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Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Halia restaurant, Botanic Gardens, Singapore

the Botanic Gardens are a delight, with trees bearing plaques and a white bandstand for weddings.

Inside the restaurant is very elegant. White and glass and mirrors and glimpses of the greenery outside.

Ginger drink and ginger dessert - Halia is heavenly. H a l i a means ginger - and ginger flavours are a feature of their menu. Walking from the car park up the pedestrian only path to the restaurant you pass trees with plaques. We went to a wedding where the ceremony was booked to be performed in the bandstand out in the gardens.

Ginger was a flavour of the cocktail we were served in the restaurant lobby area whilst waiting for the start of the ceremony. Ginger and lemon grass. I've often asked for a drink supposedly flavoured with lemon grass and it did not taste of anything. But here the lemon grass and ginger flavours were zinging.



The pumpkin soup was lovely flavour and consistency. (A few days later I had pumpkin soup at another restaurant, the Amarone, where it was not nearly so good.)

The service was superb. The wedding guests' placards were market with red dots if the diner had ordered meat, blue for fish. My salmon was moist, succulent.

The highlight of the meal was the dessert, a kind of crunch meringue with nuts and fruit flavoured cream.

The shape of the hall was in two parts, like an L shape and a screen in the larger room showed what was happening at the top table in the smaller room. If you were not at a wedding but having a lunch that would not bother you.

Afterwards we wanted to go back so I looked at the set meal on line. They offered a two course or three course set meal, 28 or 32 dollars, so near in price that you might as well have the three courses. The price includes tea or coffee. But they will add on ten percent service charge plus the 7% GST (tax).

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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