Zenden

Nice quiet dinner spot~ I have never been to this part of the road, let alone dine in Gallery Hotel. Armed with the Singapore Women's Weekly 1-for-1 main voucher, i made a trip down with a girlfriend last Thursday.

The lift at the lobby takes you straight to the 4th floor, where Zenden is. You actually step out of the lift right to the restaurant entrance because there's no doors to the place.

Soft jazzy music compliments the dimly-lit interior, and the best seats are the ones right next to the glass panes, although the bright lamps on each of these tables tend to make the seats slightly warm.

Menu is actually a clipboard with the different pages clipped on. Smart move I thought, as changes to the menu can be done quite easily in this case.

Bread (complimentary) - normal soft white rolls, served warm and with butter.

Baked scallops & prawns ($22) - it came with mushroom risotto and a few pieces of asparagus. The seafood was very fresh and came in a generous portion. There was also this crab/lobster bisque-like kind of sauce that came with the rice: not bad, but have it while its hot. The asparagus was too old though, I poked it aside after my 1st bite.

Flambe Tenderloin ($28) - my friend ordered this as there is something rather attractive about flambe dishes (we think). The 2 pieces of small tenderloin was done rather nicely, and it was fun watching the service staff cook it in front of you. Apparently the taste is not bad. The sauce that accompanied the beef was extremely salty however, really really salty. There was also this square of alternate layers of potatoes and cheese, baked, and very good!!. Its a french thing supposedly but I don't know what it's called.

Thick cut fries ($5) - technically we didn't order this, as my friend has requested for her side of mashed potato to be changed to this. Not bad actually, although it wasn't served hot enough for me.

Vanilla ice cream - this sweet surprise was served to us at the end of the meal, a scoop for each of us. Your normal King's ice cream, but still a nice touch I thought.

Quality of food exceeded my expectations to be honest; I had expected lesser fare from a hotel 'coffeehouse'.

Service needs to be much improved though. The place was a tad understaffed, with some of them disappearing at times, leaving only 2 staff throughout the restaurant. Very hard to get staff's attention, and I realised some of them had the tendency to walk backwards (i'm not kidding!) while looking at things or mumbling stuff, which makes getting to them even harder!

We wanted to change our main course to those under the flambe section after they took our orders so we asked a staff if he can check if they've already started preparing our orders, and if not, we would like to change our choices. He smiled sheepishly, asked us to wait a minute, then asked someone in a jacket which we assumed is the supervisor or captain to come over. So we repeated our request; he walked off to the kitchen for a while, then walked away to do other stuff. So we were puzzled, not sure if it meant yes or no??? So we asked him again, to which he said okay, and brought us the menus. We deliberated over it, then finally when I wanted to place my new order, the same guy told me: oh, im sorry, I think the chef has already started to prepare your order". Eh???

Finally, we realised they had no idea of what we were talking about just now, at all! I never did find out what he went over to the kitchen for, but we were just amused~~

Service aside, the prices here are very reasonable for a hotel, mains between $12 - $28 and desserts around $6-8. Will be a possible dinner option if I'm in the vicinity :D