Another trip to Howards Storage World, another opportunity to eat at the Espirito Santo bistro. After a rather disappointing experience when we went on the day it opened, we thought after 3 months we could see whether they improved.
In terms of service, there are obviously 2 or 3 very savvy and competent servers, but the rest are still really blur. A ordered a salami sandwich, and the waitress brought it saying “You ordered a burger?” At first we thought it was déjà vu, or perhaps the burger that we order the last time and never got… Turns out it was the correct salami sandwich after all, as one of the head waitresses rushed over to assure us.
The sandwich wasn’t bad – very clean tasting with just sliced salami, tomatoes, some chutney and lettuce. Definitely not something I’d order for myself, but it was really up A’s alley. Fries probably weren’t made in-house, but they were well fried and ended up pretty good.
I was quite undecided about what to order. I was toying between a porcini risotto, baked cod with fettuccine, and one of Fabianne’s Brazilian specialities. In the end I decided to try a Brazilian dish, and the question turned to: which one? It was a toss up between the moqueca, a fish stew with coconut milk and dende oil, and the classic feijoada, a stew with pork, salted beef, bacon and black beans. Since this is a butcher specialising in meat, I decided to go with the feijoada.
Alas, it was pretty much a non-event. The flavour of the stew was one-dimensional and not at all outstanding. I guess it’s not exactly fair to compare this to a properly-plated dish, because feijoada was never meant to be fine-dining. Like all traditional peasant food, it was created with scraps, leftover meat and bone pieces, bacon and chorizo for flavour, and black beans added to stretch the dish as far as it could go. The beauty of peasant food is creating something out of nothing and I appreciate that, but notwithstanding that awareness, this still didn’t have any rustic authenticity either.
I’m not sure if I’m going to give this place another chance. Their roast pork is definitely one of the better ones I’ve had; I guess we just have to go without lofty expectations, and not order anything too ambitious.
A says:
Sandwich was surprisingly good and affordable (compared to certain high end sandwich places). Bad latte though.
And, the wait staff seem consistently blur every time we come.
Fabianne’s Bistro
Espirito Santo
80 Marine Parade Road
#B1-83B, Parkway Parade
Tel: 6440-8867
Opening Hours: Monday to Sunday: 10am to 9pm
1 comment:
I am also experience the same bad service at Espirito Santo.
I order a house pour red wine and it was server at "room temp" slighly higher than the aircon enviroment 25C.
When I told the server that the winw is a tad too warm she look blur and reply it chill in the frig.
I have sent a feed-back to them dated 14 Dec 2008, until today never hear from them. It give me an impression they are not interest in improving themselves.
Well they lost a customer.
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