Sunday, August 07, 2005

The Canteen

1, Scotts Road, Shaw Centre,
#02-10 Singapore 228208
Tel: 6333-8966

Over the years, Les Amis has slowly established itself in the culinary scene in Singapore. Branching out from its fine French dining restaurants, it has slowly tried to cater to the different crowds with their newer varied restaurants such as Coq and Bull and Pepperoni. The Canteen, which has recently turned two, is one of their later ventures. Located in the heart of the city, it serves up bistro comfort food and some Asian delights.


Duck Confit

Nosh: Bistro food such as duck confit, steak frites, seabass, osso bucco and pastas make up the western side of the menu. On the Eastern side of the menu, innovative items such as the deep fried baby squid salad sat side by side with other local delights such as hokkien mee, hor fun and beef rice are available.

In my opinion, the appetizers sounded more interesting than the main courses, and hence the debate around our table was whether to go with two appetizers and dessert or the full two or three course. For appetizers we elected to go with the mushroom fricassée because of the wonderful poached egg that was served with it, the roast duck salad and the mushroom “cappuccino”. The soup was incredibly small, the truffle oil took it up a notch, but the soup was a little disappointing. The duck salad was a nice combination of the bitter salad leaves, sweet plum sauce and the roasted duck. The mushroom fricassée was rather beautifully done as well. The main courses however were rather disappointing. The duck confit portion was incredibly small and the seabass which was served with a tomato and lemongrass broth did look slightly overcooked, but it was still succulent and juicy, still had a scale or two left on it. In place of a main, we also ordered the deep fried baby squid salad, which was a good combination as well. Our lunch seemed to have started off pretty decently and it slowly went on a downward spiral as dessert was a total disaster. We ordered the apple parcel which was an Apple compote sautéed with Grand Marnier, baked in crispy pastry served with lychee ice-cream and the Pineapple compote which was diced pineapple cooked with sugar & vanilla, served with coconut ice-cream & fresh raspberries. The apple parcel’s crispy pastry tasted simply like flour which was pretty gross, but if you mash everything together (apple, pastry and ice cream) it isn’t that bad. The pineapple compote was too sweet, which made us cringe, it was like eating pineapple tarts without a nice buttery tart shell to balance it off.

Pay: This social club at lunch time spots business people and ladies who lunch, and hence prices are pretty high. For an a-la-carte 3 course will set you back about S$70, but there are set lunches available for S$22+++ for 2 courses and S$28+++ for 3.

Service: Very Les Amis - smooth and professional.

Me Thinks: I might not be back here; or maybe just I'll get appetizers and I’ll walk to somewhere else for a hokkien mee.

1 Comments:

Blogger M. said...

1st, congrats on being mentioned on the digital life in straits times!

2ndly, yep, we seem to go to the same places! also took advantaged of the 50% off to go Canteen :) Wise decision, IMO :)

6:50 PM  

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