La Cuisine

Tiny lit­tle bistro called La Cui­sine. Cute hor?

At the cor­ner of Cluny Park and Bukit Timah roads is this row of shop­houses which houses a super­mar­ket, a cake shop, and a tiny bistro called La Cuisine.

It is tiny because it seats only 20 cus­tomers at one go, and it is tiny because, well, it is tiny.

Once you’ve pried open the lou­vered doors, which are jammed shut with a piece of card­board because if they weren’t, the wind would blow them inwards and cus­tomers seated next to the doors might get smacked in the back of the head. Or the front of, depend­ing on how they were seated… now, where was I?

Ah, yes. Once you open the doors and step in, the maitre d’ steps for­ward and picks up the lit­tle piece of card­board from the floor and jams the door shut again. Not that he’s annoyed at you or any­thing, but you mum­ble oops sorry anyway.

Once seated, you mar­vel at the decor. It is never going to be min­i­mal­ist because there’s so lit­tle space. But the walls are adorned with posters of Paris (as you would imag­ine), some Tolouse-Lautrec-like prints, and some of half and fully naked men, some of whom I rec­og­nize, because they’re French rugby play­ers. If you were hun­gry enough you wouldn’t at all be per­turbed by a poster of a nude Cristophe Dominici by your ear while you ate. So I wasn’t.

I was glad my fiancée said she was going to give me a treat by bring­ing me there to eat, because the moment the pan-seared foie gras arrived, it threat­ened to dis­in­te­grate, which is a good thing for foie gras, I am told.

The ser­vice staff were great con­sid­er­ing there was only the maitre d’, some­one behind the cashier, and two peo­ple dressed in chef’s clothes, though one was seated by the bar chat­ting 23 to the dozen with two other peo­ple who appeared to be din­ers. Must be friends of theirs.

The maitre d’ was another high­light not to be missed. Boy, was he effi­cient. There he was, unob­tru­sively by the bar (which really isn’t that far away because, did I men­tion the place was tiny?), watch­ing eagle-eyed until you fin­ish the last sliver of foie gras, which by now is almost liq­uid, then next thing you know, he’s right by you, clear­ing your dishes with nary a word. So quick. So French. Only. He’s. Not.

The mains were great, and you’d shout about them as you eat if you were so inclined to shout with your mouths full. I had the lamb while my fiancée had the beef.

Being the recal­ci­trant smok­ers that we were, we insisted on bring­ing our cof­fees and dessert out­doors, so the effi­cient French-like maitre d’ had to pry open the doors, hold­ing them and the piece of card­board while we adjourned to the newly leg­is­lated smok­ing area out­side, which for a restau­rant of this size, you would imag­ine to be very, very small.

But no mat­ter. My fiancée sat on my lap while we smoked, sipped our cof­fees and mulled over how darn good din­ner was.

The lamb — check out the garlic!

The beef

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