Mia's Review: The Black Sheep Cafe

Recently, Y has a craving for her favourite Duck Confit and yet she's pretty sick of the usual long queue at Saveur and so, D did her thorough research and decided to set the gathering at The Black Sheep Cafe! Touted to have the best Duck Confit in town, the girls (Y, D, and R) were pretty excited as we finally found the simple, yet cute looking cafe nestled at the basement of Thomson V Two.

All thanks to the banner, if not we wouldn't have known this building is the legendary Thomson V Two.

Even though they're The Black Sheep Cafe, there's also a fair share of white sheeps around to accompany this black sheep! 

And all the news covers about their Duck Confit....

The cafe interior is pretty spacious, yet big enough to house a considerable number of patrons at one time. 

And pretty cute too! See little meeh meeh looking over all the patrons from the ceiling. :)

Really happy to be able to sit right below the black sheep and his sheep friends. Heehee... :)

And now, let's get started on the food. 

Rose Raspberry Cider, Belgium - $9

 

Didn't manage to get a picture of the bottle for the staff took it away after serving it at the table. Actually I can't really decide if it's really a cider or just an extremely sweet and fruity beer. For the bitter beer after taste is too much of a beer thing, but the fragrant sweetness is too much of a cider. 

Nevertheless, a good refreshing drink. A recommended choice for ladies who feels ciders are too sweet, yet dislike the bitterness of beers. 

Chicken in Red Wine,Stuffed Field Mushrooms, Pureed Potato - $26.50

Couldn't put a word to the gravy taste. A mixture of both savoury, sweet and a slight indescribable fragrance. There isn't really much of a red wine or alcohol taste, but I guess it helped to tenderize this big fat chicken drumstick really well. The meat was really soft and tender, yet lacking a bit of flavour for my tastebuds. The stuffed mushroom, on the other hand, was really flavourful. I couldn't make out the ingredient used for the stuffing, but it was slightly chewy yet pretty tender and juicy. I really enjoyed every single bite of it. As for the pureed potato, was a huge let down. Didn't like the taste of it at all, for the potato fragrance was overpowered by a strong cream/milk taste. Plus, the serving was so meagre I kept thinking that the dish name should have ended with Asparagus instead. 

The Duck Confit on Apple Roesti, Mango Relish - $26.50

Didn't get to try both the fruit side dishes, but did get a bite of the duck confit. It's really flavourful and tasty, but I guess it's already obvious enough from the picture that it's slightly charred and hence, dry. Reviews boast of a crispy surface yet juicy tender meat. But sadly, I didn't taste that. It was dry (and almost tough) throughout the entire chunk of meat I've tried. 

Maybe it was a one-off miss by the chef, I don't know. But this definitely wasn't worth the rave I've read of.

Homemade Tiramisu with Espresso Tuilles - $9.50

This wasn't very well received at the table but I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure if the mascarpone cheese mixture was just totally frozen or the chef substitute part of the cream with ice cream, but the entire dessert was just really refreshing and pretty light. 

Kahlua Souffle, Double Chocolate Ice Cream - $14

This souffle is really worth every bit of the $14, in terms of serving size. Creamy, fluffy and very moist, infused with a shot of kahlua upon serving at the table, this dessert should be a must try for every souffle lover. 

Now back to the cafe, if you're not very familiar with The Black Sheep cafe, one of the main 'attraction' will be that they only have one chef. Yes, ONE CHEF. And that simply equates to long waiting time for order to be served. 

Our mains basically took a minimum of 25 minutes to be served, and the souffle took so long that we lost track of the waiting time, I'm estimating a 45 minutes or so. Pretty exasperating if you're on the brink of fainting from hunger, so I strongly recommend that you take into account of the extent of your hunger when dropping by for a visit. 

For more information, visit their website HERE

Till then,

Mia

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Mia's review: Au Chocolat

Somehow I realised that I've accumulated quite a handful of backlogs on my eating place reviews. *yikes* 

Oh well, I guess I'll have to blog more for these days to catch up. :p

But first, let's get on to the restaurant chosen (out of the list of backlogs) for today, Au Chocolat.

The very first made-in-Singapore French-inspired concept store, Au Chocolat is a retail & dining experience that promises to fill your belly, warm your hearts & bring smiles to your faces.

A place for family and friends, Au Chocolat  will provide fine and sweet things to be enjoyed together. Deep in this wonderland of goodness, meet Danielle (The 8 year old French girl), OO (Pronounced Oh-Oh, Danielle's French Bulldog) and Yu Fa (Danielle's Pug), friends of Au Chocolat. The three are inseparable as they travel on a delicious journey of friendship and adventure filled with the most scrumptious treats.

-credits to Au Chocolat-

Au Chocolat consist of a Bistro section and a Confiserie section, located side by side at the furthermost corner of MBS. If you know me well, you should know that I totally went into 100% excitement mode when I saw the confiserie section. 

The entire section was full of pretty looking sweet treats like chocolates, truffles, oversized macarons, and pastries! 

But we didn't visit for the confiserie that day, aww.... 

 It was pretty dim and I set the wrong setting for my samsung mobile camera, hence the disastrous looking photo of the bistro shopfront. 

And here's OO, one of the cute mascot for the cafe! Special appearance by my colleague's hand. *rofl*

And yes, erm... it was Halloween that day we visited. 

And some photos of the cafe interior.... 

Apart from the pretty floral ceiling, there's something even more intriguing at the ceiling.... notice the track? 

 There's a choo-choo train running on it, going around the open area of the cafe. How cute is that! 

And upon seated at our table, I noticed that everything in Au Chocolat simply oozes cuteness. From the coaster with Danielle's face printed on it (which, in the end we asked the staff if we can keep one and he very generously handed us a stack of brand new ones), to the serviette and the menu, every single item placed on the table are just mad cute and pretty!

However, I was slightly disappointed when I flipped through the menu because there's some item missing from the online menu, HERE. 

I was totally eyeing the macaron burger when I checked out their online menu but I couldn't find it anywhere in the menu at the bistro. I reckon this online menu is a combined menu of both the bistro and confiserie, as to whether you can order desserts off the confiserie menu while at the bistro, I'm not sure. 

Their pricing is pretty pricey, but fret not. Their serving is pretty huge, too. 

Frozen Hot Chocolate - $12. 

And mind you, that's a Samsung Galaxy S4 beside it. The amount of whipped cream is really generous (it's almost like a 1-to-1 ratio of whipped cream to frozen hot chocolate) so those on a 'diet', please remember to make a special request for less/or no whipped cream if needed to.

Plus, erm... do consider sharing this. :p

My pot of Camomile Tea - $10

I do agree that this is pretty pricey, though, judging from the fact that it's a tea bag.

Spicy Chorizo Linguine - $25

Frankly speaking it's hard to get a bad pasta for me, unless the chef screws up the sauce and overcook/undercook the pasta. I'll say that this pasta fits the bill of a pasta I can get from any other restaurant, through I do admit their tomato sauce is pretty rich with generous chunks of tomato bits inside. However, I could hardly taste the spiciness from the hot sauce. It's really just Chorizo pasta in tomato sauce. Zero kick from this SPICY chorizo pasta, quite a disappointment even though the pasta wasn't bad.

Battered fish & spiced chips - $22

I didn't get to sample this dish but look at the serving! My colleague hardly touched the fries after finishing up the fish. 

The other 2 dishes, which I didn't manage to snap pictures of, made it to the best and worst list of the table. 

Must try: 

Duck Confit - $27

2 of my colleagues who tried this both quipped, "This is good!" at their first bite. A steal of a teeny weeny bite from them boasted of some tender, savoury duck meat!

To avoid:

Steak Frites - $43

Medium rare was requested. But just a slice through the meat shows it's pretty well done. Needless to say, my colleague had some rubbery ribeye for dinner that night.

Au Chocolat is located at The Shoppes @ MBS

Bay Level L1-03

For more information, visit their website HERE.

Till then,

Mia

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