essential brew

we had dinner at essential brew today. the tea concept restaurant, which uses tea as one of their ingredients in most of their dishes, is located at holland village. the place is dimly lit to create a relaxing and soothing ambience. diners can choose to sit on the ground like the japanese way or at the tables- the normal way. for the second level, the diners have to take off their shoes before they can step onto the platform. 

it was surprising packed for a weekday dinner. almost all of the seats on the second level were taken. thus, there were actually quite limited space for each table and at times, i accidentally knocked into the lady beside me. 

after browsing through the menu for quite a while, we finally decided to have corn soup and tofu steak for our starters and grilled salmon and lemongrass chicken for our main course. lingering angel was our choice of drink. 

the corn soup was served promptly after we ordered. each scoop of soup was filled with the corn. it had quite a strong taste of corn, much better than the campbell's or some other western places. it was good. however, our starter took a little longer than we had expected. the steak tofu was served only mid way through our meal and so it became our side dish instead. the steak tofu was topped with mushrooms. it looked pretty and delicious. however, it was kinda true not to judge a dish too much by its presentation. it was not exactly that kind of soft tofu that we had expected. it was dau gua. the sauce and the mushroom that go with the tofu were awfully salty! so beside looking pretty, there wasn't anything good about this starter.

i ordered lemongrass chicken. it was fried and served with jasmine flavoured rice ball and salad. basically, i would just say that if it was a cutlet, it would be good. but as a lemongrass chicken, then it would be just average. i could barely taste the lemongrass in it. one consolation was that the plum sauce that went with it was quite good. the cutlet itself was quite big but 30% of it was fats. i won't recommend this dish to those going for a healthier meal. the jasmine rice wasn't that bad. i could taste and smell the jasmine. i believe the sauce that was on the salad was jasmine as well. thumb up for the sides.

huiying had grilled salmon. the presentation was good. the pepper ( i think) was sprinkled lightly across the salmon. the salmon tasted good. the skin was crispy. what was missing was the jasmine flavour which was supposed to be present in this dish. i agreed with hy that the strong salmon taste probably overwhelmed it. the sauce that was served with the dish was actually butter topped with pickles. it was my first time seeing butter going with salmon. in my opinion, it was not really a good choice.

the lemongrass chicken aka chicken cutlet

the grilled salmon

Lingering angel was the name of our drink. it was jasmine tea with citrus flavour. it was a nice combination. it was good in fact. better than what i had expected. =)

essential brew is quite a good place for friends to come and chill. beside the main courses, they offer finger food. they allow customers to play poker while waiting. the service is not bad. the price is a little above the average given the standard of the food. the bill came at 40 plus for us.  i guess i will pay them another visit but not in the near future. 

food : 6.5/10

ambience : 7.5/10

service : 7/10

price : 6/10