White Dog Café (VivoCity)

I have tried two cakes here-The rasyberry chocolate and Chocolate fudge.

The rasyberry chocolate
It has a tint of rasyberry flavour but it's pretty mild. The chocolate mousse is pretty smooth and rich but the sponge is dry! I threw the chocolate sponge away.

Chocolate fudge
I always thought that chocolate fudge should be fudgy and rich. But this chocolate fudge is conpletely different from it's name. The cake is ultra dry and it's one of the worst cake that i have ever tried. When i try to poke my fork to eat the cake, it collapses and crumbles. I think it might be due to the long standing in the display shelf.

The two cakes are a disappointment and i think i would never ever try it again. For food wise, i have not try it.

So far, most of the reviews I have read are quite negative and I suspect this is because pple are gg there for the cheap set lunches rather than their ala carte which I suppose is better.

Anyway, been to White Dog Cafe like on 3 different occasions already and on the latest trip there, I was with a party of 12 so I had the opportunity to see quite a wide spread from the menu.

As it was a Saturday and we had not made reservations, we had to put our names on the waiting list for bout half an hour before we could get seats which was okie i guess considering that me and two others foresaw such a scenerio and went there half an hour in advance. After we got our seats, water was not served until I asked for it and when the waitress came with the carafe of water, she asked us to pour it into glasses ourself. -1 for service there...

So here's a breakdown of what we ate:

1) White Dog Platter (6.5/10)
Eaten this before and I found it ok. There's like wedges, drumlets, calamari, springrolls and prawn tempura for 3 pax. But this time, they gave us short of 1 tempura so I din get to eat mine. zzz... And the $20 price tag attached is a bit on the high side for my liking.

2)Texan Beef Ribs (9/10)
I have eaten this before and I have to say it rox my socks. Tons better than the beef ribs you get from Brewerks. The beef is marbled and your knife cuts it like butter. The accompanying sauce complements it well and i love the melt in your mouth feeling I get eating it. Absolute must-try. But I think a few pple are disillusioned with its pricetag of 27 bucks but its well worth the money. Trust me!

3) Pacific Dory (7.5/10)
I think dory is like the most generic kind of fish you can ever get and it usually tastes more or less the same where you buy it. For White Dog, they fry it Fish and Co style and serve with a tomato sauce topping. It tastes pleasant and fresh.

4) Pork Knuckle (7/10)
I'm a sucker for pork knuckles so when I got this chance, I took it as I have seen other pple order this before on several occasions and found the serving to be very reasonable for 20 bucks. Anyway, I was slightly disappointed that despite the reasonable portion and lovely accompanying sauce(a saucer of chili and a saucer of brown sauce, presumably used for mash potatoes too), I got a bit bored eating it after a while. Hence, I suggest that this be shared btw 2 pple or more and for pple who don't mind the fat.

5) Mango Chicken Delight (7.5/10)
Tastes fine. A deep fried cutlet of chicken breast stuffed with mango. The chicken is pretty succulent for a breast meat but when White Dog first opened, they used the chicken thigh which made this dish even more tender and palatable. I really hope they didn't do this to save cost at the expense of consumer's welfare.But still, applause for making chicken breast taste wonderful.

6) Hawaiian Pork Chop (7.5/10)
Not bad. This pork is as tender as chicken thought the meat is lean. Compared to cafe cartel and new york new york, this is a better variation.

7) Baked Rice (Either Seafood or Pork Chop) (4.5/10)
This is the reason some of my frens found White Dog terrible. Tastes like what you would get from a fast food outlet like Pasta Mania. White Dog should just cancel this from their menu entirely and focus on their meats and seafood menu.

8) Chicken Fillet (7/10)
If mango chicken was a chicken cutlet, this would be the chicken chop. As the name suggests, it is a fillet of chicken in black pepper sauce topped with basil leaves I think. Quite nice though I wouldn't order it as there are nicer things to try here. Personal preference though.

9) Crispy Salmon with Roe (?/10)
This was more or less the only dish I didn't try that night as it belonged to someone I didn't know and I was too shy to ask to try it haha. But I have a picture below. Looks fine and I don't think you can go wrong with pan fried salmon.

Ect) Some of the stuff I tried before which I recommend are the ala carte soups such as lobster bisque, clam chowder and mushroom soup. They are pretty good. The steaks here are also comparable to those from mid-high end steak houses. The pasta here is usually nice for the first 5 minutes before the fats in the cream sauce(eg creamy Salmon pasta) starts to coagulate. Beer is also cheap here($3.50 for a bottle of tiger).

In conclusion, stay away from set lunches and stick to their nice ala cartes!

I wish I didn't have to say this, but I had an unpleasant experience at White Dog Cafe. Both food and service were of sub-standard, and it was really a disappointment.

Let me justify my opinion.

A couple of friends and I ordered set lunches (main course, soup and tea/coffee) - priced at $18.90. The soup of the day was reminiscent of Maggi instant noodles soup base - probably laced with copious amounts of MSG and what-not. I ordered pasta with chicken pieces, and it was just average - nothing to boast about. For the price that I'm paying, I expected the food to be of a higher standard, but it was clearly not.

As for the service, what's more frustrating when the service crew gets the order mixed up? My friend was served a pasta dish of a lower value than what she ordered, and the service crew did not even bother to exchange or compensate for the difference. Only when my friend started to fuss about the mistake, did the manager come along to resolve the matter. By that time, the damage has already been done.

Food and service aside, the ambience is fairly good; though I wonder why jazz music is being played in the afternoon.