The PR game of hype and lies

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A few weeks ago there was a discussion on new restaurant openings in town, and Cocotte came up as one location that quite a few people wanted to try.  Well, someone in the group did try it, and commented "wonder how long the chef was actually at Amber..."

A look at the restaurant's Facebook page describes Chef Patrick Dang's background as "Chef de Cuisine of Amber, Hong Kong..."  Materials sent out by the restaurant's PR agency says the same thing.

Sakura birthday

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It's been over a year, but we've had two birthdays in the Tigger family this month, and it was time for me to take the ladies out to dinner.  We're back at Tenku RyuGin (天空龍吟) for this occasion to sample the spring menu, and of course there is one ingredient in particular that we were really looking forward to...

Spring is the season when Japanese chefs love to showcase the use of seasonable vegetables, and tonight was no exception.

How assholes from Linklaters ruined dinner

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This post will start with a rant, because I am so livid that I am actually going to name and shame for once.

Tonight was an evening that could have been.  I was back at my favorite On Lot 10, with a group of friends who all know the boss well.  We gave David carte blanche and was prepared to enjoy a dinner that would blow our collective minds.  And - not that it really matters to me but I know some people do care - we were seated next to not one, but two venerable former Miss Hong Kongs... from the days when being Miss Hong Kong was a really, really big deal... whose spouses / ex-spouses / offsprings are movers and shakers in this town.  We were all here to enjoy our Friday evening over some great food.

Unfortunately for us, our Friday evening was ruined by a table of assholes.  Lawyers from Linklaters, and perhaps their friends.  They were some of the loudest, rudest restaurant patrons I have ever had the misfortune to come across.  They behaved as if they owned the restaurant, or maybe they thought they were in a private room and the other two tables sharing the space simply did not exist.  We got to hear about every little detail of their lives that I could not care less about - Gloria this and that, Jocelyn this, 吳總, Patrick, Sherry, throwing up, jumping into the pool, and a whole slew of other stuff.  They got louder with more and more bottles of wine and Krug Grande Cuvée, and they couldn't care less about their complete lack of manners.

At one point I seem to have caught one of the restaurant's staff going up to one end of the table and politely asking them to turn down the volume.  It seemed to have had some effect on that end of the table - for a few minutes - but the message wasn't passed on to the other end... and those assholes simply didn't care.

At a time when people in Hong Kong keep complaining about the behaviors of their northern cousins from the Mainland, it's particularly interesting to see that those of us living in Hong Kong (whether originally from Hong Kong or not) really aren't behaving much better.  I think I spotted a few senior people at the table, maybe a partner or three, even?  Absolutely boorish and shameful behavior.  As I noted in an earlier post last year, there seems to be very little correlation between higher education, income and basic manners and common decency.

My MNSC boys and I always get pretty loud at our gatherings, as it's a boys-only gig and there is plenty of wine involved.  What we always do is to make sure we book private rooms at every venue we go to.  Once the door is closed, we can be pretty loud but it becomes harder to disturb the other guests.  Well, there's no private room at On Lot 10, and I would expect patrons to have the decency to behave accordingly.  I guess it was too much to ask from this particular bunch.

OK, now that I'm done with my rant, let's see all the yummy stuff we had for dinner...

Simple, casual, good

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With a string of crappy yet fatty meals behind me, my last hours in Singapore were spent with friends at two different restaurants in the same neighborhood, with both offering simple, well-executed Western fare.

Brasserie Gavroche was the venue chosen by my friend L, who is an old friend I have known for (gasp!) almost 20 years.  She was a little apprehensive about picking a place, since she feels that my taste in restaurants is always very atas... and of course she had been told about the crappy meals that I'd been having...

The decor certainly looked like an old school brasserie, and interestingly the menus were sandwiched between plastic boxed in a wooden frame.  These have got to be the heaviest and the most unwieldy menus I've ever handled...

Getting fat with wasted calories

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Everyone who goes to Singapore ends up going for some type of local eats, most of which are cheap and cheerful.  I myself have my own list of place to hit, and it's still growing with each new trip I make.  But the reality is that Singapore, like any other city, has its fair share of crap restaurants.  For someone who is looking at restarting his diet, who desperately wants to make all the calories count, this can be infuriating.  There's nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, worse than having consumed a bunch of high caloric, fatty foods and didn't even taste good.

My first crap meal came while we were doing an excursion to Pulau Ubin, an under-developed island off the north-east cape of Singapore.  It was past 1pm and we were all a little tired, hot, and starving.  We had initially planned to take the ferry back to Changi Village and find a place there to eat, but for some reason my relatives decided to stop at the first restaurant they saw...

Season Live Seafood (海味活海鮮) is as obvious a tourist trap as I have ever seen.  It's only or so away from all the bicycle rental shops and 2 or 3 minutes away from the ferry jetty.  Anyone looking for half-decent food would normally have alarm bells sounding off in one's head about places like this.  But I decided not to protest...

Fried you tiao (炸油條) - these deep-fried Chinese crullers stuffed with cuttlefish paste failed.  Too dry from having been fried too long, and these also seemed to have been left out for a little while.