Sunday, October 24, 2010

My Little Spanish Place

C says:

This little hole-in-the-wall neighbourhood joint reminds me of the first Don Quijote at Lorong Kilat – a small, understated place that seats just about 30 or so. I was quite encouraged by the fact that it’s owned by a Spanish lady, since I figured it had to be pretty authentic. Because it seats so few, it was surprisingly hard to get a table here. Last minute reservations on a Friday and Saturday proved unsuccessful, and we only managed to get a table on the day itself for the less popular Sunday night

They have an interesting split in the menu, between tapas and raciones, the latter being slightly bigger portions for sharing, in between tapas and main courses. Because we wanted to try their house special paella, we were quite restrained in our tapas order.


To start, we had the potato omelette, which is apparently the national dish of Spain. The menu confusingly said that it’s traditionally served cold, but they can warm it on request. However ours arrived warm by default. A took the first bite and after a moment, said “chai tao kueh”. I thought he was joking, but when I tried it, I had to agree. The flavour and texture was very surprisingly like chai tao kueh. Good but not what I was expecting.



The two seafood dishes fared better, especially the snails, which were sautéed with jamon, chorizo and white wine. The snails didn’t taste overly “gamey”, and the combination of jamon and white wine was a winner. The squid cooked in its own ink was another unexpected dish – I expected the squid being sautéed in a squid ink gravy of sorts, but instead the squid ink had been incorporated into a batter, and this was just a version of deep fried calamari.


The paella takes about 20 minutes to cook – the house paella has everything and the kitchen sink thrown in. Prawns, mussels, calamari, chicken and chorizo, with saffron rice. The rice was very flavourful, infused with all the flavours of the ingredients, but I would’ve liked the rice to be a little more moist. The charred bits were good, but I don’t think it was worth the wait. Plus, with so many interesting tapas and raciones to try, the smallest paella still fills us up way too much, so unless we come in a larger group, I doubt we’ll be ordering this again.


Because A isn’t a big paella fan, he left me to hoover up the paella while he saved room for dessert. We went with the Fried Milk, which was actually more like little morsels of deep fried custard. It was lighter than expected and a good end to the meal.

I’d put this place more or less on par with Don Quijote – it’s not the long awaited Spanish restaurant that we’ve been waiting for, but it’s ok for an occasional fix.

A says:

Fantastic service. The food’s mostly good, but not exactly spectacular. We’ll probably be back just because there are so few Spanish places. Oh, and to try the churros.

My Little Spanish Place
619 Bukit Timah Road
Tel: 6463-2810
Lunch: Sat & Sun 12 noon to 4 pm
Dinner: Tues to Sun 6.30 pm to midnight
http://www.mylittlespanishplace.com.sg/

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