Thursday, September 25, 2008

3

its really been 3 years! 5 of knowing her, 3 of love, and many more to come. despite all the difficulties i have grown to love her more and more, her little idiosyncrasies and peculiarities adding charm and humanity to a wonderful person.

and with that background, here's a food review for the anniversary dinner!

Dozo is located in Valley Point Shopping Centre, away from the orchard crowd somewhere in the River Valley area. i got to know about it from the ever-useful hungrygowhere.com portal, where it had garnered 16 straight positive reviews on the strength of its service.

they really weren't kidding. my reservation was for 6.30 but by 5.30 me and PJ were already starving, so we toddled down from Orchard after doing some essential shopping. arriving 15min early, we inquired as to whether we could occupy early. the staffer immediately ushered us in. the restaurant's culture is one whereby all the waiters and waitresses are warm, friendly and joke with the guests, be in when introducing menu items or serving the food. they also aim to give best service. when i made the booking, the person taking the call asked if it was a special occasion. the resulting exchange of information yielded a little cake with a candle on the house. high marks for service, these guys are deliberately aiming to deliver.

the dinner (which is after all the point of the whole exercise, ja?) is organised as a set menu costing $58+++ for a dinner or $38+++ for lunch, sans the starter. diners get to choose the appetiser (starter is fixed), soup, entree, main, dessert and drink. the menu choices are also rotated every 3 months to keep things new and exciting.


the starter dish was 3 very small, chic-looking bite-sized things which were honestly very tasty but i'm not quite sure what they were. i do recall a grilled scallop with a sprig of asparagus and what seemed to be foie gras on a piece of toast.


for appetisers, i had escargot and PJ had her a foie gras chawanmushi. the escargot was acceptable, i guess. the concept was to subvert the usual garlic butter paradigm by making it a teensy bit like an oyster mornay, ie drowning it in cheese. i like cheese more than i like oysters, to be honest. more cheese for the escargots would have been nice. PJ's chawanmushi was a source of unexpected amusement. it actually, in all honesty, smelled like wet dog. not unpleasantly so, it was more like a small happy dog which had been caught in the rain while on walkies rather than a Hound of the Baskervilles type of smell, but still wet dog. and it tasted like... chawanmushi with bird liver in it. tasty, but nothing to make faces like a japanese food vlog.

soup was a cream of mushroom with black truffles and a seafood bisque. i dont know whether its my philistine tastes, but the seafood didnt quite agree with me. too much of the crustacean-type umami, and perhaps a little too much grog thrown into the soup stock. more cream might have modulated the flavour well. the mushroom was however good. coarse-blend mushroom bits for extra goodness. not quite sure why truffles are so hyped tho...

next up was a beef carpaccio for me and a crab salad for PJ. the carpaccio was a bigger hit with me than it was for her. the external surface of the beef appeared to have been lightly cooked before being thinly sliced and went well with the flaked parmesan and crepe. i think i would actually have been pretty happy to eat something like that (in 3x the quantity) for a light lunch. the crab salad was however a bit of a hassle; while the claw had been cracked and a section removed for access, it still required some dissection.

i had the beef steak for a main. consisting of medium-rare sliced beef on a very very hot granite stone, this seemed to be the best item of the night. one could cook each individual slice to preference on the hot stone, protected by a leaf, and few things make me happier than beef. Peijun's cod was decent enough, but by this time she was beginning to feel stuffed, and eating the cod became a bit more of an exercise. the pairing of cod with some filo pastry did assist in lightening the usually heavy flavour of the fish.

dessert was a hot chocolate cake with ice cream, and a green tea creme brulee. both competent, but nothing to write home about. and of course, the surprise little cake to end the evening!

so to sum up, excellent service, okay food. nice ambience, although going early means its quite quiet. it seems more like a girls night out kind of place, where the waiters can be cheeky and the small serves will fill up petite young ladies...

Lion - May'n, Megumi Nakajima

No comments: