Rib Eye For The Straight Guy.

When he walked through the doors, you could almost hear the collective exhale of regret and grief.

Of course we should have known better.

He was cute, in a sort of impish imperfect way. He was funny though we were too bashful to laugh in his presence. When he talked, nobody else in the room commanded your attention more. To top it off, he was scarily intellectual but unbelievably humble about it.

Well of course we should have known better.

Beauty, wit and charm all in one package? Wait, is it Christmas already?

No?

That's quee- He's queer? Oh, how right you are.

After we were done with our minute of silence, we realized life has to go on. Bills have to be paid, reports have to be done and just because Specimen ‘Almost Perfect Man’ turned out to be queer doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world- it only means we probably wouldn’t mind an apocalypse say, sometime after brunch tomorrow?

Sigh.

The other night after dinner at Tom Ton's, we walked past Fine Cuts!, a gourmet butcher at the basement of Central. It's a rather convenient way of shopping for slabs of meat but if you either cannot wait or dish washing is not your thing, you could always go the ‘job interviewee’ way- pick your meat and have them grill it for you.



Now you should have seen the US Kobe Beef pre-grilled, in all its signature streaky marbled beauty. It was good, no wait it was pretty good, almost earth-shatteringly so (yeah I think I felt the tremors) but… there was just something missing. I know this sounds super superficial but I think it was the case of The Missing Grid Lines.



The awesome thing about their meats is its natural flavour and how they don’t drench it in gravy or sauce. That being said, the black pepper sauce served on the side had a good sprinkling of cracked pepper.



However, the US Kurobuta Pork was a washout. It looked beautiful but was unforgivably tough. Apart from the mixed grill, each main is served with mayo-sodden coleslaw and crunchy potato salad.






The Mixed Grill came with a Thurlington sausage, lamb chop and beef steak and was served with crinkled fries. Naturally I wasn’t expecting the beef steak to be Kobe standard but it was sufficiently tender. So was the lamb chop and in fact that’s what I would recommend if you aren’t in the mood for beef. The Thurlington sausage was a chunky capsule of cheesy fatty-meaty goodness.



At Fine Cuts!, here’s nothing fancy about the set up; in fact, it looks as if the owner decided “Hey, since we have some leftover space, let's throw in a couple of IKEA tables and chairs, and create a makeshift restaurant!” Service is pretty raw and this place is still finding its bearings. Give it some time, this gourmet butchery might just surprise us.