Another place that tries too hard with its name. Located at the old CMPB premises at Dempsey, they’ve “cleverly” retained the name but it now stands for Contemporary Melting Pot & Bar. Even the address is annoying. “Dempsey 6ix and 7even". Sigh. Anyway, the menu looked interesting, with some creative pizza flavours and posh twists on local food, so when some of A’s colleagues decided to have dinner together, we suggested this place so that we could finally try it.
Among the 6 of us, we ordered a number of starters so we got to sample quite a few. We had the fried chicken wings (of course) – nothing outstanding and frankly I would’ve been just as happy with the Ikea ones… The cod brandade fritters were interestingly presented as lollipops, and served with a wasabi mayonnaise. The deep fried calamari rings weren’t too bad either, with the rings being quite tender and not rubbery.
Some of the mains on the menu looked hideously overpriced - $34 for a Foie Gras burger? Or even $26 for the CMPB burger when I’m pretty sure it can’t top the $25 Morton’s one? We decided to share the pizzas instead, since those were what caught our eye to begin with, and were recommended by V.
The pizzas range from $20 to $26, and for $26 you can order a Half and Half. In true atetoomuch fashion, the other couples shared a pizza between them, but we had one each… A had the smoked salmon with cream cheese, capers and rocket, and I had a Half and Half – shredded duck with mushrooms and mozzarella, and wagyu beef with sautéed mushrooms and white wine reduction sauce.
The pizzas were good but not great. The toppings were quite tasty – I particularly liked the beef, which was very tender. The duck was a tad too sweet. Unfortunately the pizzas were let down by the crust, which was a cross between a thin Italian crust and a Skinny Pizza-esque crust, but not in a good way. It was thin but hard and flat, and pretty chewy.
The desserts were described very well on the menu, but reality fell kinda short. The goreng pisang with ice cream, which was probably intended to be a high end twist on a banana split, was very lacklustre. The fried banana fritters were overbattered, but what took the cake was the ice cream. Instead of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, which are traditional banana split flavours, there were 2 pale-coloured scoops and 1 lightish brown/purple scoop.
Between our 6 palates, we figured out that one was honey and raisin/fig and one had bits of gingersnap cookies, but for the life of us we couldn’t figure out the third. It tasted like some sort of stone fruit, but not quite peach or nectarine. When we asked the waiter what the flavours were, he proudly declared “vanilla, chocolate and strawberry”. ??!! When we asked him to check, cos no way in hell were any of those flavours “vanilla, chocolate and strawberry”, he came back with the unsatisfying answer that he didn’t know because they have many ice cream flavours, including plum which may have been that elusive one.
Nothing here was downright bad, but at the same time there wasn’t anything that would make us come back. Another Dempsey joint with more form than substance.
A says:
Pizza is passable but desserts were a massive fail. Sigh...
I think it’s a cool place to have casual after-dinner drinks but not for anything else.
CM-PB
Block 7, Unit 01-05
Dempsey 6ix and 7even
Dempsey Road
Tel: 6475-0105
Open daily: 11 am to 12 mn
www.cm-pb.net
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