organised a belated birthday for a close friend at oso on 11.8.2015. ^^

we took the SG50 5-course dinner menu. we had 7pax.

we were served some rye bread & focaccia with olive oil & balsamic. quite ok.

first was a cured salmon with caviar & some shaved fennel. 🙂

it was nice. not exceptional but a great starter. 🙂

we had cream of cauliflower soup.

soup was smooth, quite tasty, a bit thick. pretty ok but no better than my own cream of cauliflower.

pasta was also average.

good pasta certainly, but quite ordinary, no stand out.

we had 4 orders of veal cheeks & 3 orders of fish. dory not my choice fish.

i tried some from my friend. it was pretty ok. i guess good for a dory fillet.

the braised veal cheek with beetroot – stracotto was excellent though.

tender, totally consistent & not very beefy, quite gentle & quite excellent bite, not the sinewy stewed meat type. i would say one of the best braised meat.

& the crotata – choc lava tart was marvellous.

it’s like any good choc lava cake, with the tart giving it very good combination of texture.

the restaurant was told that it was a birthday celebration, so they provided a tiramisu cake for the birthday, a good gesture practiced by most good restaurants.

however, when i called to reconfirm the reservation on the day, the person who answered told me he reserved a nice quiet corner for us. but in fact we had 7pax seated on a table 6 with 1 chair at the end & next to the kitchen with a lot of traffic. that would have been quite fine if the restaurant was full but it was just 50% occupied, so i think that was not quite the level of service for a good restaurant.

anyway we had a great evening. food was good, especially the braised veal cheeks & the choc lava tart. the cured salmon was pretty good as well.

dinner was S$50pax for 5-course. we were all quite happy with the meal & ambience.

c.h.e.f andy