Wild Rocket

C says:

We managed to get a table at Wild Rocket on fairly short notice – we called on Thursday for a table on Saturday (table for 4 – C & A, K & J). We’d read many stellar reviews about this place so we decided to check it out for ourselves.

For starters, A and J had the mushroom puree with truffle oil, and 4 of us shared 3 more starters – a sesame marinated chicken salad, seared tuna rocket salad and deep fried new potatoes with aioli and fleur de sel (which was actually one of the side dishes). They were all ok, the soup being probably the best of the lot. The tuna salad was, to me, slightly lacking in flavour – the tuna had a nice texture but the entire dish could’ve done with a little more dressing, or perhaps the tuna could’ve been marinated a little more. The chicken salad had a slightly Asian taste, probably because of the sesame oil marinade. It was quite tasty, but again I felt like it was something that could be made with some greens, leftover chicken from Hainanese chicken rice and a good dose of sesame oil.

The mains were definitely better. J had one of the house specialties, the laska pesto spaghetti served with prawns and a quail’s egg. This was very interesting; I’m not sure what it was, whether it was the laksa leaf pesto or something else, but this really did taste like a dry version of laksa. K had the crusted Chilean sea bass with kale flowers (i.e. kailan…), which was, in our collective opinion, the best dish of the night. I’m not sure how much of this was attributed to the quality of the fish rather than the seasoning, but we all relished it. A had the crispy skin salmon with crabmeat potato mash. This was good but no where near as good as the sea bass. The salmon was a tad overdone, though the skin was nice and crispy. The mashed potato was pretty good, but I couldn’t really taste any crabmeat in it. I decided to try the braised veal cheek penne with green peppercorn, which was a tad disappointing. It ended up tasting like a high-class bolognaise sauce with shredded meat instead of minced beef, but overall it wasn’t unpleasant.

However, in case you’re thinking this place isn’t worth a visit, the desserts are certainly worth trying. We had 2 chocolate lava cakes with flambé banana, a strawberry cheesecake and a kueh bolu tiramisu. One of the lava cakes collapsed a little, so the waiter said if we didn’t mind, we could have it for free. D-uh! The lava cakes were really gooey, more liquid than solid really. (I must learn how to make my puddings gooier…) They were delicious, and the banana was a nice change from the usual vanilla ice cream with which lava cakes are traditionally served. The cheesecake and tiramisu were both ‘deconstructed’, i.e. they weren’t in traditional cake form, but rather their ingredients were just piled into a glass like an ice-cream sundae. While this is fairly common with tiramisu, this is the first time I’ve had a deconstructed cheesecake and I enjoyed every bite of it. A enjoyed the tiramisu, mainly cos it was light enough that he didn’t get tipsy…

Another plus of Wild Rocket is its location within Cathay’s new backpacker hotel, Hangout Hotel@Mt Emily. After dinner, a walk around the hotel’s romantic, lantern-lit roof garden, with stunning views of the city (and a freaky-looking house right below), was a great end to the evening.

A says:

Restaurant quite nice. Staff very, very friendly. Food was good, but nothing unbeatable. It’s a nice place I’d definitely recommend trying at least once, but for the same price, there are plenty of other places I’d rather go. The rooftop does rock though.