| rev:text
| - I remember being a student and going with my boyfriend at the time soon after it opened. This was all we could go for a nice dinner as Susur was clearly out of reach and we kept the number of dishes to a minimal. My naive palate liked the duck confit roll, but finding the matchstick potato too greasy, even tho my then food-critic idol Joanne Kates gave it high praise in the Globe.
Visiting my family last Feb, we wanted to go out for dinner on a wimp. This being Winterlicious, we couldn't get a table at any place I longed to dine at while living there: Bymark, North 44, etc.
I called Lee and they said they had tables. Hopping into the car right away, we got there 8 something. Good thing too as the place start filling up after we sat down.
Considering nobody were known for a big appetite, we decided on 7 dishes. While ordering, the waiter mentioned that oyster special at Madeline's could be brought over. As a family, we just don't pass off oysters! Then suggesting we would do with a bit more, he sold the Singaporean style slaw pretty hard, so we gave in.
The seafood were definitely the better choices. The 3 oysters per person (one perserved lemon, one hot sauce and one I didn't remember) all tasted very fresh and worked well with the accompaniments. Salmon ceviche was good but about standard. The spice crusted diver scallop was cooked just about right,with nice spices.
Also memorable was the slow braised beef, so tender, rich and flavourful. I normally believe only in medium-rare beef but this is an exception. However, the duck confit roll was not the same as yesteryear, while still good the wrapper was doughy instead of crispy spring roll wrapper.
The mexican goat cheese tart and spicy crisp tofu were not very memorable but I guess we ate them rather happily. But plenty of the tomato beet salad and Singaporean style slaw were left at the end of the meal.
Especially considering the waiter hyped it so much the slaw was a let-down: it has a good texture of crunch of crisp but no, you can't taste all the flavour components as some are stronger than others. Maybe it's the anticipate and how it was not met!
As for dessert, the creme brulee was good. I liked the panna cotta but the berry ravioli with pineapple wrapper on top, while interesting in concept, was hard to cut with knife or teeth.
As for service, maybe my family were not the hip crowd they were catering to, so the waiter didn't come to check on us after all the dishes arrived. I felt he was also overselling us more food than we could consume and pushed the slaw too aggressively.
With a tab of about $300, i have to say I could do a bit better. Either I have outgrown it or this place has gone down since its Susur Lee days...
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)