For some time now we have been meaning to try out Les Amis au Jardin, a restaurant located inside the famous Botanical Gardens in Singapore. It's taken us this long because the place is always fully booked for Saturday nights, which means you need to be organised enough to place your reservation more than three days in advance. My flair for what I like to call spontaneity, and everybody probably calls disorganisation, means I rarely think to book a restaurant before Thursday. However since we were looking for somewhere special to celebrate our 11th anniversary last Friday I booked us a table and off we went.
Finding the place was the first challenge. But wait, I hear you say, how big can a garden be? Well pretty damn big actually, and the 'uncle' who was driving our taxi had no clue how to find it. The address of the restaurant is Cluny Rd and after a lengthy detour through Cluny Park Road (wrong side of the park!) we finally headed to the right entrance - the visitor centre. We stepped out into the humid darkness, silent apart from the croaking of frogs and the distant traffic noise from Bukit Timah Road. Of course at 8 pm the visitor centre and surroundings are dark and deserted, but oddly there was a man in a snappy tuxedo standing next to a golf cart. We were expected.
A quick wizz along a dimly lit fern lined path took us to au Jardin, which is inside an old Colonial house inside the grounds. Smiling staff welcomed us into the regal surrounds, and we seemed to be one of only about four couples there. We climbed the red carpeted staircase, admiring the original wood panelling and beautiful decor and were ushered to a table intimately set on a small enclosed balcony looking out into the lush ferns and tropical trees outside. What a fantastic setting!The restaurant offers two types of menu: the 8 course degustation 'taster' menu, or the 4 course menu which you put together from a select range of fish or meat dishes. Opting for 4 courses, we were also offered a side dish of three kinds of the freshest looking mushroms I've ever seen - I expected the wiater to have dirt under his finger nails from picking them in the garden. The food was, in a word, superb. I choose the duck while Holger went for fish, and both were simply divine. The prawn and pea 'pot au feu' was a gorgeous conconction of fluffy pea souffle with succulent prawn fillets, and the tastiest fish boillion I've ever had in my life eleantly poured over the top at the table. My desert of chilled mango soup was superb, while Holger tucked into a tasty plate of suitably smelly cheeses. Something also worth mentioning was the brilliant service; our waiter knew each and every dish and could discuss the ingredients and preparation with knowledge, something you don't come across very often. Wine buffs would appreciate the wine list which was a book at least 2cm thick. We settled for a lovely Raveneau Vaillons 2004 Chablis which hit the spot perfectly.
Just when we thought we were finished and settled back to enjoy an espresso for the road, the waiter approached with slice of delicious chocolate cake on a plate decorated with Happy Anniversary written in chocolate! How sweet. We thoroughly recommend this restaurant for a special occasion or even just because, and in fact it may even come very close to rivalling Blu as our favourite - future testing will be required! One bonus was that the bill was quite a bit less than we would have expected to pay at Blu, although the fact it doesn't have a martini bar may account for some of that. Check it out if you can, but don't forget: make a reservation!
No comments:
Post a Comment