The White Rabbit

A great sunday brunching experience. Very friendly staff knowing how to make you welcome even with young children. Their fish and chips was exquisite, with a lovely thin, light but crispy batter. For adults, the 'salade de printemps' was a lovely starter, the aspargus, mango and  truffle (generously served) flavours combination worked surprisingly well. The real delight was the salmon blinis though. While the plate at first didn't look particularly appealing with all the food stacked up together, the vodka cream and russian pancakes really took the scrumbled eggs and (a bit too salty) salmon to another level. I will definetely come back again. For a less eye-watering bill, one should resist the temptation of bellini cocktails and champagne.

Had the set lunch here. The camembert cheese parcels tasted alright, the poached seabass was not bad, and the sticky toffee pudding was OK as well. Nothing spectacular. Overall food quality is just average for the price. But service was really good. It was raining and the waiter walked us to our car with an umbrella. The restaurant was also really quiet and peaceful.

Held a private event at White Rabbit some time back. Was assured the outdoor area was going to be cordoned off for the afternoon, but alas, we had random people strolling in and out, even had families taking their kids to play by the swing. 

The food portions were tiny, the canapes ran out within 2 servings, it was a real embarrassment trying to explain to guests why the wagyu beef had run out. 

The food was only so-so for the $75++/person that I was paying for and the service was ABYSMAL. 

Sunday brunch again, very excited as many people had recommended me this brunch. I must say my booking was a bit disorganized and a couple more friends showed up... of course this was not that fun for the service that after changing us to a bigger table gave us an icy treatment.

Food was good, we were all so hungry that had like 2 dishes each, I had the benedict's and some waffles as 'dessert' with a glass of bubbly, as I cannot call it brunch with no champagne!

Service kept going bad - even we were expending! - and the big moment came with the bill... we were 3 couples and 3 singles, we wanted to pay in 6 credit cards and they refused in a very rude way, after counting the cash -that none of us had- one of my friend paid with one card and even thought the sourness in the staff face was not normal... a real shame because is such an amazing place but i don't want to expend any brunch served by unhappy people

Not knowing what to look for, I went for the degustation set. Variety not fantastic. Would not recommend if you do not have the UOB discount cos not value for money. It is a great place if you have a big crowd and want to have a noisy celebration. Their black truffles do not have any aroma at all which is disappointing. Foie gras is however prepared in a unique way with poached eggs. That is a relief. 

Would not return myself unless invited to entertain.

Not for fine-diners. Take your UOB card with you.

For more photos, please visit Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow.

Every Christmas eve, Chiobu and I gather a few friends to dine at a chichi restaurant to celebrate another year of friendship. When White Rabbit invited us to check out their festive menus starting from an affordable $48 (available throughout December, including Xmas Menu and New Year Menu), we jumped at the opportunity faster than 31 year-old Edison Chen moving on to his next 16 year-old school-uniformed girl.

We were knocked over by the gorgeous decor, an old church converted into a restaurant, retaining some of the ecclesial decor, such as the stained glass church windows and the pulpit is changed into a bar counter. There is a residue grandeur and reverence to the restaurant. Chiobu observed that unlike other chichi restaurants in Singapore which are usually small and exclusive, White Rabbit is more Gordon Ramsey style, huge open space. However, the booth chairs ensure a degree of privacy. This place is suitable for a group of friends or for lovers. The ambience was electrifying. I said to Chiobu, “Come on! This is such an amazing place to celebrate Christmas! Dining on Christmas in a church! And we can get to make new friends here in such an open space.”

Entree: seared scallop; foie gras parfait on brioche; Iberico ham & fig.

I started with the fresh fig wrapped in ham with parmesan cheese and rocket. I said to Chiobu, “It’s a very smart combination lor.” Very smart because it had a bit of everything, sweet fig, salty ham, bitter rocket, and milky cheese. But I wondered if it was too glib and polished.

The scallop was seasoned in a very Chinese style, and was overly salty. So the right way to eat is to wrap the scallop with the salad (which had chrysanthemum petals), so the salad could lessen the salt and provide a textual contrast.

I tried the foie gras parfait on brioche last because I tried it at other restaurants before and at other restaurants, I thought it was disappointing, such a waste of foie gras. But Chiobu said, “WOW, you must try it!!! It’s so good!!” I rolled my eyes…how good can it be? OMG. It was happiness! Love at first bite! It didn’t have the iron-y taste of liver, it wasn’t smelly, it was dense and extremely smooth and creamy, which complimented the brioche–one of the best brioches I’ve tasted. The brioche tasted almost like a sweet but soft Khong Guan square cracker. This was the elusive WOW-ness I was searching for!

Second Course: Champagne Poached Seabass in Mushroom Broth. Chiobu said that this could have been perfect if the fish was fresher and less fishy. But I LOVE IT. This was again a very Chinese dish, almost like Chinese steamed fish at wedding dinner. There was a slight bitter aftertaste coming from the champagne and the broth had a herbal tinge, adding dimensions to the sweetness of the fish. My only complaint was why so little broth??? Chiobu and I can drink a whole pot of it! So yummy! We used the complimentary bread to soak up all the soup. Not a drop left on the bowl, drier than the Sahara desert. I wanted to lick my bowl.

Roulade of Turkey with stuffing of chestnut, smoked oyster, cornbread, sage and cranberry sauce. You’d think that the detailed description would include–I tasted this in the mix–bacon, which provided a slight saltiness.

Chichi restaurants don’t serve food hot because they don’t want to get into law suits of scalding the customers. Because the food isn’t hot, there usually isn’t fragrance coming from the food. Let it be said that this is the FIRST time that there was such a great scent. I almost forgot to take photo first!

Chiobu dislikes main courses to be sweet. Looking at the ingredients, you can tell they are most sweet: chestnut, cornbread, turkey, cranberry sauce. But after a while, she said, “The chestnut is very soft!”

I replied, “Mine is ok only. And my stuffing is a bit hard and dry.”

“No! Mine is so soft and moist!” So perhaps she got the good parts of the stuffing.

I ate a roulade–just meat rolled up–recently at Magma, and my preconceived notion was, “This is going to suck. Roulades are hard.” But when I sank my teeth into it, I felt like I was in one of those commercials: slow motion, zoom in on the s*** way a s*** woman bites into the food. I turned to Chiobu and said, “OMG, the turkey defies physics! It’s bouncy, like a grape, but when your teeth break into the meat, the meat is completely tender. We have to come here for Christmas!”

For the second time, even though the sticky date pudding wasn’t hot, there was such a delicious baked fragrance coming from it. Naturally, covered in caramel sauce, this dessert was saccharine sweet. Chiobu exclaimed, “OMG!!! This has to be the best dessert ever!”

“What do you mean ‘ever’? Like in the entire Singapore?”

“YES!!”

I do think the dessert was very, very outstanding. A scoop of the extremely rich vanilla ice cream with a bit of pudding and a piece of berry – quite divine. But Judging on its taste alone, it gets 9.5/10. Judging on creativity, the Dining Room @ Tanjong Beach Club wins.

Chiobu said that she felt so snug and intimate with the service. It felt like she was living in Singapore again, not China! Haha. The service was indeed top-notched. They always serve the ladies first. When Chiobu had tea, the waitress moved the milk jug so that the handle faced Chiobu, easier for her to take. Guests at other tables were in the bathroom, and the servers covered the food for them. Very considerate and efficient and polite.

Chiobu and I seldom agree on food. This is one of the rare instances that we actually like the place. I think we found our restaurant to host Xmas Eve dinner! (PS: if you need a copy of the Festive Menu and pricing, you can email me and I’ll forward you the Menu.)

When it comes to food, I'm not picky. Weetbix with coffee is a regular lunch item. And on the day that I tried White Rabbit, it was my first meal of the day. Having woken up at 9am and only stepping into the converted cathedral that housed the restaurant at 2pm, I was famished. Hunger tends to make any food taste better than it really does. Even so, White Rabbit was a let-down.

I had Eggs Benedict and my wife had the Mac and Cheese. Both portions were so small, a kid's meal at any other restaurant would seem indulgent. My egg yolks were so runny that the meal was just an attempt to pick up as much of the yellow flowing stuff as I could with my fork. Suffice to say the plate would be able to better review the eggs for you. The Mac and Cheese was normal and nothing more. Sure the truffle sauce was good but there was a mere drizzlingling (basically a mini version of a drizzle) of it and honestly, how do you get bad tasting truffle sauce? Even the NTUC brand of truffle oil make my meals taste like a gourmet treat.

So portion size = fail and quality = fail. Price? Well for two eggs (sans eggyolk), two small pieces of bread, two slices of salmon and a spoonful of salad, I paid $28. One word: fail.

I'm never going back, even if someone offers to treat me. His money and my appetite would be better fulfilled anywhere else.

This is the 2nd time I've been to TWR. The first was dinner with friends, though it was about 2 years ago, I could still remember the good service and good beef steak. 

Having read recent reviews about the quality of the service in HGW here, it gave me doubts about going there again, but I wanted to find out about the brekky. And I'm glad I was there.

Time: 11am, on time for my reservation today. Had a look around, it wasn't crowded, but quite a handful of tables were already taken.

Service: I think they are still as good. The only man with the pink tie was really attentive, and the other service staffs on the floor was always ready to response to a wave of hand. As the temperature was really chilly from the rainy morning, we asked for warm water instead of cold. They gave us with a smile.

Me: Eggs benedict.I had eggs benedict from a few places like Prive, Hatched, Clifford @ Fullerton Hotel. The benedicts here are good. The first taste impression really made the mark. The muffins were buttered with some tasty spread, and with the honey baked ham, poached egg and hollandise sauce, the flavor really mixed well together harmoniously in my mouth. 

Her: Belgium WafflesCrispy waffles all the way till the last bite. I wonder how they do that? The waffles were spread with fresh fruits like strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and physalis. There are also whip creams and some maple syrup for taste. Crunchy with sweet taste, she like it.

Her sis: English "Fry Up"Two sunny sides, and strips of crispy streaky bacons and abundance of salad. On the side was toasted bread size of potato chips... interested presentation. She asked for salt and pepper, and they return with crystalised salt and ground black pepper. Hmm... crystalised salt, wasn't that salty although they looked flaky big. Wonderfully done up, she said.

Ambience: Feels like a place for wealthy man, that's why I seldom go there. I wore polo-tee, berms and fit-flop. The man with the pink tie (I think he's the floor manager) treated me like any fine gentleman. A bit chilly from the start because we were hungry I guess.

Overall: I think if you're thinking of breakfast, you might want to try this place. Neat!

Short story:

- Quaint atmosphere

- Abysmal service

- Unspectacular food (for the price point)

- A sad-faced wallet

Long story.



Arrival at the restaurant:

I went to White Rabbit for the first time with a group of 8 other friends (one of them was celebrating her birthday) and thought that the place as wonderfully quaint, and I didn't mind it being rather dim, adding rather than detracting from the atmosphere. (To be honest, it is a very good place for couples on blind dates.)

When half of our group first arrived, we were brought to our table, which was the largest one in the restaurant to accommodate our group of 9 - a large table on a slightly raised platform that made us feel like knights of the rectangular table in a castle. Quite nice.

However, no one came to at least offer us any water, so we sat there for another 15 minutes waiting for the other half of the group to arrive. When I asked for water, the wait staff agreed to it somewhat sulkily.

Getting our orders taken:

When everyone was present, menus were doled out, as well as bread (which had 2 options of onion and plain; it's always nice to have options). The boyfriend wanted olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip his bread in, requested for it, but it never arrived.

In between receiving the menu and actually making our order, we had tried several times to catch the eye of various wait staff - but they studiously avoided eye contact and went on their merry way. They would walk right past our table and we'd call out, Excuse me!, but they'd just walk right by as if they had massive earplugs on. This happened several times.

Anyway, we made our orders, and waited.

Starters:

Wait time for our starters was about 20minutes. The portions that arrived were on the smaller side. I had the Chicken and Duck Liver Parfait ($19++), which was unmemorable. The boyfriend had the Escargot Ravioli ($19++), which was considerably more delicious than mine - it's worth a try if you're there.

Mains:

We waited probably another 20 mins for the mains. When they arrived, the server did not attempt to clear our starter plates, and waited for me to pass it to him. This inability to clear our starter plates continued around the table for those of us who had starters. When I merely moved my plate to the spot beside me so that he could put my main on the table, he laid down the main dish and didn't bother to remove the empty starter plate. Even after laying down all the mains he had on hand, he did not come back around to remove our starter plates, and we had to call for another waitress to remove them. There were no apologies for this basic lack of service.

I had the Scallop Linguine ($28++), the boyfriend had The White Rabbit Mac and Cheese ($28++). The truffle oil in the mac and cheese was a nice touch, but it was quite a heavy dish and was personally not something I'd order again. My scallop linguine was pretty bland and dry; the 4 scallops were done well and were the only tasty thing on the dish but I didn't finish the linguine. I should have agreed to the ground pepper the server offered.

My friend had requested his starter of steak tartare to be served along with the mains but his came 15 minutes later than everyone else's mains. Guess someone in the kitchen fobbed up the orders.

To be honest, while the mains were nothing to rave about, what got on our collective nerves was the consistent lack of service.. and if there was service, it was crappy.

We had to constantly, constantly request for our water glasses to be filled up. It's annoying when you need a drink of water and your glass is empty. It's not as if we drank an entire ocean's worth of water, or that we needed our glasses filled every 2 minutes, so this especially annoyed me because I consider this a very baseline standard for service (especially at a place like White Rabbit).

The whiskey my friend had ordered was served in a huge glass - larger than our water glasses - and even the server couldn't tell if it was empty or if there was whiskey in it, and took away the glass before asking my friend if he was done with it. (He wasn't, and he had to ask for his glass with the whiskey back.)

Because there were 9 of us, and the servers were doing such a great job of ignoring our table and a terrible job of topping up our water glasses, as a server was (finally) topping up our water glasses, a friend requested for a jug to be left at the table so that we could do it on our own. The server declined our request, and then proceeded to fill the next person's glass to the absolute brim (It happened to be my boyfriend's glass, and he had to gingerly pick it up to avoid spilling the water). It was the server equivalent of a 'You want water? Take that!'... or I could be wrong and he really just got nervous and mis-poured that glass.

As it was a friend's birthday, we had a cheese cake that we had originally intended to eat as dessert after dinner, but due to the generally unwelcoming service we decided to haul ourselves over to House instead. When we asked for the bill, we asked for the cake to take along with us as well.

Payment for the bill came and went, and our cake still hadn't arrived. When we managed to flag down a server, he asked, "Oh, your cake? Do you want it cut into slices?" My friend firmly said No, as that was not what he had requested for in the first place, and had to go to the counter himself and retrieve the entire cake. Going to the counter himself, he got the cake almost immediately. If you need something done, do it yourself, right? Why rely on help that doesn't help?

An experience with service I had that was unrelated to the dining experience:

I had accidentally left my ring in the ladies' washroom, and when I went back 10 minutes later it was gone. When I approached a server telling her about it, her first reaction was to tell me that many people have gone in and out of the washroom already, which annoyed me because she did not even try or even put on an appearance in helping me out. I had to ask her if she could at least just ask her colleagues because, who knows, one of them might have picked it up? None of them did, but the point was a service that was inactive as opposed to being proactive.

Conclusion: I will never go back to The White Rabbit. The food was blah for the prices we paid (even if it were cheaper, I still would not have thought the food delicious), and the service was an abomination. All this makes me feel that the restaurant is overly pretentious - it looks pretty but is severely lacking in substance. I have read some reviews where the food and/or service was stellar, but last evening's experience was such a turn-off that I would recommend friends against ever visiting the restaurant.

I ate at the white rabbit restaurant. It had great Ambience , as it was in an old church. The service was good as waiters come to your table quite regularly, topping up your water and giving you various assortment of bread free flow. The food had good taste and texture, well prepared. The mojhito's were very nice and refreshing. The staff were polite and friendly and clean toilets, they were even environmentally friendly, observing 1 hour of earth day by switching the lights to minimal.

Here comes the downside of the place. The bill was like $50 per person. The size of the servings were small, "le-petite" literally. The waiting time for the food was like nearly more then an hour. I would have given it a bit better in ratings but what was the real spoiler here was when the crowd built up, and when we were finished with our meals the waiter abruptly tried to chase us to the bar, not letting us continue our conversation on the table. Like "HELLO" we are like paying $2 hundred plus for the whole meal with my friends, being an up class joint, i expected better manners from the waiter. That was bad and spoilt my overall rating of the place. Other then that a good place to just try once but if you don't have lots of money to spend and a big appetite, don't visit this joint too often.