Sunday, July 24, 2005

SQ Raffles Class lunch - Alfred Portale

SQ Raffles Class Satay

Alfred Portale of NY's Gotham Bar & Grill fame designed today's business class lunch on Singapore Airlines, which has its so-called World Goumet Cuisine International Culinary Panel. Aside from this, SQ of course also started with its standard satay, which I've always found to taste pretty darned good and authentic to local street vendors in Singapore. The little onion cuts on a toothpick have always been amusing to me too.

SQ Raffles Class Lunch - Alfred Portale

Actually, of the four-course meal, I only ate one item that was actually his, which was the "French duck foie gras and confit with mizuna salad." Just as with yesterday's foie gras sushi at Sun, this foie gras had a great rich taste that stole the show. The confit was a little less fatty than I would have thought, but still OK.

SQ Raffles Class Lobster Thermidor

The other items I had, however, were not his, mainly because I had pre-ordered SQ's Book the Cook service, where you can get an even wider selection of dishes, as long as you order 24 hours in advance. So I got the obligatory lobster thermidor. Actually, I don't even like lobster too much (to me, it has always been just one overgrown - and thus, too tough - shrimp), but I got it again just for the sheer novelty factor of being able to eat lobster on an airplane. It was better than I was expecting - solid chunks of lobster tail in a creamy sauce, with tomatoes and saffron rice to boot (my addition of butter and salt helped it).

I'm glad I ordered this, as the other selections just didn't seem too exciting fettucine, Chinese braised duck, Indonesian fish assam surani, or the Portale-exclusive simmered beef rib in rich broth, which my neighbor ordered, and didn't look bad, but wasn't what I wanted...I wonder how it tasted though. Finally, to close it off, I opted for a simple banana. So there was not much of a guest chef presence this time, but stay tuned for the next meal.

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