Quick Restaurant Reviews

Vivo City - Home of White Dog Cafe - and 100s of other places to eat.

The view at Breeze.

Here in the city of eating, food is King. . While I prefer the great food found at Hawker Centres http://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna/travel/singapore/food.htm and Food Courts, on occasion I do get to the real sit down places. Over the past few weeks I ate at the White Dog Cafe and Breeze. Both were upscale but not tip top scale.

White Dog Cafe - Last week, as a belated nod to Secretary's Week, I took my superb assistant Norene to lunch at the White Dog Cafe in the Vivo City Mall. As an added bonus, the lovely Sophia joined us. The Cafe is one of the many higher end restaurants at the huge and new Vivo City. Vivo probably has 100s of places to eat if you count the three big food courts (Food Republic, Banquet and the Halal court whose name I forget), the fast food (Burger King, Carl's Jr., Super Dog and many more) and of course the many fancy places. White Dog is located on the water side of the mall and many of the tables have a great view of the Singapore Port and Sentosa Island. Its nice to watch the boat traffic, the cable cars and monorail to Sentosa and all of the waterfront activity while dining. The menu is kind of Italian with other odds and ends mixed in. We arrived after 1PM with no reservation and were not thrilled with the first table they offered us. After a short wait, the Manager found us a nicer table by the window. The staff was a bit disorganized and it took quite some time for our order to be taken. I ordered the Caesar Salad and Duck Confit. Norene opted for the Tuna Tatare and a Pasta main. Sophia, eating lightly asked for the Soup of the Day (to be served with the mains). Service was pretty bad for a higher priced place. My salad came about 10 minutes before Norene's starter and My main came about 10 minutes before hers did. They were pretty busy but that's no excuse.

The food was good. The Caesar was loaded with nice, fresh shaved Parmesan cheese (a rarity in Singapore where you usually need a microscope to find cheese on salads and sandwiches). The dressing was nice and the croutons were crunchy. Norene was happy with her late arriving tatare - it looked good. My duck was almost perfect. The large leg was well cooked and the tender meat fell off the bone easily. The sauce was flavorful. It was a little too salty but otherwise first class. Norene was pleased with the pasta and rated it highly. Sophia was satisfied with her soup. All in all good food and average service made for a nice meal that required too much attention to the service. http://www.streetdirectory.com/restaurants/singapore/reviews/restaurant-White_Dog_Cafe-1000000834.php

I give it 2.5 burps on a five burp scale.

Breeze- Friday night Sophia, Myrna and I visited Breeze. Breeze is the rooftop lounge and restaurant at the trendy Scarlet Hotel in Chinatown. The ambiance is nice - lounge music, a sweet view of the rooftops of Chinatown and the Buddha Tooth Temple and fans to give Breeze some airflow. Sophia's Champagne cocktail was mostly bitters and light on Champagne (as is the Singapore bar style) but the happy barman did a do over which was a bit better. My Bombay Sapphire Martini (and the 2nd one) was decent.

We started with 2 tapas plates - risotto and Mediterranean dips. The risotto was really fried risotto balls - ok but not great. The dips (hummus, baba ganoush and salmon roe) were served nicely on a funky apparatus with several arms holding ramekins. The accompaniment were bread sticks. The dips were good enough but we really needed good bread or pita instead of the bread sticks.

Mains included a Rib eye steak for me, grilled prawns for Sophia and chicken for Myrna. The steak was actually quite good - one of the best I've had in Singapore. It was tender and tasty and cooked just right. It (and all of the mains) came with some very good roasted potato wedges. Sophia's prawns were huge and not too bad. She thought they were a bit over cooked. They were more like mini lobster tails and were very flavorful. Myrna's chicken was ok but nothing close to what she can cook up on short notice!

Deserts were a little above average. Sophi's Creme Brulee was middle of the pack from her vast Creme Brulee tasting experiences. I had an interesting ice cream thing with coconut, orange encrusted in a good crisp shell of some very sugar filled things.

The only really bad thing was the price. It was a fine dining price and the dining didn't quite live up to fine. We figured we could have had about 40 really good Hawker Centre meals for the same price.

3 Burps