Mia's Review: The Tiramisu Hero (& Fluff Bakery)

Just last weekend, I met up with the girlies for a dinner gathering, mainly to distribute souvenirs to them. But, all thanks to my forgetfulness, all those lovely scented handmade soaps and candles from Australia are still sitting nicely in my bedroom right now. 

Anyway, from A's suggestion, we decided to try out the new cafe opened by the blogger, Peggy Chang, The Tiramisu Hero.

This picture was taken when as I left the cafe, and very much in a haste, so I was unable to get a nice shot of the shop front. I must admit this picture totally didn't do the cafe outlook any justice. The entrance to the cafe was made into a lawn, with an extremely simplistic wood-over-stand kind of bench at the side, that leads to the two outside-seating tables as seen. It's quite a cute and unique idea.

We were greeted by cute doodles of Sir Antonio the Cat all over the wall (there's a 3D art piece of Sir Antonio's head on the wall as well, which I was unable to snap a picture of due to customers seated right there) and ladders hanging from the ceilings with pretty starry lights wrapped around them.

There's Sir Antonio gracing the cover of their Menu with his cute face.

And I was really disappointed as I flipped through the menu. Their choices of food was really limited, with merely 5 (rather common-sounding) mains. 

But before we get to the actual food, I really have to rant on their level of service. I'm not sure if it's because my friends and I were just less pleasing to their eyes or what, but the service we were rendered was really, oh well... nowhere near acceptable. Bad, to be exact.

First up, PS and I were the first to arrive and we asked for a table of 5. The staff (aunty) at the counter was still pretty welcoming as she pointed at the table inside the cafe while the younger staff showed us to our seat. Menu was also promptly given to us, with no further information given. It was really just a drop-and-go. It was only when we waved for staff to take our order did that particular staff informed us that all orders are to be made by ourselves at the counter. 

This piece of information should have been given to the customers upon showing them to their table and handing them the menu.

Upon reaching the counter, PS and I wanted to make some clarification to the drinks menu before ordering and throughout the whole question-conversation, that aunty at the counter didn't bother to turn over to look at us. Her eyes were totally transfixed on the lists of drink orders she has laid out in front of her while she 'acted busy'. Come on, how much of your precious time can we, your customers, waste by asking just 2 questions? 

"Is the Honey Milk served Hot or Cold?"

"Since it's meant to be served cold, can we request for it to be hot?"

Just that! She didn't even bothered to give us any form of eye contact, no acknowledgement towards our questions even. 

It literally went like this:

"Erm, we will like to check if the honey milk is hot or cold."

-Eyes only on the pieces of order lists- 

"Cold."

"Then, can we have a hot one?"

-Eyes still fixed on the order lists- 

"Eh, XXX (another staff at the counter) eh sai bo?" (Can or not, in Hokkien)

Then it simply just died out in mumblings and we were just left hanging there, our question unanswered. Nobody bothered to give us a second look. Oh wait, there wasn't a 'first look' in the first place. It seemed like we were only worthy of her attention when we spoke the golden words: Can we order.... 

Upon hearing that, the aunty immediately dropped her on-hand tasks and turned to us, her fingers positioned over the tablet meant for keying in orders. Our question of whether the honey milk can be made hot was only answered properly then.

Later on, while PS and I were having our food, the rest of the girls came. The staff all saw them coming in and acknowledged their arrival. Nobody handed them any menu. But then again, since we have to make our own order at the counter, we decided that it's not important and off they went to make their own orders at the counter. When they came back, J obviously didn't look very happy. Guess what, exact same kind of service from that aunty. This time, she was totally engrossed in pressing something on her phone when J wanted to get her attention. 

"Excuse me.... "

-Continues to press, customer ignored.-

"Err, excuse me?"

-Customer still ignored. Pressing phone is way more important.-

"I want to order Mac & Cheese."

"Orh!"

-Immediately keyed in orders-

Needless to say, when your customers were already upset (by your poor service) even before they were served the food, your food quality will NEVER meet their expectations. 

So here's my take on the food we had for the night.

 Bangers & Mashed - $15
Alternatively, you can have the bangers with Mac & Cheese for $17.

I have to say that the dish is really cute, being served on a pink plate even! But sadly, it looked much better than it tasted. The sausages were really, just sausages, with only the middle sausage (I reckon is pork) being a better, more standard taste of a "gourmet sausage". The cutie-sized white sausage was kind of... too squishy for my liking and also by the time I got to the final sausage, I got too sick of them to even manage more than just a few mouthful of it.
The mashed potatoes were definitely self-cooked and not those ready-made ones, because there were quite a lot of chunky bits of un-mashed potatoes lying within. I can't exactly pinpoint if it's a good thing, or not. But of course, being a potato-lover, I have nothing to complain about the mashed potatoes.

Honey Milk (Special request to be warm) - (about) $4
This drink has got to be the best of what I've had in this cafe. The honey added a subtle, perfect sweetness to the warm and frothy milk, which wasn't too rich. Just nice for my liking!
However, on a 2nd though, it's really just steamed milk and honey.

And that's PS's Baked Cheesy Chicken - $17

This was served in less than 5 minutes after PS and I returned to our table after we made our order. In record time! It's so fast, both of us got very suspicious of it. I reckon it was probably a cancelled order cooked a while ago. The portobello mushrooms were lukewarm, the layer of cheese were in a state of re-solidifying after being melted, while the chicken remains piping hot. And even though I've read the  review from Chikumama that she found hers a little too bland, PS's one was extremely salty! All of us (5 sets of tastebuds) concurred that it was very salty. The chicken wasn't exactly tender, either.
 To be fair, it was definitely not till the extent of being un-tasty, but just... the quality of food was hardly worth the money spent.

ZH's ChefChef Curry Baked Rice - $12.50

First impression - Aircraft food! *rofl*
They could have at least served it in a cute baking dish or something to go along with their brilliant cafe interior design. Why disposable aluminium baking tray?
As for the actual food taste, ZH found it rather nice but I didn't like it at all. The curry was the very distinctively Indian kind of curry, the very strong taste of spices that I don't really enjoy. But of course, this is really just my own taste preference.

On top of that, ZH topped up an additional $5 to get a small bowl of mushroom soup and this mini cupcake sized original flavoured tiramisu, called MiniHero. Look at that shy-smiley face, it's mad cute!
But once again, it looked much better than it tasted. This should be a tiramisu, but I could hardly taste the coffee or liquor at all. It tasted much more like a cheesecake. Not just me, but J also shook her head and just said, "Not good, no taste."
But one (very) good thing about their tiramisu is that they use a no egg recipe! Thumbs up for that! :)

J's Mac & Cheese - Price unknown

We were all expecting the Kenny Roger's style of Mac & Cheese, with well cooked pasta drenched in the distinctively bright orange Cheddar. But it ended up looking more like a cream sauce macaroni. Once again, the taste was mediocre. Not bad, but nothing fantastic either. I would have preferred the dish to have more cheese, and made runnier, too.

-The Tiramisu Hero is located at 121 Tyrwhitt Road-

And besides visiting The Tiramisu Hero, I also dropped by a new place earlier. Yes, it was actually 2nd November and Fluff Bakery officially opened their own bakery at 12 Jalan Pisang. Even though I've RSVP and supposedly can get a box of 6 assorted flavours at $20 instead of $24, by the time I got there at almost 6pm, the entire bakery was left with nothing except for a final batch of Salted Caramel, which they had previously left in the fridge and forgotten about it. Thank goodness for their forgetfulness! If not, I would have dropped by and left empty-handed.

 These cupcakes were simply divine! The vanilla cake was extremely soft and fluffy, almost falling apart as we bite on the cupcake, and there's also a surprise centre for their cupcakes! For the salted caramel flavour, the filling was a generous glob of thick salted caramel sauce, that not only add on a surprise factor to the cupcake but also the 'punch' to this amazing sweet treat.
Bought a box of 6 as a treat to the girlies as well, and they all enjoyed it, even though most of them aren't cupcake monster like me. :)

And just sharing some badly taken shots of their other flavours, which I've bought a while ago while they were still selling at Penny University. That Red Velvet with Nutella centre is also a must try!

-Fluff Bakery is located at 12 Jalan Pisang-

Till then,
Mia