One Last Time At Ember

We love Ember's comfort food. Made a table for another dinner at Ember before owner-Chef Sebastian Ng leaves and starts up something new next year. His wife Sabrina is always lovely and remembers us best as the raucous guests who partied up a storm at the dear friends' cool-chic wedding dinner held at the restaurant years ago.

It's precisely my fondness for the 12-year-old restaurant that allowed it to test my patience in waiting 45 minutes for the mains that evening. They would have merrily made us wait another 45 minutes for desserts if I hadn't insisted that I had to leave soon. With that, the desserts arrived in 10 minutes. Whewww. Otherwise the whole point of ordering desserts at the start would be negated; the menu stated that prep time was 40 minutes for an apple tart.

The restaurant's probably going to be packed out all of April with folks going for a last taste of familiar favorites. They're pretty used to crowds all this while. I've seen them filled to the brim and still dish out plates fast. I was just there two weeks ago for a fuss-free satisfying lunch. So it was rather unacceptable to have them explain that the long wait for food was because "the kitchen was really jammed." Which could only mean, something screwed up that evening in the operational process/logistics in that tiny, underpowered kitchen. What kept me from exploding into an ogre from the waiting was the company of good friends and conversation. And the continuous topping up of warm bread kept hunger pangs at bay. Heck, I might have been full from eating all that bread. Between the four of us, we had four baskets of bread. I still have one pending lunch at Ember in April. I hope that won't require a 45-minute wait for food again.

Ember still does one of the better renditions of cold angel hair pasta with kombu and abalone. The kitchen has always made it spicier for me. Nice. I hope they would offer more vegetarian options in their new restaurant. Currently, there's a grand total of two options- tofu and pasta. It works, but it's unexciting, unlike what other restaurants can offer in terms of variety for vegetarian choices within a meat-based or seafood-heavy menu. Since the restaurant began operations, the scene has changed so much, but their menu remains constant. All good, but it's time to innovate.