Bistro 103

I'm so happy that my holidays are finally here :D Real holidays for 3 weeks - the last proper one we had was last yr :S I look forward to


About a week ago, I tried Bistro 103, which is located at 103 Pasir Panjang Road. It's quite a short distance from the other end of South Buona Vista Road (great for the 1.5hr lunches cheooooooong!) It's a homely little restaurant run by this couple. Prices quoted are nett - no service charge or gst here and their prices are really reasonable for the food you're getting.
Salt and pepper squid - breaded squid balls which came with a special chilli mayonnaise. The chilli mayonnaise was really yummy, as was the bread part of the breaded squid balls - I really like the cubed kind of bread for deepfried breaded stuff :D I can't remember how much this costs (seems to be happenning alot) but it's probably about $6.
This is the pasta that my 2 food-hunting-food-loving friends were raving about - the Crabmeat Pasta with Salmon. It comes in 3 different kinds of sauces - Tomato, Cream and Red Pesto, but the Red Pesto was sold out that day. So my second choice was Tomato. For $15.20, you'll get a huge plate of pasta with chunky tomato crabmeat sauce, and a piece of panfried salmon. The sauce is not too salty, but I found it a little too sweet for my liking. However, I really liked the huge bits of tomatoes, celery, onions etc inside the sauce. I found the panfried salmon suprisingly tender and it went very well with the tomato sauce.
Of course, using the excuse of having to review more dishes, I pinched some of the cream sauce too - the goodness of having a blog (^u^) The cream is not the rich pure cream kind - instead, it's consistency seems somewhat closer to bechamel sauce. It makes the dish easier to stomach, and you won't feel too bloated or full from the heaviness of the cream. The taste of the sauce is also enhanced by the fried garlic bits.
This is the BBQ pork ribs($24) which smelt really lovely. The moment it arrived at our table, the delicious aroma of BBQ sauce mixed with chargrilled ribs warfted around and got all of our appetites up.

The ribs are meaty and full (none of those scrawny runty looking ones) and the meat is firm and juicy. It doesn't fall off the bone as easily like Cafe Cartel's (which I think it slightly too soggy), but has just the right firmness for ribs. Think Bak Ku Teh kind of ribs. Of course, the marinade is really good for a savoury, smoky bbq taste. Overall, other than the too-sweet Tomato Sauce for my Spaghetti, I thought that Bistro 103 was really value for money. I would like to return to try the Red Pesto sauce, which sounds so interesting, especially since it sold out during lunch! I think that they're slightly under-staffed- it's just 4 staff (including the cook) for the whole restaurant, and I think they're not prepared for the crowd that they're getting.

Michellelim star rating:

Bistro 103
103 Pasir Panjang Road
Tel: 6476 6373