 3 scoops of ice cream were quite good as well, but I don't think they made this in-house.

Overall, after the slightly disappointing tasting of the db Signature burger...if you read my earlier review...not exactly a bad burger, no sir, indeed it is one of the better ones in town, but beaten by a cheaper offering across the bay. Today's tasting was rather better. The salad was good. The lamb quite superb, and the dessert was very good. Only the prices are a bit steep, but that's what you get for being at MBS. Recommended to eat here if you are around MBS, perhaps drop by for a pre-show dinner.




db Bistro
The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands
2 Bayfront Avenue
66888525