PY and I have done something that probably few, very few, very very few, Singaporeans have done.  We've actually walked all the way from Orchard MRT to Tanglin Mall, and then crossed to the British Council, left into Dempsey road and all the way in to the Dempsey cluster.  It took a grand total of 30mins and probably 500 calories.  That was done about a year ago.  On that 'roadtrip' I noticed we passed by a quaint looking white church building opposite the famous Au Petit Salut.  I didn't pay much heed to this until I discovered a few months that this was the newly established White Rabbit restaurant.

Owned by Wee Teng Wen, son of Wee Cho Yaw, UOB Chairman, and whose kitchen is helmed by Daniel Sia (who started out in Delifrance and then went on to do stints with luminaries such as Michel Roux and Marco Pierre White), The White Rabbit serves contemporary European fare.  Unsurprisingly, early reviews were not exactly savoury, with the bugbear being the service.  A foodie friend of mine who went had to even put up with a rude waitress; it seemed that service suffered particularly during busy periods.  But thankfully, there was less complaint about the food, the worst review being 'ordinary'.  So why did PY and I make special time from our precious saturday to make our way to Dempsey (thankfully we took a cab this time) when I could have gone to Lavender where I know at least the wonton meet will be good?

Well, its because TWR is one of the few locations for our London-themed wedding celebration lunch.  Yes, we decide to do away with hotel packages with their useless wedding favours and obiang invitation cards.  Plus, TWR seemed an ideal place for our theme!

But then, of course, we were concerned about the quality of the food and the standard of the service too since our guest list was going to be pretty small and exclusive.  But what I couldn't fault was the location, the stained glass as seen above was a nice big plus.

The wooden facades, the more casual design of the furniture and the spaciousness was also in line with what we envisaged.  But then for us, the killer punch could only come from two things: price and food.  So from their brunch menu:

First up we had their chopped cobb salad with cherry tomatoes, quail eggs, red onions, avocado, Roquefort cheese and red wine vinegar dressing.  Cobb lettuce is a type of lettuce similar to butterhead and also known as Boston lettuce.  Personally, a good salad needs only two things: freshness and composition.  Any salad which has these two components done right would be delicious even without dressing.  I like the combination of avocado and blue cheese in this classic salad.  The tomatoes were also sweet and juicy.  I also appreciated the fact that the vegetables were free of water before being mixed in.  I would have preferred the dressing to be a little more tangy though.

For mains, PY had another classic dish, the eggs benedict with smoked salmon.  The perfectly poached eggs on top of fish and muffins.  I thought the poaching was excellent, with compliments to the culinary skills of the chef.  I did my share of egg poaching in London and the two key variables of time and water temperature had to be exact.  What I thought could be much improved was the hollandaise sauce (one of the five key sauces of French haute cuisine, and probably the most finicky, consisting of butter, lemon juice or vinegar and egg yolks).  It was neither rich and buttery, smooth and creamy or tangy.  The sauce didn't seem to have emulsified properly.  I also thought maybe a dash of cayenne pepper or sea salt might have added life to the sauce.

Something better I had was the Main lobster cheese souffle.  On the menu, it said that it was twice baked, though the reason why escapes me.  But what was great was the texture and fluffiness of the souffle which itself hid bites of lobster meat and a quail egg.  Another thing was the wondrous brown lobster bisque surrounding it that had all the flavours of the sea as its aroma wafts through your nostrils.  What I need to harp on is the price, at $28++, the souffle, no bigger than the biggest muffin from my neighbourhood bakery, was pricey.  I wouldn't have minded if maine lobster were not used, just fresh lobster.  Hell, 19 out of 20 persons on the street wouldn't even have heard of Maine.

Next up:

Something you have to eat at least once and something you must order in any good restaurant : a Baked Alaska.  This is not something you can easily recreate in the home kitchen.  It is essentially an large scoop of ice-cream surrounded by a case of sponge and meringue.  The whole thing is baked in an extremely hot oven to brown and harden the meringue.  The meringue, a bad heat conductor,  keeps out the heat and the sponge preserves the integrity of the meringue.  This dish was executed perfectly at TWR so kudos to the chef once again!  Why it is called an Alaska is as mysterious and contentious as why Roti John and called Roti John...

Finally, we end off with a bit of bacteria and spoilt milk:

Nothing adds a bit of class to an establishment than a food trolley.  I remember Petrus, which Marcus Wareing helms in Knightsbridge, which had not only a cheese trolley but also a grand chocolate truffle trolley with golden curls and trimmings.  So I couldn't resist shelling out another $15++ to have a go at the cheese:

There was brie, roquefort, ossau iraty, le nantoise loire sache, saint marne and a tommette cheese among others; each with its own flavours and textures.  I also enjoyed the "jam cubes" which went pretty well with most of the cheeses there.  What I found disappointing though was the limitedness of the selection of cheeses.  I thought that the range of textures, fermentations and milk type could have been expanded.  I personally thought it was a mistake to restrict the trolley to just french cheeses.  Throwing in some spanish iberico, smoked sheep feta or a stinky bishop would have made the cheese trolley more fun.  And instead of pretentious extremely-hard-to-read-font cheese labels, I would have preferred a clear sign telling me the name, type, origin and general taste of a particular cheese.  

So that brings us to the end of the culinary adventure to TWR.  I am glad to report that I had good service with wait staff who were polite and attentive.  The food arrived in good time too and the bread selection was good.  PY and I spent a nett total of $114 for everything above with no drinks.  I thought it was pricey for a saturday brunch but the atmosphere was pretty good, not too crowded and spacious. Well, perhaps we might be back on 17 july next year for the Big One, until then!