Went for a dinner with the wife to celebrate [any excuse to eat out]… The service was immaculate from the off. As someone who gets unreasonably annoyed by amateurish service, I was seriously impressed. The wife thought that the guy who replaced our cutlery put it down a little too heavily, while I thought he was being professionally to-the-point. That’s the kind of level of nitpicking you get to with service this good.

The house itself is really nice, I recommend asking for the balcony (which is enclosed and therefore airconditioned). There’s two corner tables that look out into the foliage outside, which are especially good.

Against my better judgement, we had the degustation menu. I rarely find that they live up to their promise because they usually consist of about 30% food to which I’m indifferent and another 20% to which I have a positive antipathy. The missus, however, loves them. I therefore uncomplainingly accepted the eight course menu and settled in for a few hours of eating. Except, strangely for a tasting menu of eight courses, it took less than two hours for the whole meal including dawdling over our coffees. The whole thing was served at quite a pace. The courses are small but you leave pretty much where you’d want to be in terms of satisfaction. Unless you’re a big fat biffer -but then you could probably do to eat a little less anyway.

There was a range of bits and pieces that came with the meal, which I’ll gather in an ‘ostensibly free’ section here:

Seaweed prawn crackers: I really liked them, the wife didn’t – she said they were too salty. (No, I’m not married to Zhang Ziyi).
Breadstuffs: Smelled good, tasted good.
Amuse-bouches: Tempura frog (with its little thigh bone as the cocktail stick – bless…), which was more or less indistinguishable from fried chicken, and an accompanying coconut and pineapple drink thingy, which was far from special.

The first real course was some crab, some salad and some mayonnaise. I don’t really care about seafood – find it slightly pointless – and didn’t find anything about the dish to rave about. The wife found it well cooked enough but there wasn’t really anything that made you think ‘wow, I’m in the hands of a culinary alchemist, here.’ My feelings in re the pointlessness of seafood were slightly relieved by the second course, lobster and sweetbread ravioli. The sauce in which it was served was delicious, although my lobster was slightly stringy. I didn’t detect any sweetbread, either. The next course was some tuna, lightly seared with a thousand island dressing. Tuna also doesn’t do much for me and the lightly seared variety is something of which I’m not a huge fan. I can say that the thousand island dressing wasn’t exceptional. Mrs A. also wasn’t too excited about the tuna, although there was nothing wrong with it as such.

The next course, thank god, took us out of the seas and into the air. Pigeon. It was a little tough, and also tasted a hint too bloody for my liking but maybe that’s just pigeon. The next course was the best, wagyu beef cheek. It was braised and very tender but the real stand out was the red wine sauce in which it came. The wilted spinach leaves and puree potatoes were pretty much perfect accompaniments, although a hint more potato would have made for better balance. This said, the wife didn’t like it that much… There’s no accounting for taste.

The next course was a mango soup concoction, which I would probably leave if I had it again. Then a chocolate thingy in a cup, which was very good – crispy outside with a hint of melt inside – and actually tasted very chocolatey, as opposed to the sweet/no-cocoa chocolate that predominates here. (Yes, I'm talking to you, Max Brenner).

Drinks: a good gin & tonic and a good Riesling (went well with the seafood) and an okay claret. There were a few other things, coffees, petits fours but I think I’ve gone on quite long enough…

Partly, I think my view of the degustation menu suffered because it covered too many foods by which I’m not terribly excited. It’s fair to say, though, that Mrs A. shared my reservations – i.e. that it just wasn’t nearly special enough to justify nearly SGD300 apiece. There certainly weren’t any moments where we felt that something really clever had been served up. I’m probably going to come back – I want to try the a la carte menu and see if food I choose, as opposed to the chef choosing, bowls me over.

Ooh, I forgot to mention the first course of 'some tomato'. Which was some tomato. Seriously. Not even especially tasty tomato. Just tomato. On a plate.

Well, First time I've set foot into a French Fine dine Restaurant, and what more for my 22nd birthday.

Been hearing all the reviews about this place and always wanted to have a taste of french cuisine. So I suggested this place for my Birthday dinner.

I'd always remember the waiter, always eager to offer comments and trying his best to make us laugh as we were a little lost with the menu. Remember him trying to scare me with Rabbit meat on the menu, knowing that I'd freak out. I knew what I wanted to have though, but it was a little worrying looking at the foie gras and whatnot. I'm not a fan of goose liver, but my curiosity got the better of me.

I ordered that foie gras with ginger ice cream (utterly wierd combination...) loved the ginger ice cream but practically swallowed the foie gras for fear of it's odd taste. The particular Degustation menu we had last year was different from the one they're offering now and the darling had scallops with mushrooms. I have all the pictures somewhere, but I'll wait til some other time to load them up. --------Editor's Note: Pictures are in! Time for a Second Visit???

The spinach spaghetti was creamy and cheesy and a little too sticky for my liking but the darling loved it. So who am I to complain. The potato soup was an interesting mix of flavours. Rightly creamy with the odd foam on top that was cold and tasted rather milky.

For the main course, we chose the Wagyu Beef and the Pork cheek. Loved the mashed potato that came with the wagyu. Really creamy and smooth, like it was pushed through a strainer, blended and creamed with a cake mixer. Amazingly tender beef, with no taste of any tenderizer. The pork cheek reminded me of chinese "san chen rou". The really bouncy kind with enough fat that didn't make you feel icky like you've eaten a mouthful of oil. And their sauce was tantilizingly smooth, with a hint of oriental flavour(although I was sure it wasn't oyster sauce)

I'll always remember the warm chocolate Guanaja Moelleux with pistacho ice cream for its lovely presentation and the way the fork breaks into the spongyness and exposing the chocolate sauce inside with it oozing out onto the ice cream. Heavenly. The darling had the regular crepe type dessert(the name I suddenly can't quite remember) which for a sweet-toothed monster was too bland for him.

And how the waiter offered a second round of tea-treats to go with our afterdinner tea/coffee when I exclaimed: So CUTE! at the minature sweeties and madelines he proffered. Homemade he says. The minature chocolate truffle was not overly sweet and just felt right. Not too big and just nice to settle in as an afterdinner tea treat. But for sweet-toothed monsters like me, one's never enough. Seems the waiter read my mind then.

Definately a place to go when the romantic bug attacks. Don't bring your boisterous friends there though, those tai-tai types will stare til you feel really fidgety.

I was expecting nothing less from my dining experience last night & I got the best out of everything.

We chose the Degustation as we wanted to have a little taste of each. For our wine pairing, we did not have different wine for individual course, instead we chose a bottle of red & white each. My dining partner did the choosing as he's one person who knows my taste for wine best. He's the one to choose the wine while I am the one to choose the food...no fighting involved...clear cut :). Kir Royale was the 1st drink we had and we ended with more glasses of wine.

I was surprised to find the Hokkaido tomatos are so different fromt he rest of the cherry tomatoes that we get from the supermarket, well may sound like an idiot to say this but woah those tomatoes are really a class of its own.

The alaskan crab was one of my favourite being a seafood lover. It's light, refreshing and sweet.

I love the way the tuna carpaccio was made as when you chew it, it's slightly flacky but still has the fresh rawness of a sashimi. Really do not know how to put it like a professional critic but this is one that you should try.

One of my favourite is definately the quail and yessssssssssss the Waygu Beef Cheek...........OMG OMG SO NICE SO NICE HAHAHAHA if the whole meal is to just eat a huge slab of that I'D GLADLY DO IT!

I think all dishes have their own distinctive flavor and style so it's seriously worth it.

The atomoshpere is relaxed and not standoffish. Waiters are ever so attentive and present themselves well. I must say they do have a sense of humor too.

Like I say I got to enjoy good cooking, good ambience, good service and of cos good company.

food there is excellent. but the one thing that is definitely worth commenting on is the service. all wait staffs are extremely attentive. before i can even stand up, one staff would already be standing behind me, urshering me to the ladies..etc.

Being the lucky girl that I am, the boyfriend treated me to dinner there 2 nights ago for my birthday, which in itself is nothing really to celebrate about since I am on the road to becoming a lao zhao bor and one step closer to not qualifying for free drinks on ladies night at St James. Hur hur.

It really is romantic to take the short leisurely stroll in the Botanic Gardens en route to the restaurant. The service was excellent from start to finish - we were served some seaweed crackers alongside the Bruno Paillard champagne we ordered. Even the bread they served was excellent and was well tempted to ask whether I could buy it.

We were debating bewteen the 8-course degustation menu ($175/person) and the 4-course Table d'horte menu ($125/person). Finally decided to go with the degustation menu since it was designed to "maximise the Au Jardin experience". The half bottle red which the sommelier recommended was excellent.

Every course had us at ooohs and aaahs. The boyfriend said the meal reminded him of his other great meal at Provence (with his then ex-gf...ptui!). I loved how everything was just, well, lovely. We had the tuna carpaccio, maine lobster with apple jelly, dover sole with summer truffles and pea puree, Japanese styled steam aubergine (our least favourite), grilled quail breast with poached pear (excellent combination) and our favourite - the braised wagyu beef short ribs, roasted flank steak with morel mushrooms. The short ribs were so pink but not the least bit bloody - they explained that they hang the flank to "cure" it for a few days. Beautiful.

The pre-dessert was blood orange sorbet with vanilla ice-cream topped with a tangerine foam and the main dessert was muscat jelly with chantilly cream. Dessert for me was a bit of a let-down as I was hoping for something rich and chocolatey. Many of the diners around us had chosen the Table d'horte menu which allowed them to choose the warm chocolate cake with pistachio ice-cream. I observed many of them take the first scoop of the cake and everyone's face was etched with a near orgasm. I was very jealous.

Definitely a great place for a romantic meal or to dine your business associates. I can now understand what this restaurant has emerged as one of HGW's top restaurants by reviewers' ratings. It was truly an unforgetable experience, where food, ambience and service all came together perfectly.

After having checked the Les Amis website, looking forward to Friday lunch or Sunday brunch there one of these days.