My Little Spanish Place - Take 2

These photos were from a visit earlier this year to MLSP, and I've only just got down to uploading them. Over the past 2 years, the food has been consistently good and I'm happy to say that this would be my go-to Spanish restaurant in Singapore.  

There was a beautiful leg of ham on the counter when we arrived

Absolutely beautiful 

Some of the cold cuts that we started with

Croquettes - the first of our tapas

Mixed salad - perhaps the most boring dish of the night

Tortillas 

Anchovies with grilled peppers on bread

Mushrooms with melted cheese

 Gazpacho

Grilled squid

 Garlic prawns - great with their white wines

The star of the evening - their roast suckling pig

Slicing the pig wasn't too difficult - I found out after I had a go. Apparently it's traditional for them to smash the plate after the pig's all cut up. And the use of a plate with a fairly blunt edge also was a good sign - it meant the pig was super crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside.

Almost there

One platter on our table - the cheek supposedly had the best meat

You can't come to a Spanish restaurant and not order paella

 I think this was apple pie, but it was difficult to also stuff in the desserts after all that food

Traditional Spanish sweets taken post meal

Esquina

We had heard a lot about Esquina recently, and while we normally make it a point not to try to follow the crowd, it was too tempting not to head there after leaving the office at 6.00pm on the dot the first day the boss was out of town. We got there at 6.10pm, only to be told that there were no more seats inside. No problem, we took one of the tables along the five-foot way.

We started with a serve of toasted corn

Which was fantastic with a Margaret River Chardonnay

My normal habit is to head straight for a red, but I had no regrets ordering this - not too dry, nicely balanced and it went well with almost everything we ordered.

First up was the salt and pepper squid with black ink aioli - this was very enjoyable, and much more tender with the use of baby squid instead of large squid pieces. They managed to get the batter down pat - nice and crispy and not too oily. Loved the black ink aioli as well - the squid ink added an extra dimension to the otherwise mayonnaise-like flavour.
It was great with the green chillies. Next up was the iberico pork and foie gras burger. This was superb. The meat was tender, juicy and absolutely flavourful. Up close - the only problem was that these weren't very large at all. We could have done with another serve. This was the confit pork belly with pork skin, chorizo and white beans. It wasn't as soft as we would have wanted it though, and the flavour of the accompanying chorizo/white bean stew wasn't all that exquisite.

The pork skin was average - not as crispy as we expected as well.

Since the servings were so small, we made additional orders - the ox cheek, topped with tongue served on a bed of what must have been sweet potato mash, was excellent.

The squid saffron and red pepper paella was pretty good too, but again, it was a rather small serve for some 20 odd dollars. Final verdict on this place: excellent food, great atmosphere but not really value for money (we spent around $175), and so we're not sure if we'll be back except for super special occasions. I'm sure there are many many people willing to patronise this place who earn more than us, and we also hope that it stays around for a long time.

Brindisa, London

We were very focused knowing we only had one day in London to do/see/eat selectively, and decided to go to the Tate Modern and walk along the Thames.
It was a beautiful walk looking across the Millenium Bridge to St Pauls.

We spent some time looking through the Tate Modern and trying to understand how a scribble on a piece of blank canvas, which looked like something my 9-year old nephew could have drawn, could be considered complex art.

For lunch, our friend that we met for breakfast strongly recommended Brindisa at Borough Market. It was a pity that the market was closed, but thankfully Brindisa had recently decided to open on Sundays as well.

We both had wines - I can't recall what we had now; one was a Spanish red.

A serve of mixed olives and capers

Traditional potato tortilla with aioli. This was nice and moist.

Crispy pork belly with quince sauce. This got us very excited - the skin wasn't as crispy as the normal siew yoke, but still pretty good. The meat was very soft. It was brilliant with the wine.

Oh-so-tender pork.

Deep fried Monte Enebro cheese with orange blossom honey. The cheese was unexpectedly strong, but lovely with the sweet nectarish coating.

Ox cheeks braised in red wine with celeriac mash. This was a winner - the ox cheeks were cooked under tender, practically melting in the mouth.

We were quite particular to make sure that the items we ordered went well with wine, and we were not disappointed. The service was excellent - there were 3 waiters in the section, always silently on the lookout to refill empty glasses and clear plates, and observing the body language of the patrons. It was one of the best examples of good service in a regular cafe/diner that I have ever seen, and I was more than happy to leave a good tip. All these dishes cost us around 50 pounds.

Website: http://www.brindisa.com/

Saturday, February 19, 2011

My Little Spanish Place

My Little Spanish Place has been open for just about a year at Bukit Timah, and although we've eaten there a few times since, we've always thought it was all right. Not bad, not mindblowing, but all right, nice, and pleasant in a very neutral way.

Then we noticed things started picking up. Tables started getting fuller and fuller. They were starting to turn away customers without reservations on Fri and Sat nights. Something was definitely happening, and on our subsequent visit we realised that while the food was good before, it was now amazingly delicious. There was something special about the very same dishes which were probably cooked with the same recipe but with small adjustments here and there. It was very difficult to decipher what had changed, but perhaps it was just a matter of having things settle down and improved over time.

The croquettes - lovely crispy crust with creamy inside


Meatballs with tomato sauce - juicy, tasty and bread-moppingly yummy


Grilled squid - I felt this could have been grilled a bit longer, but I guess that's just me preferring a more burnt taste


Garlic prawns - fresh and savoury


Tortilla - great with the garlic mayo/aioli


I'm a bigger fan of risotto, so it's hard for me to be objective about paella in general. But the squid ink paella was just that wee bit more exciting than the normal house paella, and in my opinion, tastier too.

Anchovies on toast

The cold cuts platter was really good - I loved the cheese and cured meats, although I had no idea what I was eating

The grilled capsicum was lovely, with the natural sugars all flowing out of the peppers. I don't normally eat capsicum but this warranted an exception.

The grilled mushrooms were lovely - they were flavourful and moist.

The artichokes with bacon bits were surprisingly good too.

We also had the suckling pig, which had to be ordered a few days in advance. Well worth the wait - the skin was absolutely crispy, and the meat so tender it was to-die-for. One of the best roast pigs ever.

Jamon Bellota - there simply wasn't enough of this to go around! I initially thought this was plain old Iberico (hah!), but it turns out that this is supposed to be the highest grade Iberico Jamon, from free-range pigs that roam around oak forests on the Spanish-Portugese border and eat only acorns. It was surprisingly not salty at all, and simply collapsed in an amazing medley of flavours on my tongue. They don't have this listed on the menu so you might need to call up and ask beforehand.

Orange cream under all that cream - great with coffee

Churros with chocolate - lovely at the end of a long meal.

This comes up as a worthy competitor to Don Quijote, and I daresay, probably it's even better. They stock an extensive range of Spanish wines that are excellent with the food. However, the place is not cheap - the tapas are on average $10 per serve, so the budget would be about $50 per person for a normal meal, which could get more expensive with drinks.

619 Bukit Timah Road (just after Coronation Plaza)

Tel: 6463 2810

Open for lunch Sat and Sun from 12-4pm, and dinner Tues-Sun from 6.30pm-12am. Closed Mondays.

www.wix.com/winestudio/mylittlespanishplace

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