Belated Birthday dinner at the Tanglin Club, Singapore

Covid-19 Restaurant Restrictions Eased

The Tanglin Club restaurants in Singapore were closed in early June 2020 because of Covid-19 restrictions. When the restaurants reopened it was only for tables for two. As soon as the previous restrictions were lifted the available bookings were snapped up. We spent ages changing days and trying different times which we didn't want to be sure the restaurants really were fully booked at the popular times and not showing fully booked due to a glitch or the booking site not being updated. 

Time and Space

In the end, we booked for 6.30 although we wanted to eat at 7, reckoning that by the time we ordered drinks it would be getting on for seven. On the night in the large Churchill Room restaurant the tables were widely spaced out and all set for two, very different from the usual layout. The restaurant was never completely full. We guessed that the bookings were limited not because of too many diners, but because of too few staff.

 

Entry

Your taxi drops you outside the front entrance. Up a flight of red carpeted steps. Temperature control past an automatic machine. In the olden days doorman used to open the front door. Now your credentials are checked carefully.

The Churchill Room restaurant has a picture of Winston Churchill by the doorway.

Decor Of Orchids

The Tanglin has an orchid display outside in the hallway. The centre of the Churchill Room has another orchid display. A third orchid display was at the side.

Set Menu Choices

The menu online was not the same as offered in the restaurant, but gives you an idea.  

We started by ordering drinks. I had a glass of Prosecco. My husband ordered a reasonably priced Champagne.Then a glass of red wine.

Complimentary Bread

We were brought a little bowl of breads. The white bread roll with seeds was hot. Melted the butter. The black bread I saved for later. 

The crisp in a tall triangle contained blackened sesame seeds and was delicious, very more-ish. Crispy, salty, tasty.

Complimentary Amuse Guele

Dice size vegetarian mousse with contrasting green peas.

We chose two different starters and main courses and desserts. 

Choices included

Starter

Salmon mousse. Mushroom soup. Foie gras. 

I liked the salmon. That was my choice. 

I was disappointed in the foie gras. Just another smooth pate and less flavour than chicken liver pate. If I had to pay extra for it, I would not.

Main Course

Beef.

Barramundi Fish. 

Pork - excellent. 

Vegetarian option.

Main course - Served Under Domes

Served smartly under domes which are lifted simultaneously. No serving one person who has to wait feeling frustrated for the other person to be served. Nor one person starting and being told off for not waiting.

Dessert

I chose the mango mousse dessert, with ice cream. I thought the fruit was a healthier option.  Mango - excellent choice, looked great.

Why not the chocolate desserts? I admit I hesitated. Mango was a change from chocolate, which we eat a lot of at home and are offered at almost every restaurant and coffee shop location. Chocolate we could eat later at home. 

One of the options was salted chocolate. That must be very tasty, and salt is an ingredient of savoury chocolate dishes featured in a film about France. Sugar and salt does not sound healthy. 

Vanilla ice cream, often tastes of nothing. Or it is drowned by the chocolate flavour.

Nonetheless, I was hoping my husband would opt for one of the chocolate desserts. I told him so. 

He retorted, "It's my birthday dinner. I want to choose what I want to eat."

My husband chose the cheese board. It looked great. Wooden platter. Several cheeses, hard and soft, including a blue cheese. Circular crackers. Some grapes. 

He said the cheeses were a bit industrial. He is a connoisseur when it comes to cheeses.  He buys from speciality cheese shops such as the Cheese Arc. He looks online.

My dessert came up with the happy birthday words written in chocolate and a candle in a blue candle-holder.

More Photos will be added shortly.

Useful Websites

https://www.tanglinclub.org.sg/

http://www.thecheeseark.com/locate-us/

About the Author

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is Vice President Public Relations of Braddell Heights Advanced, and Tampines Changkat Advanced, speakers' training club which are part of Toastmasters International. The USA has several Spanish speaking as well as the English speaking clubs. You can pick up Spanish from buying or reading online their Spanish clubs welcome pages and manuals. 

In The USA, UK, Singapore and worldwide, there are many clubs which are English speaking, as well as Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Tamil, Malay.

The inauguration of Tampines Changkat Advanced was Tuesday 29th 2021, online on  zoom. Their meetings are on the fourth Tuesday evening of the month. They hope to hold meetings with a few people meeting physically, the others online, as soon as the Covid-19 conditions allow.

You can find the club through their Facebook page as well as through Toastmasters International find a club. 

https://www.facebook.com/tampineschangkatadvTMC

The meetings are free for visitors. Visitors can watch, and join in speaking by introducing themselves and volunteering to do a 2 minutes impromptu  speech in table topics.

If you wish to join for a year, it costs about 190 US dollars, to have monthly meetings online, a mentor, a magazine, and one of the 11  Pathways, consisting of 14 projects. Each project starts with 3 speeches of your choice of subject, lasting 4 to 6 minutes, then 5 to 7 minutes. The Pathways include the most popular Presentation Mastery. I chose  humorous speaking as my second Pathway, costing 20 dollars. Then my third was a leadership course. Come and see for free.

The club also has meetings in person in Singapore

You can also contact my other club, smaller Braddell Heights Advanced, which is a cosy little club with more chances to speak.

Login through bha.learncool.sg/meet/bha 

That will link you through to Zoom or googlemeet. 2 pm to 5 pm.

BHA meets the first Wednesday evening each month, starting at 7 pm Singapore time. 

Then an extra meeting on the 3rd Saturday afternoon, starting at 2 pm Singapore time.

To check your time zone,  

https://24timezones.com/difference/singapore/ 

Meetings will be on Wed July 7th and  Saturday July 17th.

Contact either of these or other clubs through Toastmasters International Find a Club.

Cellar Gascon Wine Bar and Restaurant

Cellar Gasgon is part of a group of three restaurants.

This one is corridor style with seating along the windows and a bar on the other long side. Toilets are downstairs.

I am not a fan of bar stools, but I preferred them to the window banquettes which sloped forward, were too short for my legs, and they looked shiny and I kept sliding off. Long legged male diners either perched on the edge or used their long legs to brace and anchor themselves. 

Tables were so close together I was in danger of sweeping the four to six glasses per setting onto the floor as I passed. It happened when I tried to go in, then when I tried to get out to the toilet. When I came back I did not want to stress myself and everybody else again.   I transferred to the bar stool type chair.

We parked our coats, bags and rucksacks on the narrow window ledge behind.  A few seats of the same design as the bar stools but low enough for you to put your feet on the ground are at the far end and by the entrance door. I must remember to request one of these tables, although I think these tables are for four.

The set menu was four courses and four glasses of wine for about £40 per person. Many central London restaurants offer set lunches of two or three courses with a glass of wine for about £20. But £40 for dinner, four courses, including wine, is good value. This is especially good value for a speciality gourmet restaurant in central London.

Small pieces of brown bread were elegantly served on small squares of slate. The butter was served in the centre of another straight sided piece of slate. A change from curves, though I prefer cured crockery, I suppose square and oblong is easier to stack on a straight sided shelf.

I've looked into buying slate for home. I've check in supermarkets such as Waitrose. It's not cheap. 

The slate pieces are dark, so you can't see if they are clean, but also rough if you want to run your fingers over to check. The small ones look mean, but the large ones are heavy to carry. Slate is fine, amusing as a change and a treat - in a restaurant.

The starter was squid. I'm allergic to shellfish. I am OK with eel. We debated whether squid was a risk. I decided against it. There was no alternative menu, no choice. I ate around the squid.

The second course was the high point of the four dishes. Foie gras. Like many people, I have been influenced by the campaign against it. I think I've had it before and not been impressed that it was worth either the extra expense or the possible suffering of the animal, or bird. However, I do like chicken liver and this was grilled on the outside, like a soft chicken liver, with the most delightful extra flavours in the sauce. 

The sauce was so nice that I broke off bits of brown bread to scrape the last tasty morsels off the plate. British diners don't wipe their plates with bread. But the French do. Gascon is an area of France. (The Gascons or Basques are also in Spain. Not in the capital city. More rural, practical.) I sneaked a peek. Nobody was watching me disapprovingly. In fact, everybody else was doing the same.

The main course was lamb casserole with beans and barley. Lamb a bit gristly and fatty, but all in all very good.

Here's dessert, pineapple with ice cream and a few specks of crumble. 

After four glasses of wine and delicious food I had forgotten my initial problems with the seats and seating close to others. Tables so near others enable you to chat more easily to couples either side. Would we go back? Definitely.

www.cellargascon.com

More pictures and story tomorrow.

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

Cellar Gascon Wine Bar and Restaurant

www.cellargascon.com

See next post for ore pictures and story about the squid, foie gras, casserole and pineapple.

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

French words of the weekend - 'le weekend' in Franglais

France has borrowed words from English and during 'le weekend' let us reciprocate by observing which French words we use every day, or at least in the weekend newspapers. Before lunchtime on Saturday, catching up on yesterday's newspapers, I have noticed or been reminded of several French words.

To test whether they are French, when reading a newspaper or book, look for the signs which help you to pronounce the letters.

(Sorry, in my posts I don't always have the accents, nor cedillas (little s signs under the letter C which tell you to pronounce is as S.) When I wrote my earlier posts I didn't know how to add accents.

Now I know, sometimes I'm sorry. I tend to leave accents off in my draft, hoping to come back later, because it's such hard work and so time wasting trying to hold down the a or e QWERTY keyboard key. You need to hold it down long enough to bring up the alternative Es, half a dozen of them, by the time you have chosen the right accent, you get triple letters. Then I try to delete two, which then deletes all the vowels. So I have to start again.

Now I am looking in an etymological dictionary, COLLINS, which is big and heavy.

Often I test by trying to use the word in a French sentence. If you speak French fluently as I do, or even just a little, try using the word in a French sentence. For example, "C'est bizarre!" That sounds right in French. (No cedilla under that C - I wonder why. Ah - because the e after the c softens it from K to S? )

cul-de-sac - We could translate this as Close in a English street name, but we use the French term to describe it. Sac is sack or bag as in rucksack, haversack - but that leads us on another linguistic trail.

bizarre - oui, tres bizarre

cafetiere - plunger coffee maker

Colleague - co-worker

league -

regime - rule or ruling group

foie gras - gras, literally grease, swollen liver from well-fed, or over-fed duck, creating expensive, luxurious liver paste or pate (pronounced patay)

culture -

royale - royal, as in kir royale, sparkling pink drink. A Kir is made from cassis (sweet black currant juice) mixed with dry white wine, whilst Kir Royale is the upmarket and pricier version made with a bubbly wine. Named after Canon Kir of the region. I visited the Kir factory in the Lyons area driving from the Chamonix ski area in the south of France back to London, England.

dialogue

Au revoir! - Bye-bye! Literally  to (until next time)  see (you) again.

TIPS for TRAVELLERS
1 Carry a notebook to write down new foreign words. Rule each page into two columns.
2 Use Google translate - and put their icon on your computer's, laptop's, ipad's dock for speed
3 Invest in an etymological dictionary and keep it on your desk to check foreign words
4 Press the vowel key on your computer/laptop keyboard to add accents to French words

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer, photographer, author and speaker