Photos by Swee
Tucked in a quaint shophouse in a quiet corner of Boon Tat Street, Vanilla Bar & Cafe serves Japanese fusion comfort food, premium coffee and breakfast all day. Food critic Swee of Make Your Calories Count checks out the cafe near Raffles Place.
Its Pulled Pork Sandwich was a classic done well. It was toasted perfectly with tender pork shreds tossed in BBQ sauce. We enjoyed the savouriness of the dish, and this was simple, comfort food.
We were wow-ed by its presentation as we weren't quite expecting a half-sized lobster with shell, and the crustacean came fresh, topped with mentaiko sauce. What could be improved on would be the linguine though, as it was pretty bland and dry.
I'm usually skeptical about steaks, especially when this paled in comparison with the Boston Lobster that was first served. Slicing this medium-done steak up changed my impression though, despite it being pretty thin. What managed to impress was the accompanying Shiraz reduction, that came with a slight tang and right salinity to complement the steak perfectly.
A tad too thick, this seemed more like home-made luncheon meat cut into strips then pan-fried instead of the thinly sliced fries we were expecting. And it was certainly overpriced for such a dish!
I'm a fan of mentaiko and I could do with a more generous serving of that. It had too much of a 'fishy' taste to it, putting us off at the first mouthful.