Antoinette

I took leave one day last month just to rest. I had a really great day out - essentially, I spent my free day shopping and running errands with the Sister in town. I've forgotten how much I miss shopping on a weekday morning. We started the day at 10am, beginning from F21, which we spent a good one hour there as there really wasn't any one else when we first started browsing! Although technically it was my day "off", I felt that we were sort of at work, since we ended our day at 6pm. :)

We took a break for lunch with our Daddy and us being us, decided to try out the new place, Antoinette, at Mandarin Gallery. I've heard quite good things about their desserts so I was looking forward to eating there.

Antoinette at Mandarin Gallery

The place was furnished elaborately, I assume to go with its namesame Marie Antoinette? With elaborate cushy arm chairs, lamps that create a dim and intimate setting and pretty white elegant china engraved with the letter 'A' for Antoinette, the place is certainly a perfect place for women to gather and chat over tea.

The restaurant was opened by an ex-Canele staff, Chef Pang Kok Keong, so some of the items here may bear some resemblance to Canele's offerings.

We ordered the Salad Antoinette to start things off. Flipping through the menu, I noticed that there were alot of items with the name Antoinette, I presume that those are its "signature" dishes that they want to highlight perhaps? The salad had crab meat (plenty!), tomatoes, eggs, crunchy croutons (really good) and it was safe to say that we enjoyed it. The Sis ordered a croissant and it was really flaky and buttery. I commented that it's delicious by Singapore's standards, but compared to those she had in France, I reckon this would just be just yet another ordinary croissant. She agreed. :)

Dad's constant love - the Aglio Olio. It was quite tasty too, I didn't had much since I ordered the Beef Bourguignon. Oh my my, the beef was really tender and melted in the mouth good! I quite like the sauce too. It came served atop a bed of creamy mash and some roasted asparagus.

Saint Honour L’Amour

As it was a Parisian styled patisserie, we couldn't miss ordering coffee and desserts can we? A few hits and misses here as we ordered a few to share. The above concoction, was unfortunately, a miss. It was supposedly made up of several rose petal cream filled mini profiteroles surrounded by more cream, sitting on a tart base. Major fail for this dessert. Besides being overly sweet, the dessert didn't taste good at all! Waste of calories and money since one, we didn't finish it, and two, it costs $8.50 for this piece of cake. Tsk tsk.

Antoinette

On the other hand, the signature 'Antoinette' cake was a hit. From the Facebook page (I wonder why it hasn't set up its own website yet...) - the cake comprise of earl grey milk chocolate mousse, earl grey dark chocolate cremeaux, chocolate genoise with earl grey tea, hazelnut feullitine with earl grey tea crumble, raspberry coulis. Really really good. I'm a sucker for anything chocolate and raspberry. Add earl grey into the mix and it heightens the flavours to another level. Yums. I did find that the raspberry coulis enrobed in the wobbly ball-like thing sitting on the cake pretty as it was brushed with gold powder? But tastewise, it did not add to the cake. Heck, I'm not even sure if the gel-like exterior encasing the flowy raspberry coulis was even edible! It was so rubbery and slimy...

Macarons - Earl Grey and Salted Caramel

The salted caramel macaron was really good. 'Nuff said.



I like the food and desserts here, and I will certainly revisit it again to try out the other cakes, but perhaps at the original location at Penhas Road? The lighting at the Mandarin Gallery outlet just looked too dim and depressing for my liking (I'm actually just grousing cos the photos turned out really bad).