Wednesday, February 3, 2010

a night of new places...Canton-i & 7ate9

After a drought of exploring new places, it is back to my favourite (and expensive) hobby again! This time, me and a friend started with dinner at the often-talked-about Hongkie sister of Crystal Jade, Canton-I....Located at Ion Orchard, its expected to be pretty packed when we arrived close to 7pm, considering that town area is almost always packed on a Friday night....well, its not as packed as we expected (thankfully!), but it was more than half full.

At first i thought the prices would be quite steep, looking at the design and location of the restaurant, but it turned out to be pretty reasonable....pretty much similar to Crystal Jade...


Had a pot of Jasmine tea to start the meal, which was served in a very pretty teapot with a metal burner underneath to keep the tea warm in their freezing restaurant

Instead of the usual salted peanuts seen in most chinese restaurants, appetiser/amuse- bouche/snack/whatever-you-call-it here was a plate of honey roasted cashew nuts garnished with white sesame seeds...very delightful! One reason to return here!


Dinner was a simple affair of half roast chicken (above) to share, and a bowl of plain congee with dried scallop each....more than enough for 2! The chicken was very nicely roasted, no burnt taste, but a little on the oily side (but fans of roast chicken will appreciate that little extra fragant oil infused with the chicken's juices...yum-o!)...and it is served with sweet chilli sauce and saucer of special salt (which i cant determine what is the salt mixed with)...pretty different from the roast chicken we get in hawker centres, but i would prefer they add a saucer of plum sauce/sour plum powder to counteract the oilyness though...
We didnt take photo of the porridge because my dining companion felt it looked too plain....However, the dried scallop flavour reminiscent of typical Cantonese congee is evident, although my companion felt it wasn't as nice as Crystal Jade's plain congee.

This was the next destination for post-dinner drinks....I patronised 7ate9 before for their degustation lunch buffet (which was pretty interesting), but hadn't had the chance to try their drinks, which has pretty good reviews....so hence, the trip here...

I had the Peach Margharita...

while companion had Hoegarden White...

and we had an artistic-looking 5-spice fries to share...

The peach margharita was very nice, not too sweet, peachy flavour was evident, and most importantly, not too alcoholic (ok, alcohol lovers will definitely say thumbs-down...but i m pretty fine with it!)...the only flaw was that the magharita defrosted a little too quickly for my liking....luckily we were only there for an hour+ so it wasnt that bad....it fully defrosted after abt an hour...
The hoegarden white was, well, hoegarden beer, thats all....i didnt taste it, so cant comment...
The fries were a little disappointing...i couldnt taste 5 spices, except for salt and pepper...so i guess it was just normal thick-cut fries....but the plating was pretty special, gave me a surprise when i saw it coming....kudos for the extra effort by Chef-in-Black!
Overall, not too bad...will come back for the other margharitas!

Canton-I Chinese restaurant
Level 3 Ion Orchard

7atenine
Level 1 Esplanade Mall (outdoor area)


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