Personally I feel that Iggy’s did not disappoint. Although JL and YY voiced at the end of the night that it would have been more worth it to spend $200 on fresh sashimi, but I thought that the service, ambience and rather experimental fusion food was well worth the money.
For a start, the service was top notch. There were no waitresses with poor command of english here. Paolo greeted us cheerfully and showed us to our seats while Azman intelligently answered all our queries, and obliged our request to speed up the courses only for YH since she had to leave by 9.30pm for a gig. He even bantered with YY, coolly entertaining our seemingly trouble-making suggestions of staying till 3am. (Post-script by ML: While we didn't stay until 3am, we were still pretty pesky by being the absolute last to leave at 12 midnight, after making a heck of a lot of noise.)
It was about this time that Mr. X walked over and said hi to YH. He introduced himself as a friend of Sam Yeo’s (owner of barstop) and mentioned that he knew YH from barstop. We quickly found out that Mr. X was a co-owner of Iggy’s , but since he did not give us so much as a discount or a complimentary dish, we shall make no further mention of him henceforth.
While waiting for WK, we enjoyed our southern french red wine and some spiced crackers. It is important to mention here that out of the 100+ bottles listed in the wine menu, only a handful were less than $100. The average price for a bottle of wine was $1000, and there were quite a few going for $20,000. Nevertheless, our 2 bottles of wine that were priced at $95 and $80 were delightful. Luckily, we did not order the $20,000 bottle of wine.
The section where we were seated was decorated as a study room. It was not particularly romantic, but it had the “perfect lighting for photography” -EL. There was a generous amount of space within our round table, as well as between the four tables in the room. We spent 10 minutes of our time honing our chinese diction, discussing why the ang mor at the next table was wearing such a causal white polo shirt when his date was all dolled up.
But more importantly, on to the food.
Dinner started with bread and then a complimentary appetiser that was a green curry emulsion with a strange-looking unidentified piece of white mushy object within.
ML courageously asks: “What is this?”
EL: “It’s brain!!” (repeats a few times)
Everyone else: “It’s not brain!!”
The waiter informs us that it is indeed not brain, instead, it is ovaries of codfish. We were undecided as to which was worse. Some things were definitely better left unsaid.
To distract us from the word “ovaries”, JL introduces a new aspect to the dish: “It tastes chinese!!”
YY: “It tastes indian!!”
EL: “It’s totally thai lor”..
The evening of contrasting comments continued, with descriptions such as “light” (ML) and “rich” (YY) used on the exact same dishes.
I believe here-in lies the genius of Iggy’s food. They are unconventional in their use of ingredient combinations to create fresh new colours in the taste palette.
For example, on the IKURA dish (Marinated Salmon roe, Orange jelly, egg royale), the saltiness of salmon roe was delicately balanced by the lightness of egg custard and every-so-slight bitterness of orange peel.
In the JABUGO IBERICO BELLOTA dish (Jamon Iberico, grilled watermelon, tomato concasse and micro herbs), the saltiness of the ham was perfectly offset by the sweet juice of the watermelon as well as the tanginess of the tomatoes. Even the different textures within the dish complemented one another.
The popular hits of the evening were Pan-fried foie gras on toast and the smoked mullet roe cappellini (Postscript by EL: I forgot to take pictures of it, too busy eating it! Plus a picture of the Duck Breast).
I headed off before dessert was served, but I heard that the IGGY’S LEMON TART was what I should have missed my gig for.
(Postscript by EL: Dessert commenced with a pre-dessert with was a blood orange sorbet on a bed of forest berries and jelly, followed by a delicious Chocolate Dome with Gingerbread Ice-cream, which we happily devoured YH's portions :) The highlight of the dessert had to be Lemon Tarts, served with a peanut butter biscuit tree. These Lemon Tarts had Pop Rocks (those crackly sweets that pop in your mouth) baked into them so it was literally like fireworks going off in your mouth haha.)
Overall, the evening was extremely enjoyable, with talks of making IGGY’S a yearly christmas event. Of course, much of the enjoyment can be attributed to the hugely succesful GEP system, which will be furthur analysed in the upcoming blog entry.
(Posting on behalf of YH)
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