Anti:dote ~ rolling writes

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Anti:dote

11:46 PM City Hall, High Tea, Singapore 0 comments

This is definitely one of the more exciting dining experiences I have had so far.

Reservations for the high tea ($45++) are a must here.

The afternoon tea menu is here.

There were two different menus. You could choose between the Anti:dote tea or the Oriental tea. The only difference is the starters. For the Anti:dote tea menu, there is the Anti:dote black truffle scrambled eggs whereas for the oriental tea menu there is a selection of steamed and fried Hong Kong dim sum.

For me, it was a no brainer to go for the Anti:dote black truffle scrambled eggs because I love the taste of anything with truffle (whether truffle or truffle oil which is essentially a chemical compound).

In any genre of music, the introduction matters a lot because it sets the stage for the entire piece. Make sure it's something original, refreshing and endearing and this will be the winning recipe for the piece. The Anti:dote black truffle scrambled egg was precisely this important introduction. Besides the fragrant smell of the truffle which hits you instantly, the deep fried breadsticks were a perfect accompaniment to the runny texture of the scrambled eggs. I scrapped every bit of the egg clean.

Next up was the drawer of food. Top layer contained the desserts, first drawer contained sandwiches, second drawer contained scones and the last drawers contained biscuits, together with the accompaniment to the scones.

Everything about this was picture perfect. Taste wise, I preferred the sandwiches more than the desserts. We decided that we needed a strategy when eating these beautiful dainty little things- alternating between sweet and savoury so that we won't get a sudden sugar rush.

The sandwiches were really the star of the show. While the waitress explained to us what these were individually, we didn't really listen attentively because we couldn't start feasting away. We started off the with Smoked salmon, lemon and dill cream cheese and ikura roe because it was probably considered the most conventional of the lot. Then we moved on to the Boston lobster roll with confit lemon and chervil. Prior to trying this, I didn't know what chervil was. Chervil is a herb related to parseley which might have ruined my experience of eating this roll since I do not like parsley at all. But the juicy lobster served as a good distraction.

This was followed by the Iberico ham quiche, with mozarella and black truffle. I am partial towards anything with mozarella. The ham and mozarella was scented with truffle and laid onto a puff pastry. Then the Confit duck rillette with foie gras terrine with pickled onion- unfortunately, this tasted more like tuna to me. Of all the sandwiches, this appealed the least to me. We ended with the Coronation curried chicken with apple. This was a very interesting combination where even the pastry had curry powder added to it. However, the apple taste was non-existent.

The scones (raising and candied ginger) came together with your choice of strawberry jam, Devonshire clotted cream, lemon curd. If I didn't realise how much fats each scone contained, I wouldn't mind eating them all day long. Leaving aside the fat content of scones, every bite of the scone brings you a little closer to England. Imagine having scones on your patio on a lovely spring day.