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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Barracks


Blur Ting and I have similar taste buds. The family and I love all her recipes when I make them at home. And we all love the restaurants she recommends. Recently, she recommended Barracks.

The place is about dressed-down chic. The pillars of old concrete are yellow and pock-marked. The tables are gently rusted. The electrical wires that power the light bulbs are exposed and hang in loops from off the ceiling... and the entrance is a hole in the wall with exposed brick and irregular edges. Like someone had had a good go at that wall with a wrecking ball... and then regretting, decided to paint it white to salvage the damage.

I can only imagine that quite a fair bit of money was saved at the renovations and seriously considered doing the same thing for my new home. Grunge chic.

I eyed the squid ink paella twice but ordered an ahi taki salad instead because The Husband wasn't with me to help eat up my leftovers. I promised myself to drag him there to share the squid ink paella with me. We did that at lunch on Sunday only to find that the item isn't on the menu on weekends. Hmmmm... disappointed mou.

But my anchovy pesto skinny pizza with boccancini cheese was gooooood! There was tart and salty. There was crust and mushy. There was bitter and sweet. Everything came together to dance on my tongue. Quite nicely co-ordinated too!! Most times, The Husband is un-enthousiastic about food places. He prefers the robust flavours of our hawker centre and only goes to restaurants to humour me. Then he'll shrug and say "It's an ok place". And then he'll say that he prefers what I cook.

As a family, we never order spaghetti bolognaise out... nor pesto sauce spaghetti... nor aglio oglio... nor spaghetti with cream sauce... nor mushroom cream sauce risotto. These are easy to make at home and our garden provides the fresh herbs to make these dishes surpass those overpriced items in the restaurants. In fact, Little Boy ordered the mushroom cream risotto and decided he didn't like it. "Mom.... the food is too creative. I like the risotto you make at home."

But The Husband actually said that the truffle fries were good... and he loved the sweet potato fries that came with his burger. The meat patty was good quality meat... nice thick and with very little fat. And when The Husband crunched into the anchovy and pesto Skinny Pizza, he nodded and chewed. It's hard to get The Husband to smile at anything so nodding and chewing says a lot.

I like the combi of flavours that came on the anchovy and pesto Skinny Pizza. It's given me some ideas on how to play with those flavours. It's been a long while since a trip to the restaurant has inspired me to play in my kitchen.

Hmmmm... I wonder how they make that thin thin crust. And it shouldn't be difficult to make truffle fries, right?

3 comments:

Blur Ting said...

Wah, I must try the pizza! The moment I ate at that place, I knew I had to bring the kids there but I haven't done it till now. Shame on me. I suspect they will go for the bay shrimp pasta but I will order the skinny pizza the next time I am there! I wanted to eat the truffle fries too but 2 persons can only eat so much.... Oh, I am hungry now!

Petunia Lee said...

Ting - Hee! Hee! First you got my gastric juices flowing. Now I got yours!

Open Kitchen Concept said...

Hey.. I missed this post somehow.. wow. Sounds good.. I have to go..