Fifth Anniversary at Nicholas Le Restaurant

After a long wait, finally another entry to my blog. No choice folks, no money no good food worth being blogged. But we finally manage to squeeze some budget for celebration of our fifth Anniversary. After searching high and low, we came across this restaurant when I was reading World Gourmet Summit Awards of Excellence 2010 web and it is nominated for Nespresso New Restaurant of the Year, which means it should have some degree of standards. We search the web but there isn't a lot of reviews, so we decided to give it a try.

We got our first dish before the starter, lightly roasted Japanese Kurobuta Pork Cheek, crispy on the outside and the fats within literally melt in your mouth, releasing multitude of flavors which enhanced your dining experience. Not bad for a start, really open up my appetite already.

Next, another side dish courtesy from Nicholas, is some thin toasted bread, topped with some ducky thing which is very tasty, I should say. Preparing you for more good food to come...

First Starter to arrive is the Slow Confit Hokkaido Scallop, with Tagliolini Pasta & Olive Tapenade and Sundried Tomato. This starter is FULL of scallops!!! Have they make a mistake? Why on earth do they give 3 BIG scallops??? It got us quite worried, maybe because it is not fresh and that's why we got 3? After our first bite, our eyes brightened! It was OISHI, the scallops are very fresh and the chef cooked it to perfection. Such pure taste of the sea!

My starter is quite experimental to me as I would never order an egg dish in a posh restaurant, sound stupid to me and not value for money. Anyway, I'm indeed dumb to order this dish, as it is just so-so to me. What do you expect, it is still an egg, although it came from a japanese farm. What they did is to cook the egg slowly at 48 degrees, the white is able to hold the yolk at liquid state and goodness it's freshness as well. To make this dish more value for money, they included a blue prawn, iberico ham and reduction of port wine. It sounds good and really quite a good combination, but as the second main dish came along, the ham and same taste surfaced again. That gave us an impression that the chef just mass cook and apply the same ingredients to every dish. Excuse me Nick, do we look like we are paying 10 bucks to have lunch at some food court down Orchard Road?

Following closely are the main dishes, Braised wagyu beef cheek with peruvian style quinoa salad, organic vine tomato and potato espuma. This is our favorite main dish, the beef cheek is tender and with sauce entirely soaked into the meat, every bite is as perfect as it can be.

Next Sue's main was actually Wild Catch Whiting Fish, with scottish bamboo clams and Iranian saffron emulsion. But when we placed this order, they informed us that the fish is unavailable and they have changed it to Sea bream! Harlow! They should have informed us about this before a customer order rather than after they placed an order, and some customers came here for the whiting fish and it will leave them with no other choice as the rest of the mains are meat. What were they thinking, how can a cheap Sea bream replace wild catch whiting fish? We decided to try it anyway as Sue wanted to have a fish meal. That was our greatest mistake of the day! The fish was totally a flop! It was overcooked and it tasted even worse than one sold in hawker centre. The portion? So miserable it's not even sufficient to fill my baby's stomach!

The bamboo clam taste alright but doesn't go with the ham as found in the eggy dish.

panna cotta taste good but not great.

This dessert is kind of like Japanese style, where they cook the pear to preserve its natural sweetness. The pear must be fresh and of a certain origin or else this dish would be a flop. Notice the chocolate beside it? I'm not quite sure why it is there as it just doesn't go with the pear. See the similarity between the 2 desserts? Rite, the chef can't be bothered and just blindly repeat the same garnish for the desserts again!

Something about their services make us quite uncomfortable, one of the waiter who is a chinese guy is much 'friendlier' than the other french guy. The french just clear your plates without even a polite gesture, and none of them ever refill your glass unless you ask them to do it.


Last dessert from the house is three chocolate which taste rather norm, it doesn't give you the feeling of wrapping up the meal for the day.

Verdict:
Food: 5/10
Service: 5.5/10
Ambience: 6/10
Value: 4.5/10

Thoughts: The set lunch actually cost S$42++ and with this kind of food and services, I've got nothing to say. One thing for sure; a chef have to be gifted or else he will just produce dishes that make us disappointed. How did this restaurant ever get nominated in such prestigious festival award. We vow never to return to this restaurant again unless of course they change their chef, which leads to changing their restaurant name as well.