Lunch at Dean & DeLuca, Singapore
Before heading back to Rotterdam, I decided to treat my little brother to brunch. I had promised to take him to eat the amazing french toast, that I had the last time in Singapore. So we headed to Dean & DeLuca with empty stomaches ready to indulge. My brother is known within the family as the wolf, since he has such a big appetite. I knew the french toast would be more than enough, but we decided to order a second dish anyways.
The first dish to arrive were the Berries & Flapjacks. A beautiful stack of four Oat & Honey Buttermilk Pancakes with Fresh Mixed Berries and "Grade A" Maple Syrup on the side. We also ordered a scoop of Ice Cream to go along with it, since we love the combination of hot and cold (as my mum always calls it). "Hot and cold" is somewhat of a mantra in our family, we always aim to have both hot and cold elements on our desserts. Back to the pancakes, they were delicious, however one of the pancakes wasn't as fluffy and light like the others and was strategically placed second from the bottom. I guess consistency is not their strong point. We also wished there was more maple syrup, since the ratio of pancakes to maple syrup was not enough. As you can see from the picture the berries and berry compote were quite limited. I guess generosity wasn't on their mind for this dish. Nevertheless, we still enjoyed it and would order it again. Just maybe request for more maple syrup the next time.
Quite some time after getting the pancakes, our second dish arrived. The reason why we came here, which was the Sautéed Brioche French Toast with Salted Caramelized Bananas and Fresh Berries. Now there's a whole story behind this one. When it arrived I was seriously disappointed, on my previous visit it was completely different. The picture above was from previous visit and as you can see the french toast consists of thick pieces of brioche drenched in the salted caramel and a lot of sliced bananas. The picture below is that of what we received.
Now this picture was taken after I made an initial complaint since not only were the slices of toast as flat as a piece of ordinary Guardania (local bread brand in SG), but they even served us the "heel" (end) of the bread. I think for such an established brand as Dean & DeLuca, they would serve up better quality. Also there was hardly any caramel as you can identify on the picture. When I tried to explain to the chef, that this was clearly not up to their standard, he just looked at me with this rude expression on his face. Soon enough though one of the other staff came and asked me what the matter was and I explained it to her, without hesitation she offered to take it back and make us another piece of toast. So when it was brought to us the second time, we had four pieces of toast (they left remainder of the dish) and some extra caramel. That was a nice gesture and was really appreciated. However, after eating some of it, I discovered a here within the toast. This was just appalling and I didn't have any appetite to eat any more of it, after showing it to the server he offered to bring us a new plate, but at this point both my brother and I had lost our appetite and kindly declined. He then offered to refund me the money for the french toast, which we received.
I know that the food at Dean & DeLuca is much better than what it was on this occassion. I was just very disappointed that it seemed like that the quality may or may not have decreased. Possibly a change in chef? Either way, because of the lovely service I will be returning and trying it out again. Hopefully by then they'll be back to their old standards.