Last Fri, S organised a surprise Birthday dinner for Iggy and dinner was at the The White Swan. It was funny how S was trying to keep the surprise and bring Iggy to the restaurant without him knowing that we were there.
They had met earlier in the day and went to Tate Modern. From the balcony, she pointed out the school that Daniel Radcliffe studied at (don’t ask me for the name, I can’t remember) and promptly went there. After viewing the school, she suddenly said, “Let’s take the first bus that comes here.” Talk about being ‘spontaneous’…hahaha. After they alighted, she brought him to some ulu alley and when they walked past The White Swan, she said, “Hey…let’s go for a drink here.” She then brought him upstairs to the dining room and SURPRISE!! LOL 😀
Now..be prepared for another onslaught of pictures of food!
Above is my starter of air-dried lamb with goat’s cheese salad. It was kinda nice considering that the sauce was a little minty, which went well with the strips of lamb. However, the meat had a strong mutton flavour and the salty meat didn’t really go well with the salty cheese. I would’ve preferred a mozarella and a vinagrette with olive oil dressing.
This was Dr P’s starter and it was amazing how even HE didn’t really remember what he ordered. It should be quail…if I remember correctly.
Gor’s starter was a soup with quail egg. Funny thing is that both Gor and S didn’t remember what kind of soup they ordered. -__-;; Gor and I were supposed to share our starters but he forgot and left me only a spoonful of soup. -__-# And the soup was good!!! Grrr….
Main course: mine was a veal steak, which surprisingly, the waiter didn’t ask for the doneness. However, it came out quite well and I love the bed of peas and roasted cherry tomatoes. J also ordered the veal and our steaks turned out exactly the same doneness! Kudos to the chef for his preciseness.
Dr P and birthday ‘boy’ both ordered the dory which they finished in a jiffy. Dr P commented that the pine nuts were a nice touch. I took a bite and I must say that the tomato salsa was very yummy too!
Gor & S ordered the same main course too…which is rack of lamb. I think the doneness of medium rare was done perfectly and I actually preferred it to my veal. S said that she preferred mine. Maybe we should’ve swapped our mains…haha.
We had to order dessert as they didn’t allow us to bring in a cake. Must be because they won’t be earning off our dessert. As such, we used Iggy’s choice of chocolate eclairs as his ‘cake’.
Funnily, the waiter had just placed the dessert in front of Iggy and then a woman from another table started singing “Happy Birthday” even before we started doing so! Haha…so cute.
Gor and Dr. P’s summer pudding with clotted cream. Disappointing, I heard. I didn’t try.
My Gooseberry fool with honey and oats. Disappointing as well. I only ate half of it. There wasn’t any bits of gooseberry in the cream but the sourness is definitely there. I should’ve gone for my initial choice of either eclairs or ice-cream. Bah…the waitress told me that it was ‘nice’. I was definitely ‘fooled’.
The homemade ice-cream was good! Especially the pink one which is elderflower with berries. Mmm…very good!
Overall, the dinner was quite good and the service was excellent. The wait staff was very pleasant and nice. The starters and the mains were quite alright. As for the dessert…stick to the chocolate or ice-creams.
They’re having a summer promotion now, if you make a reservation through their website, you’ll get 25% off the bill! An even better promo is through Top Table where you can get 50% off!
Leave a Reply