I'm interrupting my series of reviews on Japan for a quick one on the newly discovered Oriole Cafe & Bar. Located at the bottom of the Pan Pacific Serviced Suites (the big black building between Singapore Power and Somerset MRT), its not a place you would simply pass by because its hidden at the back and there is construction work on the other side. If you drive, rather than park in the building itself, please use the Grange Road public carpark which is just next to the building and very much cheaper and more convenient.
We went there totally blind and not knowing anything about it, other than that it had been favorably reviewed in the papers recently. It was fortunate that we arrived early, as the 30-40 seater restaurant although not filled up yet, was almost fully booked with reservations. Those who arrived later than 11.45am on a Sunday, had to sit outside. Normally that wouldn't be a bad thing, except the area is still surrounded by construction works, not great for ambiance. The dress code is probably more of smart casual, especially on weekdays where the crowd might trend towards office workers, although in sunny Singapore where everyone under-dresses, you can get away with casual too.The best item was the coffee. *Shinta's latte arrived first, topped with slightly brown foam and pretty coffee art drawn in. Unlikely other lattes, this one boasted a rich coffee smell and taste right off the first sip. Apparently its because of the way the milk is poured into the cup; the coffee forms a "ring" around the foam enabling the rich flavour to be appreciated right away. Other lattes have a pure white foam scooped on top, resulting in the whole latte tasting more of milk with a slight hint of coffee, rather than real coffee with milk.
My ice blended milk coffee was fantastic. When you get ice blended drinks at other places, the terrible ratio of ice to milk to coffee results in an extremely diluted mix as the ice melts and dilutes the coffee. At Oriole however, not only is the coffee perfectly blended into a smooth mix with the ice, the blend remained smooth, rich and creamy even as the ice melted. There was no rush to finish the glass off since it didn't become the usual uneven mixture ice blended drinks normally become after a while. It was only much later that we found out that Oriole boasts the services of the top 2 barista's in Singapore. A title well deserved I think!
I suspect the menu at Oriole changes very often, because this one was specially printed with the day's date on it. There were quite a lot of tempting items, but given my new drive to "eat slightly less", we settled on sharing a salad, 2 individual main courses and most importantly, Eton Mess!
The Wafu Salad was quite standard, nicely seasoned with fresh crunchy vegetables. Warning: Portions are not very large.
My Steak Melt sandwich didn't look very impressive when it first arrived. Just 2 simple pieces of toast with a beef patty, a bit of cheese and caramelised onions. It tasted pretty good though, with the sweet and juicy onions offsetting the slightly drier and salty flavour of the beef. For the price I paid, I think they should have included a small side salad. Even just a few lettuce leaves or slices of tomato and cucumber would have really brightened up the plate and made it look more balanced.
*Shinta's fish and chips took slightly longer to arrive, but was pretty worth it. The deep fried batter was not too oily, and the fish was soft and tasty. Chips were not too bad too, but the real difference from other fish and chips was the small pieces of fried garlic which added a slightly different flavour to the whole dish. The tatare sauce that we requested was "real tatare sauce" and went well with the fish, while we had to get mayo for the fries.
Finally, the highly anticipated dessert. I had been searching everywhere in Singapore for Eton Mess for quite a while now, but this is the only place that has it. Supposedly originating from the dining halls of the elite UK boarding school Eton, this is a mix of meringue bits, strawberries, berry juices, whipped cream and lightly sprinkled with nuts.
The version served in Oriole was slightly different from the English one because 1) normally I see it in a cup and not on a plate; and 2) the meringue was left in relatively large pieces rather than crushed into small bits. Still terribly delicious (and sinful), I think crushing up the meringue makes a big difference because otherwise it tends to get just a little soggy and difficult to eat in large chunks.
Despite the place being opened for 2 months already, I found the service although polite and eager to please, still very clumsy, awkward and slightly slow. The restaurant is not large, but it took a while for them to re-confirm that every other empty table had been reserved and only one was left for us. There was a slight communication problem, the waiter didn't really understand our orders until we pointed to the item on the menu. I don't think it was because he didn't known the menu, but more of a pronunciation difference, because he kind of distorted the name of the items when he read the menu back to us. Getting our card swiped for the bill also took a while. Redeeming factors are that the manager (?) was friendly and checked on how we were enjoying the food, requests for additional sauces were met with quickly, and they offered us ice/warm water without prompting.
This is definitely a place I would come back to, especially for the coffee and the Eton Mess. Hopefully efficiency of the service will improve with time, and as the furore from the news reviews dies down a little, maybe it will be less crowded. I look forward to trying the many other dishes on the menu.
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Oriole Cafe & Bar
96 Somerset Road #01-01, Pan Pacific Serviced Suites, S(238163)
Tel: +65-6238 8348
Hours: Mon-Fri 10.30am - 9.00pm(food)/9.30pm(drinks),
Sat-Sun 10.00am-9.30pm(food)/10.00pm(drinks)
http://www.oriole.com.sg/
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