Nicolas Le Restaurant

I'm a conservative eater. No interest in progressive cuisine or molecular gastronomy. To have gone round the much-raved about Michelin-starred restaurants and not ending up liking them very much confirms that I've boring tastebuds.

I'll pay for good food, but there's a certain limit too. Fancy doesn't cut it unless there's a hidden value to be discovered upon dining in a restaurant. And that doesn't mean having the chef come over to talk to the table. I dislike schmoozing. When the man and the friends could cook almost just as well, and some better, along with age, comes the appreciation of the value of food that could be quite separate from the methods used in the kitchen, and of course, the quality of floor service.

For this quarter at least, as long as the standards are kept, I'll be returning to Nicolas Le Restaurant a fair bit. It's not that easy to cook eggs, perfectly. Of course it wasn't the egg that won me over. It's the consistent delivery of quality in its food, cooking and attention to details. The few times I went, my hosts and I forgot to give prior notice of dietary preferences. So we were suitably pleased when the kitchen accommodated us at the last minute. The replacement dishes for meat that came out of the kitchen weren't slipshod. They were carefully thought out, as if the chefs had pre-empted these requests and laid out a couple of alternatives. This sort of effort, I appreciate.

I very much prefer Chef Nicolas Joanny's new restaurant compared to the old one. I'm not fond of French cuisine. However, there're variations that innovative chefs have done to make me like their brand of slightly off-centre French cuisine. Having eaten at Nicolas Le Restaurant a couple of times, I find that the new menu's much more vibrant and somehow in sync with our tastebuds, giving it familiar finishes, yet exciting flavors. I like the attention paid to the harmony of the flow between plating and plates for each course on the table. And these influences are clearly Japanese, a result of his time spent in Kanazawa during his sabbatical. I love the restaurant's new brand of presentation on my plate.