Chapter 55

This is a new western restaurant that opened up at what we called a jinxed location at Tiong Bahru. It's predecessors were mostly overpriced, lousy food and dodgy-ly decorated food places that we didn't bother giving a second chance. And all of them closed down for obvious reasons. So we were quite curious to see the renovations going on for Chapter 55. And even more excited to see the sign that says "one-for-one weekday lunch". =)

So on day 2 of opening, we went to check out the lunch. To be clear to readers, the one-for-one does not apply to the entire menu. But quite a decent selection of the menu falls under the one-for-one deal. And as expected, its the cheapest items that you get free. So if you chose 4 dishes, the 2 cheapest comes free. And the eligible items are not limited to main courses. It is applicable to some appetisers too. But bear in mind since appetisers are generally cheaper than main courses, if you want to be really 'worth it' about it, may not be the best option.

The truffle fries does not fall under the one-for-one, but we decided to order it anyway. They are pretty good fries! Crispy shoe string fries with fluffy centre, I loved them! Down side is the truffle oil are not mixed in very evenly, so you get that occasional fry that is uber fragrant, the rest are just regular very nice fries.

Truffle fries

Their pastas were served pretty quickly. The vongole smelled amazing when it arrived. E thoroughly enjoyed it. J found her mushroom Aglio Olio a tiny bit on the bland side, but she still liked it anyway.

Vongole

Mushroom aglio olio

The non pasta mains. Goodness. 30 minutes after ordering, no sign of FQ and my food! After several times badgering the waiter, we finally got our food a good 45-50 minutes after ordering. Bad! But I chalked it up as teething problem on the kitchen's part. It's day 2 of operation after all. My sea bass was very nicely done and the mash potato puree was an interesting touch.

Sea bass

We didn't really liked their coffee. It was too bitter, and J said that was over burnt coffee. Not that I know anything about coffee...

Latte

The most impressive thing about them? The gelato counter. Their flavors are interesting enough, and seems to change often enough for you to want to sample quite frequently. It's so nice to have a gelato place within walking distance from work for horribly hot days!

Gelato!

We went back on a separate occasion one week later, because S wanted to go. This time round I thought the kitchen should have sorted out its teething problem. And initially, I was impressed by my beef lasagne that arrived 10 minutes after ordering. But wait. We ordered TWO beef lasagne. And the second one didn't arrive til more than 30 minutes later. Guess the first one was a wrong delivery from another table. Oops. So needless to say, by the time the others' food arrived, I had long finished my lasagne. But timing aside, the lasagne IS very nice. The tomato sauce was perfect, only complain is the serving size is a little on the small side. NOT ENOUGH!!

Beef lasagne

We tried their buffalo wings this time round. Pretty good. Unfortunately my wing was slightly pink near the bone, something I feedback to the lady boss. She took the feedback very good-naturedly.

Buffalo wings

We also got fried calamari this time. Nice! The batter is not overly thick, and the squid cooked just right. Not too soft, not to chewy. Perfect.

Calamari

E tried the breaded pork ribs. It turned out just to be a deep fried pork cutlet. Nothing amazing. And if I didn't remember wrongly, it could do with a little more seasoning. But this was 5 months ago. I may have remembered wrongly. Hahaha

Breaded pork ribs

Overall I do like their food. It's the waiting times that is keeping me away. JK have been back twice for their dinner now, and both his wife and him loved it. He swears by their pizzas, which I haven't try. Maybe 5 months on, their kitchen speed have improved. Maybe it's time to give them another chance one fine day. For now, I'm quite happy to stop by occasionally for gelato. =D They're always quite full when I drop by, so I think this joint is here to stay and break that chain of 'unlucky' eateries to occupy that 'cursed' space. 

Chapter 55

55 Tiong Bahru Road, #01-37,
Singapore
Tel: 6221 2219

Trattoria Capri

It's our 5 year anniversary, and lazy us... Neither of us planned anything for that day! It was only at somewhere around 5pm, that we started discussing where to go. I just got him a wooden wine rack for our Wood Anniversary, so I wanted to swing by ToTTs to get the wine glasses to go with the rack. So my solution for shortlisting locations was by going on to HungryGoWhere, and searching for "romantic" and "Bukit Timah" area. Then found this Italian place known as Trattoria Capri. Looked up their website to check out their menu, saw some vegetarian risotto and pizza options. Hubby say looks ok, and so there we went.

Parking was quite a nightmare, because it was actually in a corner of a landed property estate. They do provide valet service, though hubby refused to use it. In the end we managed to find a parking space a distant away and walked to the restaurant.

The service staff were friendly, although for some reason our table was slightly neglected. We had no spoon on the table setting (which, by the way, wasn't a table a staff brought us to... more of hubby just sat down upon walking into restaurant). Then we weren't served bread until I saw the table next to us being given bread then I asked for it. But the waitress was very nice and apologetic about all these, so I couldn't find it in my heart to fault them.

Very pretty oil and vinegar bottle

As you can see in the background, the bread only appeared after my starters have been served. Which wasn't exactly in the correct order of things but I only noticed the next table's bread a period of time after we ordered our food. But anyway, these are the crusty type bread. More of the soft, fluffy, herb-y bread, which soaks up the oil and vinegar very nicely.

Bread

The soup of the day was pumpkin soup. I seldom can resist pumpkin soup. Actually, I seldom can resist soup, full-stop. Warm, hearty, not overly creamy. I liked it, and was happily dipping my late bread into it. Late has it's benefits too!

Pumpkin soup

We both love caprese, so we ordered caprese salad. I know I said I have a new favourite cheese, but that doesn't mean I'll stop liking Buffalo mozzarella. They do have Burrata cheese, but unfornately, it's served with parma ham so a no-no for the hubby. The classic fresh cheese + juicy tomatoes + peppery rocket combination just CANNOT go wrong. I spotted the next table finish their starters leaving all the wild rocket behind. What a waste!!!! *facepalm*

Caprese salad

For main I ordered a Baccalá alla caprese, baked cod fish. Ooooohhh... It was SOOOOOOOO nice!!! In fact, the hubby summarized it when he saw the happiness on my face upon the first bite: "Is it skin crispy crispy, flesh soft soft, sauce nice nice?". Coming from a vegetarian, I think I trained my hubby well. But yes, that's essentially the gist of this dish. The skin WAS crispy, and the flesh WAS perfectly done, nice and flakey. More of fish juices than a sauce, the liquid WAS really very yummy, fragrant without overpowering the natural milky flavor of the cod fish, which was really the star of this dish. The baked veggies alongside were bathed in the same yummy juices. I especially loved the mushrooms, which absorbed the flavours of the juices. And yay! More wild rocket for me!

Baked cod fish

Look at how nice and flakey the fish is!

He ordered the Tartufata pizza, which has porcini mushrooms and truffle cream. It's nice! But cream based pizza tend to be more rich than the tomato based ones, so he got a bit sick towards the end. I helped him with 1 slice.

Tartufata pizza

And since it was a special occasion, how can we not order a dessert? I ordered a lava cake to share. Theirs was served with flaming Grand Marnier. So pretty! The result is a nicely crispy surface, which we broke through to find a soft cake encasing the oozy filling. YUM!

Lava cake

Maybe the cod fish skewed my bias, but I really want to return here, if not just for the fish. But that said, I saw on their menu a lobster pasta for two. And spotted some other table ordered it. They weren't joking about the lobster, it was one entire lobster on the plate! Now that's something try-worthy. So yeah, I wanna bring Lynn back. But I'll be sure to use their valet parking service, available on Fri to Sun evenings. Haha!


Trattoria Capri
3 Binjai Park Singapore 589819
Tel: +65 6468 4886
reservations@trattoriacapri.com

Crust (Upper Thomson)

The hubby and I were thinking of dinner place, and he said he wanna eat pizza. Since I couldn't think of any decent pizza place nearby, I suggested why not we go search the Upper Thomson stretch of eateries and see if we can find something there. So there we were cruising along Upper Thomson, and spotted Crust. And just nice, a car eased out of it's lot right in front of Crust, so we happily parked and got ourselves an outdoor table.

The trouble with outdoor table is, the staff didn't really notice us much. So service was pretty limited, which annoyed the hubby (even though he's the one who wanted to sit outside). So after a long time waiting with nobody attending to us, he went in to inform them we are outside, and grabbed some menus, and told them to get us ice water.

He said he was hungry enough for one whole pizza, plus I didn't really want to eat vegetarian pizza when there were so many yummy sounding options on the menu. So I greedily decided to go for one whole pizza by myself. Each pizza is roughly an A4 size paper. I thought it sounded manageable...

Turns out it was manageable by itself, if we didn't order anything else. I actually quite liked my pizza, though I had expected more avocado than the few slices it came with. Chicken and avocado has always been the perfect combination, so what can go wrong with throwing them on pizza and smothering the whole thing with cheese right?

Avocado Chicken

He ordered the Wild mushroom pizza. It had a variety of mushrooms buried in it, and was topped with asparagus. It looks like a combination I would have liked too, but I didn't try because I was worried about not being able to finish my own pizza. He finished it, without much comment.

Wild mushroom

The trouble with finishing the food came with our order of truffle wedges. It was a pretty huge bowl of wedges. Then as it is, my pizza is already carbo-laden. So add another carbo, I was stuffed! Hubby gave up on the wedges midway through. I slowly struggled through my pizza, then picked through the wedges, and finally gave up leaving maybe about 4-5 behind.

Truffle wedges

The hubby didn't like the place, more because of the lack of service than the food. I thought it was ok, so I wouldn't write it off completely. It can be a back-of-the-mind location the next time his pizza craving hits. But I will learn from my mistake and share one pizza with him instead of trying to be a greedy pig and order one all by myself.


Crust
215R Upper Thomson Road
Singapore 574349
Tel: 6456 1555

Toby's - The Dessert Asylum

We happened to be in the far east (Marine Parade) to attend a wake, and decided to hunt for dinner somewhere nearby. I suggested Parkway Parade since it was nearby, and in no time, we had parked and started looking for dinner places. I did scan the website on the ride there to try to find suitable eating places. Hubby rejected most of those I suggested, but he spotted Toby's bright signage from from far away and dragged me over to check it out. Turns out the menu seems pretty alright, something I wasn't able to tell from it's name on the website. I honestly thought it was just a dessert place.

The menu is actually quite playful with cartoons all over, and somehow a little reminiscent of NYDC's format and variety. I was actually tempted by many items ranging from pasta to pizza to pies. I finally decided on what I want, and added on a set meal. The set meal came with a soup of the day, which in this case, was a mushroom soup. Portion wasn't huge, but its nice to see a non-campbell mushroom soup, served with a super well toasted slice of bread (which really, is more like a cookie given how toasted it is.).

Mushroom soup

My final decision was the beef lasagne, which for some reason was served with a buttered toast on it. The toast was totally out of place, but I dutifully ate it before digging into the pasta. The pasta is actually pretty alright. The sauce well flavoured, the pasta cooked right, the whole combination is pretty decent.

Beef lasagne

Hubby was hungry and straight up ordered a pizza and a pasta. The mushroom and spinach pizza had a generous scatter of spinach leaves and toasted almonds. I liked the pizza, and helped eat one, maybe two slices. That's because he was too full from his pasta and couldn't finish the pizza. There was something he didn't quite like in the vegetarian spaghetti but I can't remember what it is. Oh! I think it was the greens in the pasta. I was pretty sure they were spinach but he said they tasted weird and left them all behind.

Mushroom and spinach pizza

Vegetarian spaghetti

Ironically, we had no space for desserts. The food isn't too bad, but wasn't so amazing that I will drive all the way back to the east for it. But if I happen to be in the locality, I will probably want to return to try their desserts.

Toby's - The Dessert Asylum
80 Marine Parade Road, 

#02-68/69/70 

Parkway Parade
Singapore 449269
+65 6346 2435
enquiry@tobys.com.sg

Verve Pizza Bar (Marina Bay)

My family and I went for the Cavalier show at Marina. After the show, we wanted a simple dinner before heading home. Since we all parked at the open carpark beside the show stage, the most accessible place to dine was actually Verve Pizza Bar, right beside the carpark. Moreover, it seemed to be vegetarian friendly enough, so we settled for there. Since all the seating is alfresco, and it's pretty late at night, and I didn't bring my camera and had to rely on my phone camera, I apologise for the poor photos.

First up, french fries. No truffles, no garlic. Just good ol' fries. Ordered more for my nephew's benefit than ours, but he didn't eat alot of it so we gained from him. Regular fries, not much I can comment on.

Fries

My mom and I shared a somewhat interesting sounding pizza. Enzo - peking duck pizza. How fusion is that? Turns out it wasn't very Chinese flavoured after all. But the influence is there. Sweetish sauce, duck meat pieces, and topped with cucumber and spring onions. My mom enjoyed it, I found it not bad.

Enzo - Peking duck pizza

When there's my bro and me, there's always fried chicken wings. We CANNOT resist. But their's were so-so. Crispy, yes. Seasoned, yes. That's about it. It wasn't those super nice ones. But it's not bad. It's very hard to make bad fried chicken wings... agree?

Fried chicken wings

The hubby went for the Franucci, a tomato, mozzarella, basil pizza. It looked good! He polished the entire pizza off alone, which is impressive by itself. Then he amazed us further by ordering a pasta, and finished that too! I tried a mouthful of his pasta, which I forgot to take a photo of. I like it! Their pasta are homemade fresh pasta. The texture is nowhere like those dried kinds we get in supermarkets and find in almost 90% of the restaurants in Singapore. I love fresh pasta!

Franucci - tomato mozzarella basil pizza

And of course I managed to forget to take photo of my sis-in-law's pasta before she mixed it. But here's a look at their yummy fresh pasta. Urgh, the poor lighting is soooo not helping the food look nice. Ok, and my poor photography skills.

Aglio olio linguini

I like their pizzas for the thin-crusts, and love their homemade pastas. Overall, we liked it. In fact, so much so that the hubby asked me a few weeks later where else got sell pizza and pasta like the one we ate after Cavalier one. You see, he doesn't remember places very well, so it's no surprise he forgot the name. For him to actually remember the food he ate after Cavalier, it goes to shows how much he enjoyed it. 

Verve Pizza bar

11 Marina Boulevard
Ground Floor
Marina Bay City Gallery
Singapore 018940

Pepperoni Pizzeria

J had vouchers for dining in at Pepperoni Pizzeria from doing their delivery, so off we went to utilise those vouchers. I do think I'm slacking off on my blogging duties. On top of these horribly belated entries, I am missing pictures too often. I actually forgot to take photo of the pizza!!!!!

Pepperoni's Pizzeria's branch at  Zion Road, opposite Great World City, is a very cozy outlet. They are actually a branch-off from the Les Amis group of restaurants.  I've already tried their pizzas several times before, from deliveries to work, as well as someone buying before. Why buy when they do deliveries? Because Pepperoni's pizzas, on top of the usual small, medium and large, comes in an XXL size. Delivery is not available for XXL.

I like the flavours they carry, and because I love wild rocket, my favourite is the parma ham with wild rocket. Remember my lack of love for Parma ham? Well, I think the wild rocket won over. Haaa. But you can always add wild rocket to any other flavours at a small cost.

Because of the lack of picture, I cannot remember what pizza we ordered. But I'm pretty sure we ordered the XL one, in two flavours, one on each half. And looking through the menu, I bet we took the parma ham and rocket salad (Prosciutto Crudo di Parma) and the seafood (Frutti di Mare) to be shared among 4 pax. 

Since we're so familiar with their pizzas, we decided to try some other foods. J loves aglio olio, so we ordered that with a request for additional mushrooms. Perfectly cooked penne, tossed in fragrant garlic infused olive oil. The sliced garlic pieces inside were aromatic, and the mushrooms lent an additional aroma. We also ordered oven roasted baby back ribs (Rosticciana). Roasted to cripsy perfection, it was tender and delicious. I'm not a super ribs loving person because I get sick at the third bone. But when shared among 4 of us, it was perfect. 

Baby back ribs with it's accompanying wedges in the background

Aglio Olio with additional mushrooms

We subsequently got more vouchers, but unfortunately forgot about them past expiry. Sigh... I'll love to get an excuse to return here for a long lunch!

Pepperoni Pizzeria

56 Zion Road, Singapore 247781

Tel: 6732 3253

Skinny Pizza (Plaza Singapura)

I've always liked Skinny Pizza for their super thin pizza crusts, their fragrant truffle fries, and the wild rocket on basically everything on the menu. Previous visits were to the Dempsey branch, called Barracks, and the Great World City branch. When we were at PS hunting for a dinner location at the new wing, we decided Skinny will do because it wasn't too crowded, and some of the group hadn't tried it before. Moreover I had a 10% discount voucher from a previous visit.

I immediately decided I wanted the truffle fries and the Wild Truffle Mushroom pizza. I actually haven't tried the truffle pizza before, but remember smelling next table's when we were dining at Great World City. I remembered it smelling fantastic, so had no qualms about ordering it this time round. On top of that, we ordered a meter long chicken sausage, a Meatball Spaghetti Napolitana, a Squid Ink pizza, and a Smoked Turkey Swiss pizza.

Squid Ink Pizza

Meter Long Chicken Sausage

Truffle fries

I missed the photo opportunity for the other two pizzas. The truffle fries were as good as I remember. The Wild Truffle Mushroom pizza disappointed. It didn't have the aroma I whiffed at Great World. I'm not sure is it a branch to branch variation, or that it really isn't as attractive when it's right in front of you. You know what they say about the grass being greener on the other side. It tasted like regular mushroom pizza with the tiniest hint of truffle. The Squid Ink, however, was really yummy. The ink was actually baked into the crust, so the crust had that additional inkiness. Together with the additional smear of ink sauce, the squid rings and the ubiquitous wild rocket, it was a really good slice of pizza. The Smoked Turkey Swiss pizza was pretty good too. Salty turkey slices that went with so well with everything else on the pizza.

The sausage was quite average. Not the kind that makes your fork keep going back for seconds. And it seemed that I was the only sausage lover in the group. So I dutifully finished up the sausage at the end when no one else wanted it. The pasta was delicious. We all liked the tomato based sauce. It was fragrant, with the right balance of sweet and salty. The meatballs were ok. Hubby joined us subsequently, and I ordered him a Ratatouille Pizza. He didn't complain, so I guess it was good enough for him.

We did have a little trouble getting the waiters' attentions for refill of water, new orders and additional table setting and what not, but overall the service wasn't too bad. The pizza came one at the time, so we had the time to distribute all the slices before the next one arrived, leaving our table less cramped. It was a nice place to just eat and catch up. Maybe, just maybe, I should return to the Great World branch to try their truffle mushroom pizza.


Skinny Pizza Plaza Singapura
68 Orchard Road#03-79/83Plaza SingapuraSingapore 238839
Tel: +65 6884 8381
http://www.skinnypizza.com.sg/