Majestic Restaurant

                

Saturday morning found us waking up really early (9 a.m!) to go to Tekka market. We knew we were early because we didn't feel stressed about making a detour to the cooked food section for a spot of breakfast. But not early enough to squeeze in some yoga before rushing out again to pick Ivan up from a nearby bus stop before we hit town.

Chinatown that is. Where the Palitalia trade office sits smack opposite the Cantonment Police Station, where husband and the men pondered their alcoholic booty and I caught up with Jo on important matters like oh, online shopping. Gary the owner of Palitalia was very sweet, his composure never wavered in the face of my inane remarks like "so pretty, this bottle (Tosti Asti) looks like Babycham" and "OMG ratafia, that's what genteel old ladies in literature books drink!"

There was a demi-bottle of ratafia with its lower half replaced by a jar of ratafia-soaked cherries, and another similarly packaged bottle this time of limoncello and babas shaped like toadstools. Jo thinks we should organise a ladies tea with these, and other old-worldly refreshments, I quite agree.

For lunch we decided on the Majestic Restaurant which was in a parallel side street behind. It wasn't crowded and we were seated quickly in a nice corner booth.

               

Osmanthus something tea, the colour mirrored pale gold, however the fragrance was a tad too suble but it was refreshing enough.

               

The food, hmm, let's just say we wondered what the hype was all about. The Majestic Appetiser plate ($36) was a quartet of mini sharksfin omelet lettuce wraps, braised goose, deep fried softshell crab and crunchy wasabi prawns. All very nondescript, nothing we have not tasted at countless numbers of Chinese restaurants in town, surprisingly and tellingly, the dish we liked best was the wasabi prawns, the wasabi here was as I like it, i.e. very subtle. The waitress warned us against ordering their deep fried chicken with wasabi but we went ahead anyway and found that again, they do deep frying and wasabi sauce very well. Y a w n, maybe she was right.

In between we drank soups- a beancurd broth with seafood had a savoury soya milk taste which was not unpleasant but the token fried scallop was rubbery and bland, a bamboo pith soup was again, inoffensive but not in the least stellar. I forgot to ask Ivan if his hot and sour soup was good though. There was also beancurd braised with garlic, it was so plain, so dull, so catatonic I wondered why they even bothered.

               

The obligatory carbo dish of fried meesua was well fried, i.e. not greasy, but not so well fried that wok hei was allowed to seep in. Needless to say, we were not tempted to order desserts.

Looking around, the Saturday lunchtime crowd was mostly of the low-key, well-off middle-age to elderly demographic. My friend ttc, when I was talking to him about this at supper much later, informed me that right next door is an old-school millionaires club where bankers and tycoons gather to play mahjong. Perhaps that is it, this is like the kitchen of a rich man, he wants fine food, but nothing too fancy. His scions and their hip friends come to dine, these younger set are certainly in a position to generate the buzz to make us ordinary folks curious to try it in the first place. Even though other local bloggers have already said not very complimentary things about the place, we still invest more faith in these trend setters and taste makers. Fools that we are, oh well, live and learn, live and learn.

3 August 06: Ivan finally blogged about this meal.

Comments

[Skinny Epicurean]

Dang, I made reservations for dinner next week. I am inclined to change venue after reading your review but do you think they deserve a chance? The other place I was considering is Taste Paradise. Appreciate your views :)

[umami]

Hi Skinny Epicurean, I would weigh in on Taste Paradise because they don't seem as complacent. You can read about my experience, and that of a friend to whom I recommended the place to:

http://umami.typepad.com/umami/2006/05/taste_paradise.html

http://t-w-rose.livejournal.com/172966.html?mode=reply

[Ivan Ng]

Yah. Taste Paradise better:

http://food.recentrunes.com/?p=1084

But maybe it was an off-day for Majestic.