Kok Sen Coffeeshop - reprise

I headed to Kok Sen Coffeeshop at Keong Saik Rd one evening in late Sept with a couple of colleagues for a very enjoyable zi char dinner. It's a steady, dependable coffeeshop where the food is consistently of good quality. Writing this post now makes me really want to get back there to gobble down a hot steaming bowl of white rice, with all the yummy dishes.

Between 3 girls, we ate 4 dishes including sambal kangkung, which was cooked just right. The stems were firm and crunchy. 

I've always loved the bittergourd cooked with fish head in black bean sauce.

The home-style tofu is also a winner, especially on top of white rice

And the ha cheong kai is so good you can even eat it on its own. 

It's at 30 Keong Saik Rd. One of the best zi char places in the Tanjong Pagar area. 

Aoki - Another perfect meal

Aoki is one of the few restaurants that has managed to produce excellent food 

every time we've eaten there, consistently. We think it's better than some of the Japanese restaurants in Tokyo that we've eaten at, at the same price, and it's a place that we don't mind paying good money for because of the quality we get every time. 

These photos were taken from another dinner that someone very generous and nice bought us before our relocation to Melbourne, perhaps to make sure that we remembered him! We were seated at the counter where we could see all the action going on. 

Braised beef as a starter - or was it pork? It wasn't exciting but we knew what was in store, and it didn't matter. 

First up was yuba, or beancurd skin. 

This had an amazing texture, slightly thicker on the outside but soft and creamy on the inside, akin to a soft boiled egg with a runny egg. Beautiful with a soy-based stock. 

Shiro ebi with uni and caviar - always a favourite, and Aoki's uni has always been reliably fresh. 

Perfection in a spoon. 

Tempura vegetables for me.....

And raw oysters for the husband, topped with ponzu and caviar

The white fish with truffles made an appearance again, described as shiromi shio konbu koro truffle in the menu, seasoned with sesame oil, lime and seaweed. Excellent as usual.

This was the sake we had during dinner - it was excellent with the food. 

A beautiful sashimi platter with ama ebi, otoro, hotate, chutoro, hamachi and what appeared to be part of a tobugai. 

From another angle. Yums. 

The sweetest tomato and sweetcorn, eaten simply with salt.

 There were two types of uni that we had - one was bafu uni, which was saltier 

Otoro seared and topped with chives

This was murasaki uni, which was sweeter

Chawanmushi with truffles

And last, but not least, the saga beef bowl topped with truffles. Seared to medium perfection, and topped with slices of Australian truffles (and I daresay, there must have been drizzles of truffle oil as well) - this sent us straight to heaven.

Amazing what a semi-cooked egg can do for the don

 I can still taste the beef and truffles even as I'm typing this.

We then moved  next door to Les Amis for dessert and coffee (yes there was still space)

Some of the cheeses we had

With warm toasted walnut bread

Accompanied by pine nuts, fig jam, possibly quince paste and raisins

The Les Amis chocolate souffle with vanilla ice cream was gorgeous 

The cherry dessert was very well executed

Perhaps one of the most perfect souffles in recent memory

The night rounded up with madelines and lemon curd. Simply perfect. 

Jacques Reymond - The last of the 3 hatted degustation menus

Following Reymond's retirement announcement, the husband was anxious to get to Jacques Reymond before the end of the year to try the master's last degustation menu. We chose to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary there, and what a night it was - it was everything that we that we had dreamed of, in terms of the attention to detail, the successful execution in combining the most diverse of flavours, and the unobtrusive yet attentive service. We went for the full degustation without wine pairing at $185 per head, with a bottle of Yering Station Shiraz Viognier alongside - not that we normally share a bottle, but with the bottle at $60odd and a glass at $20odd, the maths worked out better (the resultant headache was quite a separate story).

  

The amuse bouche was a very light cheese choux pastry, which was served to our plates warm. It was a good start to the evening. 

Super light and tasty 

The shiraz voignier was a good call by the husband - it was sufficiently full-bodied yet not overwhelming, and went well even with the seafood - although some might argue a chardonnay would have gone better with most of the dishes. But anything from Yering Station is always excellent. 

Bread rolls and butter. 

First up - a clear shitake broth, with lemon and clams. This looked slightly odd, with one single clam and a chicken tenderloin on the plate. But the shitake broth was strong and clean tasting.

Next up was a slice of yellowfin tuna with smoked salmon mousse, a spice nougatine (whatever that was), tagarashi and lemon caviar.

The flavours and textures were interesting - hard and sweet versus soft and savoury. 

Followed by a pan-grilled King George Whiting with Japanese pickles and yuzu. 

The fish was cooked to perfection - seared lightly on the outside, yet moist and flavourful on the inside. 

At this juncture, I was starting to wonder if I had signed up for French food or Japanese food, since there appeared to be nothing significantly French about anything we had eaten so far. And then the next course of cuttlefish, pork, and crispy chicken skin confused me further, with strong Thai overtones.  It was super tasty, with fish sauce, lime leaves and coriander leaves featuring strongly in the drippings. 

The cuttlefish was delightfully tender, contrasting very well with the sauce which we both slurped up happily. The crispy chicken skin was a rare indulgence, and added a different textural dimension.

The pork was beautifully soft, adding to the variety in textures.

The palate cleanser was a slice of pancetta on a bed of parmesan custard, green peas, macerated grapes and an apple and wasabi granita. Again, it was a beautiful combination of flavours and textures. 

Next up was a Flinders island lamb, smoked scallop and scampi. The lamb was melt-in-the-mouth tender. It was amazing. 

Another shot of the best lamb ever. 

Followed by a wagyu a la plancha, burnt onion and coffee. It was difficult to top the lamb, and yet this somehow was inexplicably even better.

The first dessert was apricot and sencha sorbet on a bed of rice

Followed by a chocolate and chestnut mont blanc, with a smoking bay leaf and cassis scented pack nearby to add to the sensory explosion.

There was nothing edible in the straw-wrapped package, but the smells were incredible

I loved the subtlety of the chestnut 

Petit fours - the perfect ending to a brilliant meal. We were so glad we had the chance to try the master's final degustation menu, which will be remembered for a long time to come.

78 Williams Rd, Prahran VIC 3181
Tel: 03 - 9525 2178
http://www.jacquesreymond.com.au/