Orange Clove catering

C says:

We were contacted by a representative from Neo Group, an F&B company with several arms, including a fairly new high-end catering company called Orange Clove. They were holding a Bloggers Night and invited us to attend for a food sampling and a presentation about the company.


Their aim is to elevate catering to something more than just a convenient option that sacrifices taste and quality – a bit like Purple Sage, really. Veering towards “fine dining” catering, they provide proper cutlery and porcelain-looking melamine plates, attractive serving dishes rather than just standard silver chafing dishes, and table decor that includes flowers and tea lights. They also pride themselves on ensuring that the quality of the food isn’t sacrificed just because of the logistics of a large event.


We didn’t try everything at the food tasting, but what we did have definitely had potential. The mushroom bruschetta was good, I liked that they used new potatoes for their roast potato salad, and there was an asparagus and snapper fillet roll with miso butter sauce that was very good. Some dishes had room for improvement though, like the honey chicken which tasted good but would really have benefitted from using boneless pieces of chicken.


Desserts were quite good, particularly the mini cheesecakes. They also do customised cupcakes (tonight’s had the Orange Clove logo on them), which, after you peel off the thick marzipan coating, yielded a surprisingly moist cupcake.

We’re not big users of the catering market, so I don’t think we’ll ever get a chance to use them, but they seem to be an interesting option if you want a slightly more spiffy presentation.

A says:

Sadly, the spread was very small so I can’t give a proper critique. I’ll just agree with what C says.

www.orangeclove.com.sg

Golden Pillow 933

C says:

As the name suggests, this place specialises in a curry bread bowl that looks (and feels, almost) like a soft pillow. It’s quite innovative in the sense that to avoid the curry gravy from seeping into the bread and turning it into a soggy mess, waxed paper is placed inside the bread bowl first, so that you can tear away at the bread and dunk it in the curry. Utensils are strictly not very necessary (except to actually eat the chicken), so this is a good picnic option.

My first experience trying to order from here was over 5 years ago and it wasn’t very positive – they never delivered my order to a friend’s party and when I called to rail at them, they claimed that they had delivered it the day before. I vowed never to patronise them again, but I think a 5-year grudge is more than enough to make a statement…

I decided to give them a try again on Thursday night, and ordered some food to be delivered to my folks’ place since my uncle and aunt were joining us for dinner. Delivery is free for orders over S$30, so I ended up ordering 3 dishes – the chicken curry pillow, gailan with oyster sauce, and a sang choy bao (lettuce rolls with a chicken, prawn and turnip filling that you roll yourself).

Initially it didn’t bode very well. I called on Wednesday to place the order for the next day, and ten minutes after I put down the phone, they called me asking if they could deliver earlier because it was raining. I said “Hello??!! My order is for tomorrow!!!” They checked and said “Oh yes yes, ok tomorrow”. Eep! I called again on Thursday afternoon just to make sure, but I was only able to heave a sigh of relief when I got the SMS from my dad that the food had arrived – right on time so no complaints in the end.

Apart from being a novel idea, the golden pillow itself isn’t half bad. The bread got a big thumbs up from everyone – it was very soft and slightly sweet, just like KFC’s bread rolls from days gone by. The curry was ok but not fantastic, given that I’m quite particular about what constitutes a good chicken curry.

The gailan was very good – very fresh and green, considering that we only ate it about 2 hours after it was delivered. The sang choy bao was a little bland, and needed some of my grandma’s belacan to spice it up. It wasn’t bad but I don’t think it was worth $12, given that the golden pillow was the same price for something much more substantial.

Well, I think I’ve more or less overcome my phobia of their unreliability. While I won’t be ordering from them on a regular basis, it’s always nice to know that they’re a pretty reasonable and convenient option.

A says:

The bread was surprisingly good. Curry was not bad, but the whole thing is more gimmicky than anything.

Golden Pillow 933
Tel: 6323 8933
www.goldenpillow933.com.sg

Delifrance

C says:

My friend Y held a birthday party for her daughter B on Sunday afternoon (Happy 3rd Birthday, B!), and catered some tea time treats from Delifrance.



The photos only show maybe 5% of the spread that we had. Y went the whole hog and ordered practically everything on their party platter list. Besides the canapés (smoked salmon, egg, tuna, crab and chicken mayonnaise) and pastries (pain au chocolat and danishes) in the pictures, there were sweet and savoury mini croissants, madeleines, mini éclairs, and little bite sized cakes and tarts. Everything was delicious – the mini éclairs, in coffee and chocolate flavours, were particularly addictive. The mini ham and cheese croissant was good too, as were the canapés. Overall, it was much better than expected, given the unfortunate image of Delifrance nowadays.

Delifrance has certainly come a long way from its humble beginnings, and I’m not sure that I like where it’s going. I still remember when it first opened – it tried to recreate the ambience of a typical Parisian street café, down to retaining the French names of everything on their menu, and providing French newspapers and magazines (at least at their outlet at the now defunct Peranakan Place) for browsing.

Now, perhaps out of necessity, Delifrance has had to change its image and menu somewhat, to much more localized fare. While that is acceptable and probably inevitable in order to move with the times, I really do take offence at the new names for some of their items. I would have preferred it if they had simply reinvented their menu to include local fare. Instead, they’ve come up with bastardized creations and, even worse, they’ve STILL tried to retain some French in the names of the dishes. Honestly, Le Spicy Crab Spaghetti and Curry Au Poulet really doesn’t do it for me. If they had just stuck to purely English names, they would have retained a lot more credibility, in my opinion.

Still, I’m just ranting, perhaps unfairly given how surprisingly good the food was on Sunday. There’s still some life to Delifrance yet.

A says:

I’ve always thought Delifrance was very blah and swore off them years ago so this spread was a real surprise. Everything I tried was not bad at all. In fact, it was probably better than the catered food I had from Purple Sage the other day (cause it was easier to eat and didn’t have fancy schmancy ingredients). When W&M went to the actual Delifrance outlet, the food they ordered looked passable as well. I even ended up finishing their dessert (waste not, want not).

While it’s still not some a place I’d actually go to eat, if I had no other viable choices, I wouldn’t complain at all. And as catering goes, I’d wholly recommend it.

Home Catering – The Spotted Pig at home

C says:

S had a birthday party at her place on Saturday night (Happy Birthday S!), and got her cousin Michael Han to cater. Michael is a pastry chef at Canele Patisserie, and has his own private home catering set-up as well. I was very impressed with the food – they were all his own creations and were very professionally executed. Here’s the menu for the evening:

One of the best presentations for the starters was the prawn Caesar sandwiches – check them out:

Another creative use of utensils was little lab beakers to contain the chilled cucumber gazpacho. The soup itself wasn’t quite up my alley, but A surprisingly liked it a lot.


Out of the starters, my favourites were the vine cherry tomato and sausage salad, and the braised ham hock with pea puree, which was presented in individual glass bowls.




The main courses were Moroccan chicken wings, a chilli con carne made with wagyu beef, and orriechette with lamb shoulder. The chilli was delicious and the meat, being wagyu beef, was wonderfully tender. I enjoyed the wings most of all (what’s new) – they were well marinated, slightly spicy and meltingly tender, with the meat falling off the bone without even being coaxed.

Finally came dessert. There was individual lemon tarts which were nice albeit a little on the sour side, and of course the highlight which was the birthday cake – a lovely chocolate mousse cake with almond paste and a biscuity layer.




This may be a not-so-subtle plug, but really I was very impressed with dinner as a whole. He even roasted the duck himself for the Asian Roast Duck, rather than taking the easy way out and buying it from Johnson Lock or something. No wonder the duck was exceptionally tender and succulent.

So you can either call the number that’s on the menu, or alternatively let me know and I can ask S to liaise with him, if you’d like to explore the possibility of getting Michael to cater for your own private party.

A says:

The food was interesting, even though nothing really stood out (except maybe the chilli con carne with wagyu beef).

Presentation was nice and it’ll probably be good for small parties of 8 to 12 people. Maybe we had too many people there because it became a fight for the food at first and I had stuff in the wrong order.

This guy’s definitely going to be a chef to watch out for in the future though.