Thursday, 1 March 2012, via (heavily edited) email:
Jia Min: “Okay dears, so when and what time shall we meet to do up our LCS assignment?”
Me: “How’s tomorrow, love? My weekend shall not be touched by LCS.”
Jia Min: “Sure thing dear <333 ^^ 😀 😛 *.* ((((((: :X :))))))))!”
Bunny (alias: David Koh): “but why it’s Friiiiiiiday it’s my free day and you take it away from me must we really meet up *whine whine whine I’m a bunny whine whine*…”
Jia Min (ignores Bunny): “How does Cluny Court sound dear?”
Me: “Cluny Court sounds awesome.”
That’s how we found ourselves at Cluny Court bright and early on a Friday afternoon, with nothing but food in mind. The joint we chose to ignore LCS at is called Relish Burger, a charming little corner restaurant situated on the second floor of Cluny Court.
What a view. *ahem*
The ambience
Relish looks trendy, but not overtly so. One can pop over there without wearing heels and a fur coat. The place is air-conned, quite cosy, and conveniently located, which makes it perfect for a group outing or as an escape-from-work-hole! But a note of caution: the lighting is bad for camwhoring. When we arrived at Relish, it was during peak lunch period (1pm plus), thus the crowd. The picture may not show it, but there’s actually more seats behind the camera with much more humans seated there!
The ace factor about the ambience for me was the fact that Relish is simply crawling with ang mohs. Crawling I tell you. Which can only add to the ambience (see figure 1 above). ;P
A nice little corner seat was allocated to us, and we were promptly brought menus and ice water by a fresh-faced waitress who looked like she just finished her O levels (ah the good old days of youth).
The menu
Relish has a pleasantly interesting range of burgers on its menu, not just the typical chicken-beef-fish-questionable-meat-that-looks-like-pork combo most eateries have. They even have a blue cheese burger, which looked so pungent even in writing that I did not dare to try it. For those who aren’t too peckish, the menu does have a section for various side dishes, finger food, Western-type creamy soups, and salads. The selection of drinks at Relish includes fizzy drinks, floats, your typical hot drinks and wine — essentially, there’s something for everyone!
I decided to get the funkily-named Wild Rocket Beef Burger ($16.80 for 140g, all prices before GST and service charge), with the steak well-done. Jia Min was on an unnecessary diet and ordered the Tropical Salad with Tiger Prawns and Mango etc. ($10) — this isn’t the real name of the dish, but we couldn’t remember the original title (which was pretty long), hence the made-up one. Bunny, in keeping to a healthy vegetarian leporid lifestyle characteristic of his species, ordered a Strawberry Cheesecake ($10).
The degustation
Perhaps it was because we went at lunchtime — the food took extraordinarily long in arriving, with Bunny’s dessert coming first and my burger last. But it was not too bad a wait, because the beef patty was indeed well-done with no traces of blood or hooves or what have you in it when it arrived!
The salad
Jia Min’s healthy entrée, in her own words, “tastes pretty good but gets very jelat if you eat too much of it”. The Tropical Salad is a refreshing combination of succulent prawns, onion rings, mango slices, and cucumber strips (which had a strangely pleasant jelly-like texture), all topped with a fine sprinkling of herbs. The vegetables used were quite fresh, with the mango sweet and not too sour, the onions nicely crunchy and pungent and the cucumbers tasting like cucumbers.
The salad isn’t enough to fill you up if you haven’t eaten breakfast, and it certainly won’t keep you full for very long. But, as Jia Min and I agreed, it makes a nice sharing dish and is definitely one which you won’t feel guilty over after eating just a little more than you should!
Now all this needs is a paper umbrella. (:
The burger
The Wild Rocket Beef Burger, I feel, quite lived up to its reputation. The patty was moist and chewy and beefy and cooked in an appetising sauce, but was it really 140g? Maybe the plate seemed a bit big in relation. The rocket greens within the burger were agreeably fragrant, but the portion made it seem more like a garnish than a main ingredient. The burger came with Cajun fries, which is always a crowd-pleaser! The fries were worth it — thick-cut, not too salty, freshly-fried, and tasted like potatoes the way real fries should. And they came in a generous portion for a side! Of course, if you’re paranoidly healthy or healthily paranoid you can always request to switch the fries for a salad. But why would you want to do that? (:
Me happily eschewing the salad.
The dessert
We’ve saved the best for last — the Strawberry Cheesecake.
CHEESECAKE!
Have a closer look.
Smouldering.
This deconstructed beauty of creamy cheese, cake mixture, crumbly digestives, and fresh strawberries in syrup is good enough to make you forget your own name. Although I prefer my cheesecake in the traditional “cake” form, this little glass of sex appeal is surprisingly good. To eat this work of art, one must master the art of vertical scooping in order to get all the flavours at once. The strawberry syrup at the bottom contained real strawberry slices (not the typical fake bits in McDonald’s strawberry sundae), and was just the right level of sweetness, and the saltiness of the digestive biscuit layer complemented the overall taste of the dessert. The best part to me was the cheese layer (the ice-cream-lookalike in the picture above) — it was luscious and tart and cold and creamy and not overwhelmingly cheesy. In short, it was gorgeous. Jia Min and I would indulge in this every day if ONLY it didn’t cost the amount it did!
We unanimously proclaimed our hour-an-a-half long lunch a good, solid lunch, and began our slow long walk to law school with a satisfied spring in our steps. Overall, Relish is a decent place to grab a bite. The location is near school. The food is good (not extremely good, just good), and only a bit on the pricey side. If anything, the Strawberry Cheesecake is worth a try! And if all else fails, just look up and bask in the lovely ambience.
Now the bunny has no reason to whine. (:
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Article contributed by: Tay Jingxi (Law 2)
Photos courtesy of Jia Min’s iPhone and editing courtesy of Jingxi and Picnik
(bad lighting courtesy of Relish)