A pleasant surprise it was when a friend suggested we have dinner at this place in Swissotel Merchant Court Hotel.
I say it a surprise because I'd actually heard much about the lunch buffet and the afternoon tea of Ellenborough Market Cafe, with most of the reviews saying that the food was good.
Perhaps it is one of the more interesting restaurants this side of Clarke Quay where you can bring your grandmother and grandfather and the seniors for a family-type meal without having to worry about thumping Techno or growling Deep Bass Hip Hop from the clubs close by.
Also, no need to worry about half-drunk party revelers stumbling into your toddler cousin or wheelchaired great-grandmother.
Ellenborough Market Cafe is as family-friendly as it gets, and yep, the food's pretty good too.
One thing about the buffet here is that their aesthetics tend to be on the neat side, so if you're someone who likes to look at elaborate sets at the buffet counter when you're taking your food, this place might be too boring for you.
Not to say that their food isn't a conversation starter though.
On the contrary.
Especially if you like Peranakan-style cuisine.
Near our table were four dishes of distinct Peranakan-style food.
What precisely they are, I don't really remember, but there was warm, fluffy white rice stained blue by the dye of the butterfly pea flower, there was babi pongteh, there was sayur lodeh and there as another dish that I think was beef-something.
I took a portion of blue butterfly pea rice.
I took a bowl of babi pongteh.
And I took two bowls of sayur lodeh.
It was lovely just being able to have the babi pongteh and the sayur lodeh.
I don't often have these dishes in my circle, so glad I am that I got to have my favorite vegetable (cabbage) stewed in coconut milk curry- that's sayur lodeh, glad I am to have fragrant butterfly pea rice on the side, and glad I am to have this dish of braised pork in fermented soy bean sauce.
What I found cute was that whilst the dish doesn't specify which part of the pig is to be served in babi pongteh, here they seemed to be mostly pork belly, which, if you ask me, enhanced the enjoyment of the dish even more.
Of course there can be no special dinner without freshly shucked oysters (whenever they're available), so between the both of us we got about 5 plates, most of which my friend finished.
It isn't that I don't like oysters.
It's just that I don't like to fill myself up with them.
So whilst I like to have them plain or with a dash of lemon, my friend has them with vinegar that he gets from the Chinese cuisine side.
There was quite a bit of variety at this place, by the way.
Besides the usual favorites of salad, soup and bread, there was also an offering of pasta- the sauce looked really creamy and rich, there was a whole baked salmon- which was really popular with many of the diners, then there were cooked mussels in some sort of sauce, and then there was an ice slope with fresh seafood all neatly laid out.
Think that slope included prawns and mussels and maybe scallops.
At another time I might have helped myself to the prawns and the scallops but I was watching my tummy and so decided to go easy on the seafood this time.
Over on the Asian/Chinese side, there was a dish of fried rice, there was a dish of sweet sour fish (or perhaps some other dish), and then there were stir-fried vegetables and stir-fried pieces of chicken in sesame oil or some other gravy that I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with.
Again I didn't go much on the Asian/Chinese side.
I had to be very specific on what I wanted to eat.
And I had to be very specific on how much I ate.
So instead of going for fried rice, I went over to the Chinese rojak bowl where I got myself a dish of youtiao and pineapple with the sweet rojak sauce.
Don't laugh, I'm not really that big a fan of cucumber and radish and all the other vegetables in Chinese rojak. The only things I like are the pineapple and the youtiao and so since this is a free-for-all choice, why not?
The youtiao (although cut thinly) was very crispy just the way I liked it.
Going lean for dinner this evening didn't mean that I missed out on other foods that I wanted to eat.
There was sushi and sashimi at the Japanese section and that, I didn't want to miss, so I helped myself to a bit of salmon sashimi, a little bit of cooked, chilled shrimp prepared Japanese style, and four pieces of Aburi Salmon sushi that unfortunately was a little cold and hard by the time I got down to eating them.
I moved on to dessert after this, where, now on looking back, I'm wondering just why I took so little when I could have had so much more.
Like what they'd served with the hot food, their dessert range too had so many Peranakan-inspired selections, I tell you.
There was this three-tiered tray of colorful kueh kueh made from mostly glutinous rice.
There was this huge bowl of smooth, fragrant durian pengat. (Very popular this one)
There was a row of interesting rectangular-shaped cakes sitting pretty in the chiller.
And there were two pots of hot desserts somewhere in the corner.
Don't ask me why I skipped out on the kueh kueh. Also don't ask me why I didn't try a cake or their ice cream.
I don't know.
Maybe I was really feeling full by that time to want try this and that and that and this.
Or maybe I was gotten myself intrigued by the hot desserts more than the cold.
So I got these.
Two little bowls. one of durian pengat (with coconut milk!), one of yellow mung bean soup or tau suan as we commonly call it in local vernacular.
I can't say for sure which I liked better, but let's just say the durian pengat was really smooth, very creamy and so fragrant that I felt like I were eating the durian fruit itself.