Couple months ago a friend texted me in the middle of the afternoon asking if I could do an early dinner instead of the usual hour.
Why, I was curious to know.
The answer, when it came back, was swift and sure.
Someone happened to have a (very strong) craving for steak... and Marche was having an offer.
I'm someone who doesn't pass up on a good deal if I can, especially when it's something like 30%, 50% between the hours of 4 and 6, so, okay, we went.
I'd assumed that Marche Suntec City on a working weekday afternoon would be quiet, but no, it wasn't.
There were groups of people inside the restaurant by the time we arrived at 430, there was a queue in front of us at the waiting line, and all in all, it took us nearly fifteen minutes of waiting before we got in.
My very hungry friend decided to waste no time searching for a table, so very quickly we got a four-seater close to the children's playground, and off it was to the steak station at once whilst I sat there guarding our bags and contemplating the choices I could have.
Anyone who's ever been to Marche knows the variety of meals that they offer.
They're not always healthy, as in healthy per se, but there's always something for someone, child or adult, old or young.
Doesn't matter how hungry you are, doesn't matter whether all you want is a cup of coffee or a pastry or a dessert.
Doesn't even matter whether you're vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo or none of the above at all.
There're plenty of choices at their stations, and to me, the most difficult part is trying to decide what it is you want to have, and whether or not you should have it now.
I tend to be careful about my choices when I want to have them.
So, even though I could possibly go for, say, the pan-fried salmon, the steak, the huge chonk of a pork knuckle, the Spanish-style paella or the roasted vegetables, today's dinner was between either the savory crepe, and the pasta.
I wanted the crepe.
Marche does theirs well- you can be assured that you'll get lots of ingredients and vegetables wrapped inside a nice, floury, crispy pancake- but my appetite was such that I wouldn't be able to finish one whole crepe on my own today, and I knew my friend wasn't wanting to share.
That left me with just the pasta.
And a great choice it turned out to be.
After all, it's not every day I get to have spaghetti and there are very few (affordable) places- besides Marche- where I can be sure the cream of the carbonara will be fresh enough that it won't sit heavy in me, or, worse still, give me a stomachache.
So I ordered a spaghetti carbonara, with cheese, ham and egg.
There's no picture, however.
The light over my side of the table didn't do my oodles of noodles enough justice- and try as I might- no amount of editing could show my creamy, satisfying plate of spaghetti to its best and its finest.
That wasn't the case for my friend's steak.
His picture turned out beautifully, showing off the chonk of its weight, the pale red of the medium-rare meat, the glisten of the fat at its side, and its slightly burnt edge.
I got a bit of the cow fat.
I got a third of the sausage from our shared rosti plate as well.
And even though you might think it strange that I only got a third of the sausage when I could have more, well, I wasn't feeling that disciplined, there were lovely pieces of ham on my own plate already, and honestly, what I really wanted from the rosti here was that huge dollop of sour cream.