After months of R&Ding, Group Pastry Chef and fellow #BurppleTastemaker @fionatingx came up with these beauties called Ugnuts ($5.50), short for "Ugly Donuts"... Well, not in the eyes of us foodies for sure. Quite a number of varieties are available like the Banamel Brûlée that has banana pastry cream filling with a long brûlée-d banana half on top; the Crunchy Xmas with sweet potato pumpkin mash filling and cranberries, pumpkin seeds and katafi fritters sprinkled; the heavy-duty Dirty South with honey buttercream icing and fried chicken skin, plus you can drizzle hot sauce on top as much as you can bear.
If the Durian Softie Pie sounds too sinful for you, the Fresh Fruit Parfait might be more to your liking - cool palate cleanser with refreshing rose-macerated watermelon cubes, raspberries, tart lime curd and honeycomb surrounding the strawberry beetroot softee.
Another dish that I could not stop eating was the Sticky Curly Fries, house-made Idaho potato strips drenched in maple soy syrup, sriracha and kewpie mayo. The thin coils were so crispy and easy to gobble, and I just kept wanting to scoop up more of that sweet maple soy left at the bottom of the bowl.
The portions are generously covered in Zaâatar spices that are usually made with thyme, oregano, marjoram, and sumac - you can imagine how flavourful it was! My favourite part was dipping into the addictive garlic toum, so wonderfully pungent and prickly. If you need more heat to all these, the restaurant has a special shelf storing several types of hot sauce that could potentially burn your tongue, but hey YOLO đ All the fried chicken are served in âhalf birdâ ($25) and âthe whole damn birdâ ($49).
I had the Durian Softee Pie ($16++) during Savour, and it is still my favourite among the three we had. Toasted milk softee that is slightly reminiscent of malt candy, decked up with durian pudding (almost like purée), crumbly almond crust, white chocolate, and finished with swirls of gula melaka caramel all over.
What better way to indulge than downing a plate of delicious fried chicken... Not KFC - donât spoil your weekend like that. Gather your friends and take a trip down to the laid-back Frankel Ave neighbourhood where Bird Bird resides - trust me, you'll need more than one stomach.
:
You might have eaten their Southern Fried Chicken with truffle mash and gravy at Savour last year, almost the same is offered at the diner (without the truffle though), along with two other flavours - Bangkok style and Lebanese style. The Bangkok Fried Chicken is fragrant with the Thai aromatic spices added to the batter, though the experience is not complete without dipping the meat into the green chilli nam jim, a spicy blend of fish sauce and lime juice with green chilli, coriander and onions.
This has peanut butter ganache, peanut felleutine, and milk chocolate ice cream, appealing very much to the child in you. Thankfully the chef has added spikes of sour bergamot gel to balance the heavy nutty dessert.
The pavlova is one that I hope to enjoy again, slightly burnt meringue cracked open with shiso granita (like a coarser sorbet) inside and vanilla ice cream, strewn with blood orange cream crumble. This is one explosive dessert thatâs sweet, citrusy, and playful on textures.
We had many other dishes but in trying to keep things short in this post (yeah right), I shall just rave about the Black Mash and Cauliflower - these were two dishes that I think demonstrate the chefâs ability to innovate.
Mash has been transformed from being a couch potato comfort food to a luxurious pot of black gold. The squid ink seem to make the smooth puree slightly stickier and firmer, and add a mild brine flavour that grows on you like seeds on soil⊠đ
Cauliflower has never tasted better to me, aburi-ed then dressed with cider vinegar cream and finished with shavings of cured egg yolk. The tangy vinegar cream excites the tastebuds while the vegetable itself was well-seasoned - is that the effect from the cured yolk?? If only cauliflower can be all cooked like this!
This is another must-try here. Itâs crispy, but because of the natural collapsible honeycomb structure, it's spongey as well - very interesting texture!
Ok doesnât make sense for me not to write about a meat dish so yes the Iberico Pork Collar - juicy and smoky pieces layered with apple slices and isomalt shards made with sesame and mixed nuts (we witnessed the impressive process of making it!) which give a sweet crisp profile to the dish.