Caviar, foie gras, black truffle flakes, fried garlic bits, medium rare beef slices and a sous vide egg topped on a bowl of warm Japanese rice. What’s there not to love?! I’ll answer that. Nothing, absolutely nothing. This was a delicious meal... the Donburi of our dreams! The burpple 1-for-1 deal made this such a wonderful and worth it meal. We’ll definitely be back for more!
Lemme just try to walk you through our Nesuto experience - the yuzu raspberry cake was the perfect medley of sweet and sour. I’m pretty averse to yuzu and the only yuzu things I’ve enjoyed thus far is BIAP’s yuzu shaved ice and, after today, this yuzu raspberry cake. The sponge was really light and fluffy, so the sourness from the yuzu & raspberry really cut through. YET, it wasn’t an “ew” or “ughhh” kind of sour. This was thanks to the cream in the cake, which was not cloyingly sweet but sufficient to balance out the sourness. The white chocolate bits also made the cake sweeter and helped in the aesthetic department. Killed 2 birds with 1 stone! 💯
The dark chocolate cake was OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH. I say this cos both Kennedy and I love dark chocolate and we prefer our cakes to be rich and dense. This cake fit all our criteria. The special thing about it was that even though it was a sponge cake, it was neither too light nor too dense. It was just right. I don’t know how Nesuto did it cos I’m not a baker, but all I know is they did an amazing job. Highly recommend!!! The prices of their cakes may be a little steep at $9 (minimum) per slice, but it really is a good quality cake that leaves you happy and yearning for more. We paid with burpple beyond so we managed to enjoy it with the 1-for-1 deal.
On our 2nd visit to Breko, we ordered the pulled pork burger and the fisherman burger with cottage fries and sweet potato fries respectively. The burgers were delicious and huge! The pulled pork burger was delightful..... it was juicy and the pickles were a great addition. The fisherman burger was slightly more difficult to devour because Breko was so generous with the fish that there were two thick patties in the burger. On top of that, the fish patties were so crispy.... 🤤 overall, we preferred the pulled pork burger because all the flavors went well together and it wasn’t too salty or cloying! The fisherman burger was a bit salty. We also agreed that the sweet potato fries were a better choice than the cottage fries ☺️ both were great, but the cottage fries were saltier than the sweet potato fries.
We love bubble tea and we love taro too, but this just didn’t make the cut. Read so many good reviews about it that we decided to give it a shot, but it was disappointing. At 50% sugar level, it was not sweet at all and the green tea was very, very, very faint. We aren’t even fans of sweet drinks! Our usual bbt sugar level is 25% and the max we’ll go is 50%. The taro was (very) mildly sweet and we understand that it’s supposedly their plus point, but with everything so mildly flavored, the whole drink was just one dimensional and tasteless.
Just no.
Please do yourself a favour and have your meal elsewhere. And if you still wish to give it a try after reading the warning before this, just a heads-up that it’s not a 1-for-1 deal but a $20 for 2 bowls deal. We ordered the large Wagyu Don ($13) and the Unagi Don ($12) but portions for both were small. Tbh the Unagi Don should’ve been renamed to Unagi SKIN Don. My first thought was that the unagi pieces were very thin, but I didn’t expect that out of the 2 pieces, 1 was just.... skin. There was a runny egg beneath the unagi (thank goodness cos there wasn’t enough sauce) but the rice... was... so... bad. Think of Japanese rice. Picture it. Each grain is fluffy, bouncy, glistening. Now I’m gonna tell you that the rice we had was nothing like that. It was all CLUMPED together. You know ngiam ngiam??? Yea. The rice was so clumpy that you could pick up a block of rice with your chopsticks. The wagyu was supposed to be their best-seller, but it was so oddly sour that the the whole dish tasted strange. Given the small portions and the quality of food, it was not worth our $20. The cashier was also very condescending when we were making our payment. Would not return.
Sanuki Beef Egg Udon and Truffle Tonkotsu Udon. If you’re looking for an affordable and fuss-free Japanese meal in town, do consider Tamoya Udon! Their spring onion, daikon and fried tempura bits are free flow 🥳
The udon was chewy, and the broths for both dishes were fragrant and flavorful. The truffle tonkotsu was absolutely delightful. White truffle oil, black truffle paste, creamy broth...... each spoonful just leaves you wanting more. 🤤
We learnt from our previous visit that they do their pasta better than their pizzas. This time, we ordered the Pancetta tortellini & Chef-special seafood marinara (tomato base). The Pancetta tortellini was extremely flavorful bc of the bacon oil (bacon fans will go gaga over this), but we felt that it was a tad bit too salty. The dish was good, but it could’ve been more enjoyable if there was an appropriate portion of tortellini to match the amount of bacon on the plate. We made a good decision to choose the seafood marinara to accompany our first dish because the lightness and sweetness of the tomato sauce was a refreshing break from the heavy/ salty pancetta tortellini. Perhaps the sauce could have been thicker and more tangy for it to be a stronger dish on its own. With that being said, there was a good amount of seafood on the plate which made it a bang for the buck 😊🤭👍🏻 the tiger prawns were also very succulent!
It was our 1st time here for Burpple 1-for-1 as we were near the area and we decided to get the Tortellini Truffle (above) and Parma di Rucola (below). The Tortellini Truffle was topped with generous amount of mushroom truffle cream sauce. The tortellini was stuffed with four different types of cheeses, and when paired with the sauce, was really delicious. If you are a mushroom truffle fan, this dish is highly recommended! However, the parma-ham pizza was a disappointment!! The crust was too thin and dry and the parma-ham was looked and tasted old. It felt like we were eating dry crackers with a month old parma-ham. Please save yourself and do not get it! This must be the reason why they are called "Pasta E Formaggio" instead of "Pizza E Formaggio" 🙃. Would come back for their pastas!!
Breko Café at Holland V serves brunch all day and serves drinks as well. We went there for dinner and ordered Chickenology ($16.50), shown above, and Salmon Mac & Cheese ($17), below. Chickenology was really delicious and addictive, a medley of textures - crispy fried chicken, mashy mashed potato, gooey poached egg and a very flavourful concoction of mushroom sauce with truffle oil! We really recommend this dish! However, the Salmon Mac & Cheese was a horrible disaster - more like Penne and Cheese. There were only 5 small pieces of baked (and tough) salmon. The Penne and Cheese was not cheesy at all, and it was like forcing 2 incompatible people together - distasteful experience. Overall, it felt like a budget meal that a novice could have whipped up in less than 15 minutes (or less) as a quick midweek meal. We do not recommend the Salmon Mac & Cheese at all!!! Try their other dishes, which look pretty good!
However, the place was well designed and it gave off a cosy atmosphere. We will revisit to try their other dishes!
A good experience, but would settle for Nine Fresh instead. For $4.20, we got a customized cup of: osmanthus aiyu jelly (1st base), tauhuey/ soy pudding (2nd base), taro & matcha pudding-jelly and 3 abacus balls. The osmanthus aiyu jelly was the best part of this dessert bc it was refreshing and had the right level of sweetness. However, the dessert wasn’t anything remarkable and you can an equally good, if not better, experience at Nine Fresh for a cheaper price.
Yum yum YUM. Service was 👍🏻, food was 👍🏻
We ordered the specialty beef noodles; mine was less spicy with the normal noodles, while Kennedy’s was the spicy with flat noodles. The noodles were QQ and the broth was so flavourful. Don’t even get me started on the beef slices.... Núodle was so generous with their beef slices that I couldn’t finish it on my own! And I’ve got a big appetite, heh. The best thing was that the beef slices were huge too. We used burpple 1 for 1, so it was really worth it. We also ordered the beef pancake and the spring onion pancake, but unfortunately they were not served hot :( the pancakes had a lot of potential, so it could be that we were just unlucky. Both of us preferred the spring onion one! The beef one wasn’t very flavourful.
We ordered the duck burrito (side), the steak burger (main) and the dry beef vermicelli (main). The burrito is essentially a taco, but the overall texture of the dish was wonderful - the fried white noodle strands added a crunch that contrasted with the juicy duck and the guacamole added a refreshing taste. However, the highlight of the dish was the Asian duck sauce that was used to marinate the duck. This Mexican-Asian fusion was absolutely delightful. Our next favourite was the beef vermicelli. We read reviews that mentioned it was too dry but we found it sufficiently seasoned and tasty. Highly recommended! The steak burger was the most disappointing. The burger came cold; the buns were not even warm. The fries, although warm and crispy, were more like fried potato shells because there was no potato in it. It felt as if we were eating msg-laden fried potato peels. That being said, we would come back in a heartbeat for their vermicelli! Would also love to try their chicken dishes :)
