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the resident gourmet speaks up
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okay so i've always been somewhat a snob when it comes to what goes into my mouth ( in more ways than one ifyanowadimean :p )

and that's why i've been packing lunch to school recently ( usually slices of french loaf and knobs of pre-packed butter ) instead of torturing myself with the pieces of lard and rancid crap the canteen vendors claim as food.

so anyway.

tre and i were both extremely apprehensive about having our dinner at delifrance , probably because we were creatures of habit and the new delifrance menu has yet to be sussed out by any of us.

speaking of which i finally learnt what stealth abs really mean. hahaha. ( stealth = hidden ) go figure.

but curiousity got the better of me and we went for it anyway over cafe cartel.

and oh what a big big mistake.

and fyi i've never really liked delifrance , especially now that it has started serving main courses and shit on its extremely pretentious menu.

oh sorry , they call it le menu ( prounounced as ler-mer-noo hor knn , not man-new okay you ignorant suburban dwellers like me )

and despite the fact that NONE of its items were authentic french fare , they made it look as if it was alright with all the pseudo-french names

e.g

grilled chicken is Poulet à l´ Estragon

and sirloin steak is Boeuf au Poivre Noir ( the only noir i know is film noir can ?)

i wonder what's with all those frenchie names anyway, since it is highly unlikely that anyone who patronises delifrance will have any grasp of french and even so , they have the english translation of it.

bottomline : pretentious and utterly redundant.

i know they're trying to create an identity here but it just makes me feel that they're trying too hard ( think bai ling ) and might lead our naive singaporeans to think that delifrance = french food.

and exploiting the beauty of the language as well.

horrors.

anyway tre ordered the urm , something seafood set.

not surprisingly the food turned out like crap.

note : pardon the lousy quality of pics. 5 megapixel cam + shaky hands = shitty quality

look at the meagre portion of the grilled fish !!!!! just as well it's nano-sized anyway because the taste leaves much to be desired. the mussels wasn't fresh too. give me $7 grilled fish at Han's anytime.

the very deceiving poster of the seafood set in front of the cafe. clever marketing gimmicks and LYING are two absolutely different matters. someone call CASE. now.

and this is my Boeuf au Poivre Noir . i requested for it to be done well ( its a request met with eye-popping disdain from discerning steak eaters ) and it wasn't just done well. it was done charred. i had to saw my way through the meat. and just look at the "salad"

the "salad" close up. it looks NOTHING Like the succulent plumpy-ness depicted in the poster. instead , it turned up looking like it survived the WWII , the holocaust and even the battle of waterloo , got freeze-dried and bought back to life after being dunked in hot water. it was a sad looking pile of limp discoloured leaves with a murky liquid pooling around them. this is definitely salad-negligence in the first degree. needless to say the stale salad went untouched. it didn't come with any dressing anyway.

our meal came up to about $40 for crying out loud. we weren't offered any iced water and we even had to settle our bill AT the counter when there was a service charge being levied. i thought it was extremely unprofessional of them to leave the bill at our table way before our food was served , something i noticed which happened at the other tables as well. and they just practically left it there without having the courtesy of telling us what we were supposed to do with it.

in a nutshell :

never ever patronise delifrance. the food sucks and the service lacklustre. for $20 a person i'd rather you blow it at yes , dare i say , phin's steakhouse ( or maybe not )

or maybe for two glasses of good ol' bailey's with milk.

yours truly,

the upholder of culinary justice

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listenin to : morrissey - interesting drug