Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Aerin's

The basement of Raffles City was recently renovated and re-named "Raffles Marketplace". I thought part of Jasons Market Place was going to be converted to new shops... but turns out that they have dug further underground and increased the basement by 50,000 feet! So lots of new shops - everything from F&B to retail outlets.

It was all a bit confusing, checking out what there was and trying to decide where to go... but this place had a nice fountain with natural lighting coming in from the windows above and cozy looking decor (loved the chairs!) so we decided to give it a try.

Things didn't start out well... nothing annoys me more than standing at the entrance waiting to be seated - and being ignored! The place was hardly crowded, with at least two waiters standing around doing nothing... and no one notices there are patrons waiting to be seated??? I made a comment about it, and well, was probably said it a bit louder than I thought because the manager quickly came to seat us.

I asked to be seated next to fountain - it seemed like good idea - but the "dancing" fountain turned out to be a little more violent than we expected and occasionally drops of water would end up on our table.

The menu was skewed towards drinks. One page of main courses, about 6 different desserts, and about 5 pages of drinks! It was tea-time so I only had a Chocolate Fudge Cake and an iced tea.

I just could not take a nice photo of the cake. Either my photo-taking skills really suck... or this piece of cake is not very photogenic. I guess my photo-taking skills suck :D The cake was ok - rich and moist, not overly sweet. But I felt that for such a small piece, it was over-priced at $7++.

Then I happened to chance upon a review of this place on the asiaone website... Apparently this place is run by the same people who own Whitebait & Kale - which would explain the chi-chi decor... and the chi-chi prices...

Hard to say that how the food was seeing I only had cake and drinks... but the service really did put me off. Besides being ignored at the entrance, I also had to ask the waiter twice for the bill. The place was quite empty at that time - and still he managed to forget.

I guess I might come back here again. While I thought the price of the cake was a bit excessive, the main courses looked interesting and the prices were a bit more reasonable . And they have white wine sangria - which I haven't been able to find a good one since Project Shop Cafe stopped serving it! Hopefully their service staff would have cleaned up their act by then.

Aerin's
252 North Bridge Road
B1-11/12 Raffles City Shopping Centre
S179103
Tel: 6337 2231

3 comments:

Unknown said...

hey, ps cafe at harding serves the white wine sangria...i just had it last friday!

Joe Yap said...

Hmmm.. it might be just me but you've only actually had char hei mee once in your eatscapades so far. Might wanna think about renaming ur blog to something else ;D

Not a fan of sangria. :P Never tried a white wine one though, my friends only seem to make the red version. I guess I don't really like anything messing with wine.

What happened to that place near the fountain where they used to have paper on the tables that u could colour with crayons while waiting for your food.

Photo skills getting better. Keep it up !

Esther said...

thanks for the tip, PM! time to re-visit PS cafe :)

joe : i've had charheimee a few times lah, but from a hawker stall near my place... it's nothing great so i didn't bother blogging about it. you're thinking of burke's - that's long gone, it's now a crepes place called "Out of the Pan". Aerin's is in a whole new wing with a totally different fountain.