"Chic" Lunch at Canelé Pâtisserie Chocolaterie

Back-from-NYC Phillipe asked me in jest to suggest "somewhere chic for lunch". As a disclaimer, I would never have offered to meet anywhere overrun by lunch crowd, had it not been for the sad fact that I had to head back to school thereafter. With little choice but to meet at Raffles City, Canele with its spiffy water feature and glossy cafe interior became a natural pick for "somewhere chic for lunch"

"So are we going to somewhere chic?" He asked after we had exchanged our 'hellos' and 'how are yous'.

"Yup", I replied. "Canele by Les Amis"

Pause.

A pause to allow for the self-explanatory 'Les Amis is chic as hell, so by association Canele is ...' understanding to fill the silence. It also helped that Canele was one of the few places that we could score some relief from the lunch crowd frenzy.



Philip's Brioche Burger arrived promptly, a sizable-but-fittable (as in fit into your mouth) burger that had roasted chicken breast, tomato, lettuce, figs compote tucked between mayonnaise-dubed brioche.



Somehow my Club Honey Baked Ham only arrived a good fifteen minutes later, during which Philip was almost done nibbling on the sunflower seeds from his brioche top. Cornering a pile of potato chips and side salad was a triple decker of honey baked ham, omelette, tomato and lettuce, sandwiched between chi-chi-sounding "toasted pain de mie".



It was a very decent sandwich- not mind-blowing material but very dependable if you aren't feeling adventurous. Pity about the pedestrian white toast though. Guess I belong to a group indoctrinated by "white bread is evil" school of thought. Refined carbohydrates !-teeth chatters- It's got a high glycaemic index! It messes with your body's insulin response -hyperventilates- Funny enough I haven't experienced the same amount of trepidation with shortbread biscuits or pastries. Guess I almost forgot to add I'm just selectively healthy.



For dessert, we had the traditional baked French chocolate cake, which featured a dense chocolate slice and airy-fairy cream chantilly. To our delight, the cake had warm fudgy insides, very much resembling a brownie called "cake". The French would be aghast by such a statement. Sor-rayy!

Zis cake is French, not Americano brownie!



Incidentally, I had Emergency Coffee with Girlfriend at Gloria Jean's the next day. My inner Bruce Bogtrotter was calling out to me as I had an overwhelming desire to devour a block of rich chocolate cake. It's fairly-instinctive to have chocolate cake with coffee, no? Believe me, I have verified it with epicure historians and a slice of Gloria Jean's Mud Cake, a towering chocolate slice blessed with lip-smacking chocolate fudge.