Stephen, Lily & Zoe: December 2009

When I called back in Jan 09 to make a booking, there wasn't any dates available. I was told the next available date was in mid July. That's 7 months of waiting?? Even then the weekends were all taken up! I was telling quietly to myself, this business is never going to go out of business, unless they themselves stuff it up.

This is echoed by the long list of awards they have won:-

3 chef's hat from Good Food Guide
Restaurant of the Year
Best Fine Dining, and
most important of all, 5th place in the world's top 50 restaurant.

We threw a few preferred dates to the floor manager and we finally got the date that we wanted, i.e. November and we were the 7th to place a booking. GFC?? what GFC?? We were quite ecstatic and at the same time very unsure if we will still be interested in it after 11 months! We sought of forgotten about it after a month and had to call a couple of times every now and then to check on our booking time.

We were getting excited all over again by the end of October and got even more excited when the floor manager gave us a call to re-confirm our booking. We obviously played it cool! We were like young kids given all kinds of lollies!

When the day arrived, we were seated at the far corner next to the window, looking out at the well maintained Japanese garden. It was a nice spot! Gave us the space and privacy, away from all the noises from other tables.

A waitress in charge of our table asked if we would like to try the degustation menu. It didn't take us too long to go for it. It's not a restaurant where you can go every once a month (at least not yet). We weren't sure how many dishes we will get or even the type of food. Some might think otherwise, we prefer that way, keep us guessing and looking forward to the next dish!

Our 13 courses for the night