THE LANEWAY MARKET

We chanced upon this pretty cafe while walking along Tanjong Katong Road. At first glance, we were awed by its indie styled deco and we were greeted by cheerful staff and a clean and airy ambience.

Our first visit to this cafe was about 3 months ago, before we even started this blog. We had never heard about the cafe before but decided to give it a try anyway. The menu was relatively simple, it offered a few signature dishes like the truffle risotto, and classic breakfast foods like scrambled eggs and the American-style breakfast. The one thing that made the food stand out was the fact it was fusion, mainly Japanese-Western. They incorporated things like soba and dashi into classic Western dishes to create a whole new delicacy altogether. We were most impressed by the truffle risotto which was perfect in terms of texture, taste and portion (although it was a bit too much), making it worth every cent.


Today, we decided to drop by the Laneway Market again for a nice lunch. We were a little disappointed that they revamped the menu, removing our favourite dishes like the truffle risotto and replaced it with the Bacon infused Dashi Risotto ($17), but we tried it anyway along with the Fluffy eggy brioche French Toast ($14).




We believe that risotto is not an easy dish to master, and most restaurants tend to attempt it and usually fail in terms of texture. But we're glad to say the texture of the risotto persisted from our previous visit; it was neither overcooked nor undercooked, falling into the perfect al-dente category.

This risotto, as you can tell by its name, was made using dashi, which is a "homemade stock using seaweed and bonito flakes" (it was on their menu). It was topped with little fried mushrooms, a tomato mixture, alfalfa sprouts, and a black pepper mixture.

At first bite we could taste the dashi, followed by only a hint of the bacon flavour, which kind of fell flat as we were expecting a particular umami taste for a fusion dish. The dashi was a little overpowering and didn't really sit well with us, but it would be a great dish for fusion lovers.

The thing about risottos is the fact that it gets a little cloying after you plough through a plate of it, but the fried mushrooms and tomato mixture served with this dish made it a perfect balance. The fried mushrooms, which were crispy, was a great addition in terms of texture and the tomato mixture not only balanced out the dashi taste but also made the dish more refreshing. The only downside was that the fried mushrooms were inconsistent; some of the pieces were burnt, leaving a slightly bitter aftertaste. We also wished that they would have given a little more of the tomato mixture.

C: Maybe adding little pieces of fried bacon strips would have given it the push it needed. 

 C: They weren't lying about the "eggy" part of the dish though, the egg taste was really strong.

S: I thought it was fine, just a little dense. 

C: I got the Iced Sea Salt Chocolate  ($6.50) with pretty high expectations. It may be a pretty drink but it's nothing like it's name simply because it lacked salt. The drink was just bittersweet chocolate milk. It would have been a nice Iced Chocolate though.