Le Troquet

Add : 529 Balestier Rd, #01-01, Singapore

Tel : (65) 6736 1070

Hours : Tue - Sat, Public Hols 10.30am - 10.30pm, Sun 1.00pm - 10.00pm, Off on Monday

Rating : ****1/2

Price : below S$60/pax with wine

Want some really nice French food? Try the Le Troquet Cafe Bar. A modest looking place located on Balestier Road. Lini's colleague discovered them from a website, and we thought we'll try having an early Valentine's dinner there.

On a rainy Friday evening Lini and I were there, there was only 2 other tables occupied. By sheer coincidence, one of the table was occupied by Tan Swie Hian, the Singapore artist who had also dine at another table when we were at Ember restaurant not long ago. Swie Hian sat just behind Lini and I could hear his fluent Mandarin conversation with another couple (he is, after all, a poet and calligrapher also). He'd brought his own wine, a $400/-, 25 year old bottle of wine, which he shared with the couple and the restaurant's owners, with whom he is familiar with.

The owners are 2 sisters, Suzanne and Yvonne, who had started the business 11 years ago. Both of them chatted with us, and they were humble and pleasant. Suzanne, the elder sister said she had enjoyed French food while living there, and when she returned, she found the French food served here "different". So she started this to serve a niche market. Most of her customers are regulars and she doesn't believe in growing big. Her personalised service is one advantage of her staying small.

I took their set menu; 1 glass of red wine, a grilled goat cheese in fresh cream sauce started, a main course of duck confit with sauteed potatoes and mesclun, and tiramisu dessert with fresh coffee. Mine had been a wrongly-printed menu where the word "or" was missing between the 2 choices of dessert, and I'd thought the dessert also includes a "French form of cheese platter". They brought the correct menu to show me the mistake in my copy and I accepted that without any fuss. To my surprise, they served me the French cheese anyway, to make up for the error. How very nice of them. But the real highlight was the Duck confit dish. It was perfect! Crispy skin, tender meat. It's their specialty/signature dish, it seemed. Highly recommended. The set menu is priced at $48.00 nett. Beside the Duck, you can also choose 3 other choices mainly Griller Ribeye Stick w/Blue Cheese Sauce OR Chicken "Truffle" w/White Wine Truffle Cream Sauce OR Raibow Trout "Amandes" w/Almond Butter Sauce and Vegetables.

The House specialty: Duck confit

Lini had ordered a panfried foie gras starter ($25/-) and stew lamb shank as main dish ($23/-). The foie gras was good, as good as the one at the Sage and better than Ember's. But somehow, foie gras in Singapore tends to be crunchily fried on the outside but a little too soft and fatty on the inside, we thought, different from those we tasted in Colmar (France), where there was more uniformity over the whole body. Lini's lamb was less successful. The meat was a little too tough and the portion too big. Among others, we also ordered an extra glass of red wine ($8.50) and bottled water from Italy ($6.50 Ouch).

All in all, great food with reasonable price.

Chup and... .... the one who's still sleepy from the wine