Madam Butterfly

It was a strange day last Friday. I met the missus in town and we wondered along Duxton Hill. Living in Singapore for so many years, I have to say I have never been to Duxton Hill before and since my wife officially became the Mrs Food-critic, she now knows where are the "cool," places to go whereas me on the other hand have absolutely no idea where to go and what to eat.

So we wandered and darn that Broth looked cool but it was full for the night. The other restaurants just looked to either serve bad food, bar food, or just branded food. I thought of Ember and tried making a call, but alas, it was booked for the night as well. We were walking and finally found OSO that just looked also too sexy and it was full. I was down in the dumps and the wife was complaining about her feet being painful because of her heels. I was about to commit blog suicide when I saw the strange red building called The Red Dot Traffic Building. Honestly, I was looking for any place to just sit down and have a meal with the wife. ANYWHERE! And we stumbled into Le Papillon! And it was empty!

Straddled in the midst of bars and smoke, I was surprised to see an empty restaurant. We glanced at the menu and in 10 seconds I said lets go in. A very typical Singaporean like I am would not ordinarily walk into an empty restaurant but I was hungry. Okay, I didn't know it was empty until I walked in. But we were still surprised. We ordered some appetizers, my wife ordered the very sexily bowled mushroom soup which she thought had peanut butter, and I think I ordered and probably by coincidence discovered the best Cesar Salad I have had in Singapore. So good surprise so far.

A bigger surprise would be Mr. and Mrs. Tasty Bites was just next door! They were chillin out at Skin (like any cool advertising exec would I discovered), so in the midst of discovering Liverpool having to playing Barcelona in the Champions League (which Pool will win by the way), and waiting for my main course, in came the boss man himself TASTY BITES! My wife joked that we normally like to book the whole restaurant to have dinner by ourselves wasn't taken too kindly by the staff, which later explained to us that they were surprised that the restaurant was filled except that there were several last minute cancellations. So anyways, we were talking and admiring the cutlery when the main course came. My wife ordered a fish dish, I can't remember what it was and I ordered the seafood platter which contained 2 sexy looking huge asparagus lined up parallel to one another with shrimp, scallop,fish in the middle, and a side of what I thought to be mashed pumpkin. I have to say my dish was delish. It was good. It was clean, it was fresh and it was not enough (my gripe with most French cuisine). My wife loved her grilled fish and it actually looked good.

For dessert, we ordered the orange souffle which needed 30 mins to make, was good. A souffle is difficult to make but an orange souffle that had to be soft on the inside and gentle at the exterior was tough. But I thought the orange ice cream that accompanied the souffle was a slight overkill. My wife ordered her favorite melting chocolate chocolate cake. The type that has melted chocolate inside the small chocolate cake. It was decent. Not enough melted chocolate I thought.

The damage was $170 SGD and I thought it wasn't that bad. It was a great discovery by just walking around but I would probably not go back there again. If you see the hyperlink for Le Papillon, I agree with a certain Wong Ah Yoke that there's still some ways to go to improve the menu but it is still worth a try.