Video
Read full review
2014-06-17
3632 views
Decided to try here for lunch before heading to work as it was new and I was curious.Located in Hysan Place where Le Salon Restaurant et Croissanterie used to be. From the same restaurant group, Drawing Room Concepts, a new, more casual eating establishment arrives. Basically, they didn't bother to change much of the decor as the tables, chairs, the entire place is exactly the same except they ripped down the walls to give an open setting, threw around some cute cushions on the seats, made all t
Located in Hysan Place where Le Salon Restaurant et Croissanterie used to be. From the same restaurant group, Drawing Room Concepts, a new, more casual eating establishment arrives. Basically, they didn't bother to change much of the decor as the tables, chairs, the entire place is exactly the same except they ripped down the walls to give an open setting, threw around some cute cushions on the seats, made all the wait staff wear black jeans and white t-shirts and play J-pop in the background. This to give a more "casual" feel as opposed to before. To me, it felt a bit lazy for Dining Room Concepts to not put a bit more thought in redesigning their new restaurant.
When I got there, I was not greeted by anyone to get me a table. After I waited a while, I just walked into the restaurant and finally bumped into someone who got me a table. Other than that little bump, service was fine enough.
I was given the lunch menu with a note from the waitress that the soup of the day is cream of pumpkin and catch of the day was sea bass. The lunch menu is basically $118 for a main entree. That's basically it so not a cheap value meal. You add $38 for drink and salad or soup. $38 extra for dessert which is tiramisu which they use Kahula. Menu, it appears, hadn't changed from the first person who wrote a review of this place. I would have loved a pasta but one was Bolognese and I most likely will have this later tonight. The other was carbonara with white truffle oil and truffle paste which I steer clear of as I completely agree with Gordon Ramsay's school of thinking about how manufactured truffle flavors are the most useless gourmet item in existence. So I decided on crab cakes eggs Benedict and added a soup and ice tea.
The ice tea came quickly and it was a strawberry jasmine tea. From previous reviews, the tea had huge slices of actual strawberries in it. Where were mine? All I got were strawberry bits. It was also bitter, no strawberry flavor. It was horrible.
Bread was warm and quite good. I don't use butter as I tend to eat my bread the French way. Tearing it bit by bit with my hands and mopping up the sauce instead of using butter. But for those that like butter, you will be pleased that they gave two packs even though I was dining alone. I was however glad they gave me two buns as I later realized I had a lot of gooey egg yolk to soak up.
Pumpkin soup was quite good. Loaded with pumpkin and very sweet. Extremely hot when it came out.
Crab cakes egg Benedict was surprisingly good. The eggs were perfectly poached. I slit into them and the yolk just flowed out like an erupting volcano. The egg white was cooked and not transparent. Perfect. The English muffin was toasted and soft. The hollandaise was a bit watery but it had a slight lemon tang that was good. The entire crab cake was all crab meat. No mixture of any other ingredients. But oddly it was a bit bland as it wasn't seasoned enough. It was also a bit annoying to find bits of shell in my crab cakes. They should spend time removing it. Cherry tomatoes were roasted and a nice touch. However, the salad greens had no dressing. Absolutely none so it became bitter.
Yeah...the glorious volcanic eruption of egg yolk.
All in all, there were some good, some need some improvement. May return if they change the menu as the other items weren't very interesting.
Post
