Chef Pang KOk Keong, whose name used to be synonymous with Canele, has found his Sugar Daddy and established a string of cafes including Pique Nique and Antoinette. My cousin and I met up for brunch at Antoinette as the savouries sounded promising and the sweets looked amazing.
After reading Catherine's post on Antoinette, I must admit it was this scrambled egg gratin that lured me to Antoinette. Sacre bleu! You can have my head when I'm done eating yeah?
Silky folds of scrambled eggs hidden beneath the brutish deliciousness of melted cheese, ham and mushroom, served with thick slices of
Are you supposed to scoop the gratin onto the toast or mop them up with it? I don't know - maybe both because I know that Man created toast on top of utensils for a reason.
I must admit we order the spaghetti marinara AFTER our sweets. Heh heh. Tomato-based pasta with smatterings of mussels, scallops, squids and prawns. Quite blah and overpriced. Okay, moving on ...
Having devoured both seasons of Top Chef Just Desserts, I feel I can better appreciate the hard work that goes onto every manicured slice of pastry. Normally I don't like fancy smancy pastries that taste tongue-scrappingly awful or like a bar of lavender soap dunked in an English granny's afternoon tea but I found the sweets at Antoinette were pretty darn fantastic.
The namesake Antoinette is their signature creation and it was an extremely refined, dainty play of textures. Beyond the smoothest, creamiest milk chocolate infused with Earl Grey tea, we found an extremely pleasing crisp hazelnut feuillitine and dark chocolate earl grey tea crémeux.
For some reason, we left the dome on top alone till the end. To my surprise, it wasn't wholly solid when I poked at it. My cousin, with her vivid imagination, described it as an alien-predator sac. Like Facebook, things didn't get prettier with a mindless poke - a thick red liquid oozed from within ... Mama Alien is not going to be happy ... Thankfully, the raspberry coulis tasted better than what it seemed 5 seconds again but I can't say I would miss it if it weren't there.
See Catherine's post for a curated view of this bubble and how I am being totally disrespectful of their efforts.
A pretty layered slice named Brittany also made its presence felt. Though it bore a sort of seediness I could appreciate at any time of the day but I was preoccupied with the other 2 treats.
My cousin and I were discussing favouritism and while I generally despise those who practise favouritism, I can't help but proclaim the Mont Blanc to be my favourite pastry of the day. It's ok since pastries don't have feelings right?
The earthiness of chestnuts (not forgetting the beautiful piping), almost weightless Chantilly cream and fragrant, almond-y pate sucre tart shell ... I loved loved loved this!
I would like to return to Antoinette again to try out other stuff. I see a carbonara gnocchi and mushroom risotto that my younger sister would go absolutely jebeesus nuts for!
Oddly enough when I read other people's reviews and they smack down the pastries with "wasn't impressed" or "not blown away", it got me really irritated. Not liking it for its taste is one thing but not appreciating the work that goes into making those pastries? I say, off with your head.
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