Sanmar - Middle Eastern Food, Place and TIME

We went for part 2 at Kampong Glam - where there were so many lights it looked like chrsitmas decorations. It was pretty empty for a weekend, probably cos it's the fasting period now. Tried this middle eastern restaurant called Sanmar. It had really cool decoration on the second storey, and apparently sometimes there are belly dancers performing there (but not that night). It's a 24 hour restaurant/cafe and doesn't serve alcohol (cos it's catered for Muslim). The food looked quite good - there was a buffet spread for $38 as well as ala carte.

On the 2nd storey, you'll have to walk barefoot (it's carpeted) and sit on the floor (with cushions) - makes you feel as if you've just gone on a holiday to Middle East! The decor is really nice, and it's quite breezy (it would have been more enjoyable if there wasnt a table smoking near us) .

We were just going there for the desserts. And shisha (for claire :P).

Baked Tufah ($7.50) - Green apple baked to softness, with a caramelized filling of mixed nuts and sliced dates, topped with vanilla ice cream. I must say this is quite different from the usual desserts at coffeeclub/tcc - worth trying for the experience, though it's a bit pricy for quite small portions.

The apple was slightly sour, and piping hot, so the vanilla ice cream melted torrents over the dates and nuts. Makalabiyaa ($6.50) - This was my dessert! Rice and milk pudding with nuts and dates. The milk had the consistency of yogurt, it was smooth creamy chilled and tasted really delicious with the sweet dates and crunchy nuts. I saw it at the buffet spread after my meal and I was thinking that it would be quite cool to have unlimited servings of this!

Kulfi Lanz ($5.50)

Almond milk kulfi - they took soooo long to serve this kulfi to us that the whole thing melted! How can you even call this a kulfi, which is a form of frozen dessert if the thing is only slushy and wet and not a single icecle. Anyway, we asked the waiter to bring it back and change it, and he said that ALL their kulfis were like that! Their freezer must have been spoilt -_-
Semolina cake - it's pretty heavy and reminds me of the chinese honey cake (dunno the name). It's quite sweet too.
I don't know what the membership fee is about! They didn't even give us like proper wet towels and whatever - how come they're charging us membership fee? I didn't get a membershipcard either.

And paying service charge (10% somemore) for bad service...

How bad was the service?

Out of 4 desserts 3 took ONE hour to arrive. They kept asking us to repeat our order (like 30 min after taking it) and kept bringing other table's drinks and desserts to us! Furthermore, we had to ask them 3 times for our food after about 40 min, and then they asked us to repeat our order again. The baked apple came the earliest, about 15 min after we ordered, but the rest came so late.

The waiters are inattentive and kept ignoring us, and they were in no hurry to take orders or serve us our food (maybe that's why the kulfi melted).

Samar60 Kandahar Street

Tel: 6398-0530

Opens 24 hours daily including public holidays

(It's near Beach Road)