Artichoke Revisited

One more call before I go on loooong annual leave! :D

I just watched Tree of Life yesterday and it was really one of the most painful movies I've ever watched! I was just thinking to myself barely 1hr into the movie that it was really sad that I wasn't at Universal studios (cos it was raining madly in the morning) and that the movie was like watching fragments from national geographic channel without any narration :(

Went to Artichoke again (?a month back) cos I was missing the dips and the lamb ribs.

They've changed their dips - tzatziki and hummus were my faves (always are) but I didn't like the carrot and walnut dip (don't particularly like carrots). Turkish bread comes separately for about $3 (but it's a small portion)

Fried Halloumi Cheese with came with some grilled vegetables - my first time trying this cheese. It's very firm and looks a bit like a tau kua. Taste wise it's not very remarkable.
My favourite dish at Artichoke - their slow cooked lamb ribs with mint yogurt with a scattering of pomegranate seeds. The lamb is very gamey so people who don't like the lamb smell please avoid this dish!

We had one of their sharing meat platters which totally made everyone so uncomfortably full. The meat platter is really very very filling, salty and oily. And gamey. It comes with chicken, lamb, sausages. Please don't order the lamb ribs and the meat platter cos you'll really overdose on the lamb. Other than that, I quite liked the sausage and the grilled cherry tomatoes.

Was wayyy too full to even think about dessert.

Artichoke

161 Middle Road, Sculpture Square

Tel 63366949

Artichoke

Happy belated new year everyone! Didn't have a chance to blog cos I was happily spending my new year doing what I do best - eating and slacking. I finally caught my first movie (The Tourist) in a super long time (though I must say it's really not worth catching after all). 2010 has been a great year - can't believe how fast it has passed (signs of age here! but I have been enjoying the last 3 months lots) and I'm 2/3rds done with my first yr at work... Anyway, I had lots of feasting during the last week of 2010 (many more posts to come) and I spent new years day eating again.Since my new years dinner was so delicious, I've decided to let it 'jump queue'. I first read about Artichoke in the papers under the article of the young and up and coming chefs in Singapore. All these articles are great ways for sourcing for new food places to go to but I usually wait 1-2 weeks for all the hype and queues to die down before I visit them. Artichoke serves Mediterranean/greek/middle eastern food (not really sure exactly what type but under Hungry Go Where it's labelled as Greek) so it means all the delicious bread and dips.

Hummus and babaganoush - chickpea puree and crushed roasted eggplant with sumac, EVOO and Turkish Toast ($9) (the 2 plates on the right)
Hummus is one of my favourite dishes (especially when eaten with flat bread) but it's not readily available in Singapore. I've tried making my own hummus with canned chickpeas but I was lacking the tahini so it wasn't tasty. The hummus has a very mild garlic taste and is very smoothly blended. Babaganoush is the brownish lumpy dip on the top right corner of the picture and is actually mashed roasted eggplants. Although I liked eggplants, I was more partial to the hummus cos it was creamier in texture.

Turkish bread ($4) - we loved the dips so much that we decided to get another plate of Turkish bread to go with them. The Turkish bread is crusty and crispy and goes extremely well with the tasty dips.

Char-grilled globe artichokes with wild thyme and EVOO ($7)

The namesake dish - smokey grilled artichokes with lots of extra virgin olive oil perfect for dipping the crispy Turkish bread into. It's served slightly chilled. It's quite hard to find this in most restaurants locally, and other than the artichoke salads at those buffet salad bars, I've only eaten it in pizza.

Roasted beetroot with homemade labneh (lebanese yogurt cheese) pistachio dukka and garlic breadcrumbs ($11)

Beetroot is one of my more favourite root vegetables cos of it's purple colour (same reason why I like eggplants so much) and I like it's earthy sweetness and juiciness. The yogurt cheese is light and creamy and goes very well with the crunchy beetroot, and the pistachio dukka and breadcrumbs add texture and taste to the whole dish.

Twice cooked Lamb Shortribs ($21) - with Moroccan chermoula spices and garlic yogurt

This was my favourite dish (apart from the hummus) of the night. The shortribs were incredibly delicious and tasted awesome. The shortribs were infused with the exotic spices and each bite was incredibly flavourful. The meat was very soft and juicy, not fatty, and went very well with the herbs and yogurt. Do note that I really like this dish alot because the shortribs have a very strong lamb taste - so people who dislike the lamb smell and taste, this dish is not for you...

I think I am completely capable of polishing off the whole plate of 7 ribs myself cos it's so tasty.

Date pudding with smoked milk custard and salted caramel ($10)

The date pudding here is completely different from the sticky date puddings I usually blog about. It's not sticky at all and is more like a cake. Though I couldn't really taste the dates, the smoked milk went very well with the cake. The cake was sprinkled with chocolate powder and had shards of salted caramel on top. The smoked milk custard is actually dulce de leche (or something like condensed milk but slightly creamier) and they're really generous with it.

Apple cake with crumble and vanilla marscapone cheese and maple syrup ($8)

Perhaps it was cos I was very full and I had just eaten 3/4ths of the date pudding and slurped up the milk custard, the apple crumble tasted rather bland and un-interesting. The serving of walnuts is really generous tho!

I like how everything comes with the extra virgin olive oil which purportedly has lots of health benefits (though I'm sure it comes with lots of calories too). The olive oil keeps the dishes moist and has this nice aromatic smell and a peppery zing at the end of it. Great for dipping the bread. The only complaint I have is that my bread seems to run out really quick! And the $4 servings never seemed enough.

The young service crew is eager to please and although I have read reviews online saying their service is slow, it wasn't the case for me. Though the waiting time for the food was fair (then again, we just arrived after 2 large groups ordered) the food came all at once and the food was so delicious so I'm not complaining. I liked how they leave a whole bottle of chilled water at the table - really saves the waitstaff lots of time and manpower.

I am returning soon to try their many 'large plates' and sharing platters like the Haloumi and Mushrom $23) which has pan fried greek chese with organic mushrooms and smashed avocado as well as their lamb kleftiko (stolen lamb). If the lamb shortribs are anything to go by, I'm totally dying to try their stolen lamb...

Artichoke
161 Middle Road, Sculpture Square
Tel: +65 6336 6949

Sultan Kebab

Kebabs are one of my more favourite foods but good ones are pretty hard to find (in fact, I don't know any except the one in Clarke Quay which I have yet to try). Used to go to Cineleisure's Kyros Kebab last time, but that one closed down. Only $5 something for delicious tasting lamb and lots of lettuce cucumber and tomatoes.

Managed to try Sultan Kebab (recommended by Claire) at the very ulu hard to get to Peace centre. I don't usually go there cos it's very hard to get to (have to pass 2 erp gantries if I'm coming from Orchard) and the carpark is insanely expensive (considering that there's nothing much to do there). I think it's authentic Turkish, and I saw them hand cutting lots of beef pieces into really thin pieces to make the Döner kebab (kebab on a vertical rotating spit, according to wikipedia).

Although it's pretty oily, and they put generous amounts of chilli sauce and lettuce into the a toasted pita bread. I ate the chicken one (I think it's about $5 or $6, and my sister ate the beef). If it's more accessible I'll definitely go back cos I like eating kebabs alot (but hate trudging around to get it.
Sultan Kebab

1 Sophia Road

#01-15 Peace Centre

Tel: 6338-8750

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)

Shiraz

Complimentary starter of marinated red peppers, cucumber and olives. It's vinegared and very sour.

Dough (doogh) ($5++) is a traditional Persian drink which is made from yoghurt, water (or soda) and spices such as mint. It's a thin, sour drink and it's supposed to wash down the meal.
Iranian flatbread - with black sesame seeds. I think it's called the Sangak (at least, the description in wikipedia matches it). "Sangak is a plain, rectangular or triangular, blanket-like Persian flatbread. 'Sang' in Persian means stone or pebble and sangak means related to sang. This bread is traditionally baked on river stones (hence the name), and is occasionally topped with sesame seeds. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangak)
The Appetiser was the Chef Signature Platter($23++), which consisted of 4 different appetisers -

Kufteh-ye-anar-o Pesteh: a round ball of minced lamb meat drizzeled with pomegranade sauce and topped with pistachio nuts.

Kashk-e-bademajan: roasted sliced eggplant with "Kash" sun dried youghurt, mint and fried onion.

Borani-esfanaj-a: a smooth blend of sauteed spinach ith onion, youghurt and garlic.

The last appetiser was an eggplant dish with minced lamb and youghurt but I didn't take down the name (which I cant pronounce, much more spell).

Shiraz specialises in Kebabs, and their food is halal. They have lots of lamb dishes, as well as vegetarian options. They also have rice dishes and stews, but the kebabs are highly recommended.

Boneless chicken leg kebab ($28) the chicken is tender and juicy, unlike some restaurants where the chicken is overcooked, dry and hard. The portions are generous, and each main course is served with a roasted tomato, fluffy rice drizzled with saffron and a salad. There is also a rice cake which is orange in colour - it's crispy on the outside and the rice is like the kind that you find at the bottom of the claypot.Darya Fish Kebab ($28++) - the fish is soft and flaky, but it was a bit too salty for my liking.
This was my favourite dish - the Soltani Lamb Kebab ($38++), which had lamb fillet as well as minced lamb. The lamb was well marinated, and the meat was soft and juicy, and done just right. I prefered the minced lamb kebab (on top) as it was softer and tastier than the lamb fillet.

Dessert was Sholeh-Zard ($9++), which is a traditional persian rice pudding, with saffron, rose water and cinnamon, topped with pistachios. It's served cold and is very refreshing.

This place is pretty pricey, dinner was $150+ altogether, for 3 people, so reserve this for special occasions (or bring your parents). The restaurant is decorated with persian lamps, rugs etc and they have efficient service.

Shiraz

3A River Valley Road

Clarke Quay

#01-06 Merchant's Court

Tel 63342282