One bite- that's all it took for me- and Gordon Ramsay became more than just the chef with the potty mouth on some reality TV cooking show.
I don't have a problem with cooking shows.
Neither do I have a problem with celebrity chefs.
But until that evening at Bread Kitchen restaurant in Marina Bay Sands, I didn't know whether Chef Ramsay was a chef who was a chef who was a celebrity, or if he was a chef who was a celebrity who was a chef.
If you've ever felt like you've paid too handsome a price at overtouted restaurants simply because the front chef was a celebrity on some entertainment franchise, you'll understand what I mean.
Simply put, I didn't know if the strict standards on Masterchef and Kitchen Nightmares translated to the kitchens of his own restaurants.
That is, until I had my first bite of the pork chop that came served to my table in no too long an amount of time.
I want to be descriptive about the pork chop; I want to say that the portion was fantastic, that the meat was tender, that it was moist, and that had all the juices of the pork wrapped up within.
But those words don't seem sufficient to describe a chop that, I must say, made a deep impression on me.
I don't know if Chef Ramsay's background has anything to do with it- he's made no bones about his 'humbler' history- but unlike many a restaurant that tends to place the dish of pork chops as a mere sideline, Bread Kitchen didn't.
That slab of meat had to be the heartiest piece of pork I'd ever eaten in a British/European/American restaurant.
It wasn't just because they served a cute little whipped potato on the side or that they had a most fantastic sauce of blue cheese to go along with it.
It wasn't even because we had been so hungry we'd consumed nearly two baskets of bread. :P
How exactly- I don't know- I'm no chef, no aficionado, no connoisseur- I just eat- but the chop really was like a piece of good steak (that's of pork instead of beef) where my knife could easily cut (down) into the meat, where each piece was comfortable to chew, where every bite held firm the juices of the pork inside out, and where the warmth from the roast wrapped snugly around your throat and your tongue,
I exaggerate not.
Especially not about the warmth.
There're so very few places I know of that grant the same sort of comforting, cozy warmth (in the mouth) over a plate of chops when they decide to put it on the menu.
Bread Kitchen did just that.
That indescribable, hearty warmth marked the greatest- and most memorable- surprise of the evening.
It became one which I couldn't forget, one which I still haven't forgotten, and one which had me back to the restaurant a couple of weeks later for their Beef Wellington.
I haven't yet had their fish and chips.
That's something I want to try.
Not just because fish and chips are a quintessential British food (he does brunch and pasta as well) but because if a restaurant can do an ordinary, oft-neglected dish like pork chops the same way they do the more coveted steaks and Beef Wellingtons, if a kitchen can decide that every dish regardless of its social status should grant a warm, assuring hug to a hungry soul, then I'm pretty sure that their fish and chips will be worth the dining experience as well.