Simple no frills oden. I really liked it! Especially when it was raining outside and chilly. The soup wasn’t too sweet and didn’t taste like it had MSG (unlike a lot of other odens out there).
Not sure why this was so satisfying - maybe it was the fact that it was freshly baked out of the oven and raining outside - but this was warm, flaky, buttery and crackly like how a good croissant should be. May not be the best croissant out there but it is a good one!
No.17 crĂŞpe features raspberry jam, fresh berries and strawberry basil ice cream. All their ice cream flavours are from Birds of Paradise which wins brownie points!
The galette features ham, sunny side up egg, sautéed mushrooms and Comté cheese. Pretty good! But not filling for a big eater like me. The service was great too.
Everything in a banh mi that you’d ever want - pâté, ham, roasted BBQ pork, pickled vegetables. It was not bad but I wouldn’t give it the same hype others give it. I really liked the BBQ pork though, but there wasn’t much in there to begin with.
Pictured are the Barbacoa (braised lamb) and Carnitas (pork belly). When I first bit into the Carnitas I was greeted with an explosion of flavour! The crunch of the red cabbage, the smokiness of the pork belly and the sweetness of the jicama lended their hands to a really good taco. Modern and with a twist no doubt, but such a pleasant surprise. The barbacoa was good too with a very strong mutton flavour, but not as a good as the pork belly. My friends who had the Camarones (prawns) also said was not bad.
If you’re still peckish, get the Totopos + Con Todos (corn chips with all their sides) and Alitas de Pollo (chicken wings)!
Food overall is pretty good! Everything we had was pretty decent. A lot of variety of dishes in their menu from Indian cuisine to cheese and crackers. Our favourites were the seafood platter, roast duck, steamed halibut and sirloin.
Used Burpple 1 for 1 for this!
We chose the Tiger Prawn Ramen for our first dish (in my other review) and the other dish that was part of the 1 for 1 deal was the Kuwayaki chicken: Binchotan-grilled juicy chicken thigh topped with spring onions, sesame seeds and togarashi. Simple dish but executed well. I liked that It wasn’t seasoned too much but still brought out the natural flavour of the grilled chicken. $18 for this originally which honestly is a pretty pricey dish.
Used Burpple 1 for 1, this used to be one of the four dishes you could choose from for 1 for 1, but now you can’t.
Nevertheless the broth was thick and flavourful. The noodles were the right texture and had that bounce. The tiger prawns were big and didn’t taste super fresh, but good enough. It was also topped with loads of mini shrimps. I appreciated the portion! $28 for this is pretty steep though.
Located on level 3 of Fortune Center, what gives the restaurant away is the many tables outside the actual restaurant and crowd that has congregated at the entrance. Around 7pm, there was already a waiting list so I suggest you make a reservation beforehand. Environment was ok, I was definitely expecting a more Izakaya vibe though. Service was initially not bad but the male server seemed a little hostile especially when we mentioned we were missing some skewers? But oh well people have their days I guess.
We ordered a ton of food: from yakitori, Don, fried food to grilled fish. The reviews seemed to speak very highly (like 4.8 star rating on Google reviews high) of this place, but we thought it was probably worth a 3.5-4 star? A few dishes worth mentioning were the succulent chicken gizzard, salmon mentai and unagi don and shime saba (vinegared mackerel). I think the rest such as skewers were generally slightly above average, but not worth a 4.8.
Our meal came up to $170+ for 3-4 people which was quite pricey in our opinion. Too bad we didn’t get to use the Burpple 1 for 1 deal (we ate on an eve of PH), and I wouldn’t come back without it.
A quaint hole in the wall at Fortune Center that serves small Japanese eats like an izakaya. To eat here, the Japanese boss says you MUST drink. So for non drinkers like me maybe prepare to drink something like the Umeshu soda, which is mild in comparison to other drinks. The sake our table ordered were quite pleasant and smooth to drink though!
We ordered the tori karaage, steamed Asari clams in sake, fish cakes, raw oysters in ponzu and braised pork with root vegetables. Our favourite was the oysters - it was fresh and the sauce was refreshingly sour. The rest were slightly above average but nothing special.
From left corner anti-clockwise: Lapsang souchong, Kaya king mai tai, Tommy’s margarita and classic mojito. Everything was generally not bad, except that the lapsang souchong was way too smokey for our liking and kaya king mai tai was way too sweet. Experimental but I’d say stick with the classic cocktails.
