tiong bahru chic
tiong bahru’s seriously becoming chic you guys, what with popular cafes and restaurants like forty hands and open door policy sprouting up, along with curio shops like strangelets (that sold popaganda!) and cool bakeries like drips. mark my words, tiong bahru’s your next duxton/ann siang. already, i noticed an increasing number of foreigners and well-dressed singaporeans strolling around roads with names like tiong poh road and such, so its a matter of time. anyways, ODP is sited along yong siak street, directly across forty hands. its not exactly easy to get there — you’d have to walk for about 10 minutes to get into the old estate area from tiong bahru MRT, but i guess that’s what gives it its tranquil charms. the place is still relatively under-developed and primarily an old residential estate, so when night falls, there’s a certain tranquility that settles within the area. parking isn’t an issue because there’s a relatively big open air carpark within the estate.
the interior of ODP gives off a very industrial, sleekly designed feel that feels like some up and coming restaurant in NYC, say within the meat packing district. you do get the feeling of being transported to another world, one where tired executives head to artsy restaurants like these to unwind from the days work alongside well-dressed socialites quietly sharing the latest gossips with each other. one must mention the furniture within the restaurant, which has largely adopted the “olden days” theme, with tables converted from old classroom desks, and many chairs being those old, rusty metallic chairs in classrooms. the furniture, whilst fitting with the theme, wasn’t exactly too comfortable as the chairs were kind of hard and my mom stared at the rust worried she would get tetanus (lol.. kidding). ok food talk.
steak tartare with truffle mayo and potato chips, $19
yummy! i recently commented to a friend that i found truffle fries to be the next big overhyped dish of singaporean cafes but these truffle potato chips made me literally swoon upon first bite — crispy and amazingly flavored with truffle sauce. i could order an entire bowl to finish if I had the chance. =) the steak tartare was well made and paired well the toasted bread. i suspect we were supposed to eat the chips with the tartare, but the chips were too good to need any further flavor inject. mind you, for people who don’t know, tartare refers to raw meat, usually used for spreads for toast. (this is essentially the thing mr bean ordered and hated, and proceeded to try hiding chunks of them in the most ridiculous places ever. but don’t worry this tastes good.) so yeah, if you get squeamish about eating raw stuff, then don’t order this — though to be honest, it tasted really great and had no such slimy/raw feel to it.
48 hour cooked braised beef cheek with mochi potatoes, carrot puree, and snow pea lendrils , $29
didn’t exactly like the snow pea lendrils, but besides that this dish was perfect — something that can literally send you to gastronomie heaven. the beef cheek is so soft that it really melts in your mouth as you savour it. the sauce for it is well balanced, and the carrot puree formed a perfect complement to the beef cheeks. mochi potatoes was something new to me and they likewise went really really well with the dish, and made me actually hanker for more of such carbs. my only other complain would be that the sauce wasn’t enough and I ended up eating a little portion of the beef cheeks without the sauce. but besides that, seriously guys, go try this rendition of beef cheeks. yummz.
pork belly with parsnip puree, braised quinoa and celery, $29
tried some portions of this — the crisps stacked on top of the pork belly were really good and the pork belly was one slab of crispy goodness as well. my companions who ate this gave quite high reviews as well, besides for the fact that it was slightly small.
i didn’t try the desserts. why? to be honest, I realised just how expensive some of the dishes were – desserts were roughly $15 each, which is kind of exorbitant. and likewise, a quick calculation in my mind made me realise that we had already spent upwards of 30+ for a shared appetizer and mains each. haha.. i’m quite the calculative cheapskate nowadays perhaps, but i think the atas food trips is taking a tolling on my wallet. =(
overall? a really cool place with an exciting menu and food that has some serious flavor and goodness in time. it’s more pricey that your usual cafes (a spaghetti bolognaise went for $22) but in return, you get good ambience, interesting food arrangements (there was a tendency to use chopping boards and stone pots for various dishes) and good, solid food. come at least once to try it out, then take a stroll round the estate to discover this part of singapore, eh? 8.0/10
open door policy | 19 yong siak street | contemporary, western
