Smoochies Bistro & Bar

This is a very very delayed review….i keep procrastinating We visited the place on NY’s eve, as we did reservations at the very last minute, we got the outdoor seats (a little warm) I like it for it’s peacefulness, maybe because it’s situated in the midst of office buildings and we went there after everyone has gone home or celebrating elsewhere =) Totally can imagine how nice it will be chilling out at a place like Smoochies after a day’s hard work… Ok..enough of my daydreaming, let’s get to the food part.. We had (accuracy not guaranteed) 1) mushroom soup 2) smoochies smoked duck salad 3) spaghetti Bolognese 4) baked pork ribs 5) Prosciutto pasta and pizza 6) Warm chocolate lave cake 7) Tiramisu They all tasted and looked good with reasonable serving size…no complains at all!! Oh! Their smoochies smoothies are worth a try. alcoholic beverages are the normal list of what you can get... Service was great! They were attentive, friendly, prompt and flexible. I was particularly impressed when they gave us the prosciutto pizza – on the house! What happened: we had wanted to order the pizza, but I pointed to prosciutto on the pasta selections. We were quite disappointed when we were served the pasta version (coz we already had a pasta dish) but we accepted it, as it was clearly our mistake. So, there we were, happily eating and chattering away and came this surprise, the waiter (same person who took out orders) brought us the prosciutto pizza, saying it’s on the house as he didn’t want us to be disappointed on NY’s eve!!! How sweet is that!! I think he has outdone himself in terms of service; the ability to empathize with customers is indeed a rare trait found in local service personnel. A pity I didn’t get the name of the waiter who served us throughout…wanna say thanks to you and team. We had a great experience and we will definitely be back again!

Smoochies is a great place to hang out with friends. Why? The place is cosy yet classy. Quiet enough to actually engage in a decent conversation without being in a shouting competition.

Food was above average. Don't go in with high expectations and you'll be delightfully surprised.

Service was EXCELLENT! Kudos to the staff who attended to us. They were friendly, professional and always willing to go the extra mile. It was them who made my evening at Smoochies an wonderful experience.

We were deciding between this place and the japanese buffet next door. As a result of the positive reviews of this place and we are in not in the mood for a heavy meal, we decided to try here first. The place is romantic and serene. The staff are very attentive - never have to ask for water refills, pepper and cheese. The menu is also easy to read.

The food is good - in particular, I recommend the bacon and blue cheese pizza - thin crust and rich toppings of bacon bits and blue cheese. We also had the seafood pasta with tomato base and baked pork ribs (which melts in your mouth) - both are good. For dessert, we tried the white chocolate tiramisu - it was authentic which reminds us of the one we had very long ago at a fine italian restaurant in clarke quay.

I decided to give this restaurant a try as it was close to where I live.

Place was a tad run down and not very clean. Menu was sticky and had bits of dried leftover food stains.

Location wise, it was nice and quiet with plenty of parking.

I ordered the baked pork ribs and the portion was very small. Taste wise, it wasn't anything to write home about. My brother ordered the lamb chops and that was replaced with another lamb dish as it was unavailable that evening. That dish was very tasy but yet again, the portion was insufficient to fill him up. We're not very big eaters, so it says a lot when we had to order the burger to complete the meal.

Service staff were cheerful and accommodating.

It was one of those days when we didn't want to drive out. Friend suggested Smoochies which was within walking distance and we decided it would be good to try.

Was told that the set lunches are really good value. There are 2 variants: $9.90 for 2 course and $17.90 for 3 course. In case you are wondering why the huge difference, I think it's because in the 3 course set, there are choices for appetizers, mains and dessert.

It appears that they change their set lunches everyday. We were there early, and the staff was still busy inserting the new set lunch menu into their designated frames. We waited for a while before deciding to just go with the 2 course. It was French Onion soup and Creamy Chicken and Asparagus pasta. While waiting for the food to be served, I had a quick flip through their wine list. They've got a decent wine list, with good prices to match.

The food was served fairly quickly. The soup was tasty, but its consistency reminds me more of a consomme rather than the traditional French Onion soup. Not much complaints, after all, it's lunch time and perhaps a less thick style of soup works better.

When the pasta came, I blinked. :) It was generous. Huge chunks of chicken thigh meat and crunchy asparagus. Taste was decent enough. After the pasta, we could feel the carbo-effect and quickly decided that we needed coffee.

The waiter was very quick to introduce us to the new capsule coffee machine that comes with many different flavours of coffee beans. That was a nice touch, and it's probably easy to prepare, as all you need to do is just pop the capsule into the machine and viola! Nicely brewed coffee.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience at Smoochies. Perhaps one day, I've go back for the wines...

I was searching for a new place to try for a friend's birthday celebration, and decided on Smoochies after reading the many positive reviews. It was a weekday night, and the 4 of us were the earliest to arrive. Waiter showed us the set and a la carte menus, we picked the set -- mozarella salad/corn soup, hawaiian chicken/baked dory/mushroom pasta, cheesecake. 3 of us ordered a glass of wine each, and the other a pina colada. No water was offered, so we helped ourselves to the room temperature bottled water on the table.

The 3 glasses of wine appeared in a few minutes. Many minutes later, waiter returned to tell my friend that they couldn't produce the pina colada as they'd run out of some ingredient. My friend selected something else but they'd run out of it too. Finally she settled on Coke.

After a further long wait, the salad & soup arrived. They were quite nice. I was relieved.

Many minutes later, the main courses arrived. The Hawaiian chicken looked like it was roasted and had tomato ketchup poured over it. The dory looked rather plain. Both were declared just "ok". The mushroom pastas did not look like mushroom pasta. We called the waiter over to check. He confirmed that it wasn't mushroom pasta, and took it away -- explanation was that the cashier had keyed in the wrong order. No attempt to apologise or do a service recovery. By then 2 of us were irritated and hungry, and considered ordering a snack to survive till our mains arrived. The waiter simply told us that the chicken wings would probably take as long to arrive. We requested peanuts to stave off our hunger pangs. The pasta turned out to be quite nice, but the mood was already spoiled.

Objectively, the Cheesecake was nice, but it was disappointing that the staff totally ignored my earlier info to them at point of reservation that it was my friend's birthday -- most decent places would at least have offered a complimentary slice of cake.

Never again.

My hubby and my mom went to Smoochies to try out their foods coz I am looking for a place to hang out with our friends on our b-day on 1st week of July

I liked the place, it did not upset me. The live band plays cool music they are friendly.

We chose to dine in the alfresco and we sat in front of the band to feel and enjoy it more.

I ordered braised pork ribs and my hubby and my mom ordered pasta.
The serving is pretty generous and prices are reazonable I can say.

My hubby ordered 2 glasses of whiskey and the 3rd glass is free.

I like the ambience but it would have been better if there were more crowd to have a good feeling that this is a happening place. At that time it was almost empty, only 3 tables were filled in, (maybe because it was Thursday or it's the standard crowd)

So by the time the band sang the last song no wonder they asked us to request coz aside from being just in front of them there were only few people around that time.

I forgot to comment on their dessert which is the warm chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream. It was really fantastic. I even thought of ordering one more!

There is only one thing that disappointed me when I just received the email from them which was the revision of the quotation/proposal that I asked them to change. TO THINK THAT I ASKED THEM MORE THAN 1 WEEK AGO. I THOUGHT THAT WAS CRAZY IT WILL ONLY TAKE MINUTES TO MAKE SOME AMMENDMENTS EVEN IF THE PERSON WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN CHARGE IS NOT AROUND THEY SHOULD HAVE ANTICIPATED THAT.

Overall I like the food, the ambience is very appealing but they don't have proper management for enquiries.

For Smoochies, I give them 7.5/10.

I have heard about this place from hungrygowhere, and decided to give my boyfriend a surprise birthday dinner there. So i booked a table a week ahead, with a special song dedication which is supposed to be the surprise for my boyfriend. In order for things to go smoothly, I called them again to confirm my reservation and the song request on the day itself. So we went down. We were early and there was almost no customers around 630pm, the new waitress greeted us and she had no idea of my reservation and luckily it was quite empty so we still managed to sit near the band performing area. we ordered the drink on the spot, (i have ordered the starter and main course on the booking as i heard it took long for the dishes to come out), my boyfriend ordered espresso martini and i ordered smoochies strawjito, the drink came after about 5-10 minutes and then the starters: beef carpaccio and garlic prawns, they were well presented and we were both satisfied with the food. We finished the food pretty fast as it was of small portion, and then we waited for about 20 minutes for the main courses to arrive, I had grilled ribeye and my boyfriend had baked pork rib, frankly speaking the taste was average but the presentation of the dishes were nice. And while we were having the main courses, the band started performing. The singers are great and so are the songs they picked. I waited for my song request to be played however I waited till the singer said:"Now we will have the last song and we will see you next time." and the next song was not my song! I was a bit fussy then and told my boyfriend i needed to go to the wash room, while in fact he saw me talking to the new waitress asking about the song request. The waitress was again unaware of my dedication and asked me which song i'd like to play. By the time i returned to my seat from the wash room, they started playing my song, however without surprise and no special mention about my boyfriend's birthday. I was really disappointed about it but then they made up for it by giving us a free home-made chocolate cake with a surprise birthday song. And then again they left us with no spoons, and i called the waiter several times, he seemed to look at me but he did not see me asking for spoons, so i had to walk to the counter and took the spoons myself...And sadly, even though they didnot have many customers around at that time, and the waiters and waitresses were standing there doing nothing, they did not come to fill my water at all.

Well, now an objective review on the restaurant:

Good:
Nice ambience, quiet and green and open
Excellent band performance, great singers
Friendly staff
well-presented food

Bad:
not so professional service
expensive for its standard (the table we were sitting was not so clean with the leftover from previous meals in between the crevices, which disgusted me a bit)

Food:
Beef carpaccio $16.00 (6 very slim slices with some salad)
Taste (8/10)
presentation (8/10)

Garlic Prawns $16 (about 8 prawns with some salad)
Taste (8/10)
presentation (8/10)

Baked pork rib $28 (very large portion with lots of smashed potato)
Taste(7/10)
presentation (8/10)

Grilled Ribeye $28 (large portion too)
Taste(7/10)
presentation (8/10)

Espresso Martini $12
Taste (mocha with martini)
presentation (no extra presentation)

Smoochies Strawjito $12
Taste (soda with smashed strawberries and three pieces of mint leaves)
presentation (7/10)

Total cost : $131.85

We were both 100% full.

Smoochies is conveniently located a 2-minute walk away from my office main door, so I've been there since the renovations for the restaurant was done. And I've finally visited Smoochies, though it has been opened for more than half a year.

We made a reservation, considering we had an initial crowd of 8 persons. In addition, we found out that Citibank has a 15% discount off ala carte dishes but in the end, we decided to go ahead with the HGW discount.

There were 3 service staff and an unknown number of ppl in the kitchen, thus serving time was unfortunately really long. Upon settling in, our first dishes (i.e. salad from my colleagues' set lunches) came only after 15 minutes. Our starter - Calamari Rings came only almost 30 minutes later.

That aside, the Calamari Rings were a little oily though the batter was truly on the light side and the calamari ring thickness was pretty alright. The tartar sauce really brought an edge to the dish though and this portion was definitely good as a starter for 2-3 persons.

It took once again quite some time for the main courses to arrive, and also the crew actually forgot to take my order, thus I was main-course-less. I was so about to not follow-up on the order, but the crew guaranteed to bring me my pasta in 6 minutes, so oh wells.

My pasta - Al Frutti Di Mare, which was a toss of seafood, comprising of squids, prawns, clams & scallops, was served piping hot and in under 10 minutes. But due to the time constraint, I didn't get around finishing the dish. The tomato base was pretty good, though the sphagetti was a little on the wet side but still tangy. The seafood portion was just sufficient, which was a good thing as I really did not wish to waste food. This pasta is worth a try, so definitely a possibility for me to KIV it.

My other colleague had a Fettucine Julienne, from which I stole a small slice of beef. Nicely done, coz the beef was juicy, easy to chew and definitely not tough. My colleague gave her thumbs-up, though the remaining penne pasta was a little too much for her to finish up.

Due to all these minor hick-ups in serving time etc, my table was a little not on the happy side, coz we do not have the luxury of a long lunch hour (45 minutes is definitely too short for a good lunch at a good restaurant). Well, for compensations (of course with us trying very much to make the kitchen hurry up), we got free rounds of orange punch and an additional platter of fruits. At the end of the day, F&B is still all about customers' satisfaction.

Smoochies is somewhat a restaurant, designed for almost-fine dining, thus I guess, the service crew must have been really surprised to see our table being so hurried over lunch. In some sense, maybe they should also tweek the place a little to make it a little more friendly to the lunch crowd, otherwise it will be difficult for ppl with a tight lunch hour to have a good lunch (around the Alexandra-PSA area). Personally I think that this place will make a better dinner place, whereby one can just enjoy his meal and maybe catch the soccer on the big screen.

In general, my colleagues have pretty good impressions of the food here and there lies a possibility of us revisiting any time soon. =)

I got to know of this restaurant via HungryGoWhere. Since the reviews were generally quite good, I thought I will try out this place to celebrate my husband's birthday.

The restaurant's deco was quite nice and cosy. Only one side was open so wasn't sure how the entire interior will look like. Nevertheless, I tot the ambience wasn't too bad. I told my husband that the reviews on a few of the items were quite good. Finally we decided on the Fried Seafood Platter, Baked Pork Ribs (House Speciality) and Al Frutti Di Mare (Seafood Pasta).

The Fried Seafood Platter consist of Prawn, Soft Shell Crab, Fish and Squid. I started off with the fish which wasn't too bad. The soft shell crab was a little hard, think it was fried for too long. Before I could taste the next one, my husband asked me to check out his prawn. And to my surprise, the prawn was raw (transparent with black veins). And let me repeat, it's raw. How can they have fried the batter, but the prawn was still raw? I called the waiter and upon looking at the raw prawn, I think he felt embarressed and took back the plate.

After 10 mins, the same waiter brought me a fresh new plate. Although he highlighted to me that they have prepared a fresh portion for us, I did not have much appetite for it anymore. Moreover, I think the cook must have been worried that it will be uncooked again, so this time round, the entire plate of fried food looks brownish(fried for too long). We did not finish it up as we wanted to save some space for our mains.

The ribs and pasta looked lovely. We tried out the ribs and it was tender and the mashed potato was nice. The pasta was quite tasty as well with generous serving of seafood.

However, we were smacked again while eating the pasta. My husband cut the scallop into half and I noticed that it looks wierd. I picked up a piece and realised that it is transparent. I tried to tear it apart into smaller piece and it does not pull off well. Again, we have uncooked food on our plate. For this to happen once is bad enough, but Twice???

I called for the waiter again. The same waiter saw me waved at him and I think he looked worried. He came over and bent down with a long 'Yeessss'. I showed him the scallop and he shook his head. Our food was once again brought back to the kitchen.

10 mins later, the waiter apologised again and served us a new plate of pasta. By this time, we could not finish the pasta. Actually, I wanted to try out the Warm Chocolate Lava cake, but put off the idea.

I think we were unlucky to encounter this as I think the rest of the tables did not have any problem with their food. It was really disappointing since the reviews were actually quite good. Really disappointed to spoil our birthday celebration.