This place always catches my attention when I walk down Orchard Road to Dhoby Ghaut. It looks chic, modern and a cool place to hang out at with a bunch of friends, or with your partner. We were deciding a place to celebrate Yogi Bear's birthday last month, and Miss Sunshine did a little research, we were choosing among OverEasy, Helipad, Loof etc but settled on this 'cos none of us had tried it before, and there was 1-for-1 Ladies Night on Tuesday! Reviews online were bad, but we still decided to take the risk.
You can choose to sit indoors or have al fresco dining, which overlooks the Orchard Road/Dhoby Ghaut stretch and has quite a good view at night. We decided indoors as it was just too humid outside, and thought maybe we could move outside when we're having drinks later after dinner. It's a double story building, and if you're only having drinks, you can choose to sit downstairs where it's an outdoor pub/lounge area which looks quite nice to chill out at as well.
Miss Sunshine was late, so Yogi Bear, Miss Splendid and I went in first and we were famished so we ordered the
Giraffe House Salad with Soft Shell Crab to share first. It's quite nice, though nothing fantastic.
Soft, warm, moist bread on the house. These were good. We wanted to have more but we were
paiseh (embarrassed) to ask for a second serving.
We decided all the dishes we wanted to share before Miss Sunshine arrived but when she arrived, we still asked her to choose a dish, in the end, she still went along with our decisions because she's nice like that. Or maybe we just have the same tastes!
There was 1-for-1 for main courses, so we ordered 4 main courses altogether to share. The first up is
White Fish with Thyme ($14++) and something else (I can't remember, sorry!) One of my favourite dishes of the night, partly by virtue of the fact that I like white fish, but also because it's fresh and I like the way it's done and the sauce as well. Everything goes well together.
This one was not so fantastic.
Crabfish Pizza with Wasabi Mayonnaise. We liked the crust because it's crispy and fragrant, but other than that, the toppings are nothing to be raved about.
This was unanimously the best dish out of all.
Ribeye with Blue Cheese Sauce ($24/$26) (as you can see prices are quite reasonable, especially after 1-for-1!) All 4 of us answered in unison, "Medium rare". It was really tender and the sauce goes very well with the meat as well. Couldn't really taste the blue cheese (don't know whether that's good or bad haha!) but it tasted yummy all the same. Wish I could've more of this.
King Prawn and Chicken Combo ($19/$22) (All prices are estimated given my bad memory)
When it came we were slightly disappointed because there was only ONE king prawn. So we cut into 4 small pieces and shared... Maybe because it was such a small piece I couldn't really taste the freshness/sweetness of it. But because I'm such a sucker for seafood, I think it's not bad too! Chicken was well done too. At that point of time, we couldn't understand what was so bad about Giraffe that other reviews complained about their food. It's not that our taste buds are deficient, we can differentiate good and bad food fairly well, tyvm (thank you very much). Maybe they changed chefs?
After the main courses, we ordered more drinks. Before this we ordered fruit juices to go with our dinner. At this point we got confused by their promotion.We thought it was 1-for-1 for EVERYTHING we ordered, but no, it was only 1-for-1 for the first set of 1-for-1 items we order, if you get what I mean. So we thought the fruit juices were 1-for-1, and our 2nd round of drinks would also be 1-for-1, but we were wrong. Anyway, after the big hoo-ha about the confusing promotions they have (so confusing that the management agreed as well and were going to change the promotions already, so there may be different promotions now), Miss Splendid ordered the
Snowball Cocktail. What a cute name for an alcoholic drink. Sounds like a name for your pet.
Tasted like yakult, which I liked. Alcohol taste is very slight as well, which I liked even more, haha! The rest ordered martinis, which they said were too bitter.
The portions of the main dishes were quite small, but somehow the 4 of us were still very full after the food. Yet we couldn't let off the desserts, because they looked and sounded so good on the menu, and we were lazy to move out of Giraffe to another place. We were even too lazy to move outdoors, haha!
Prices for cakes are very reasonable, around $6 per slice. They're all airflown from America, which sounds impressive, but throws doubts on the freshness of these cakes.
Chocolate cake.
Cheesecake.
Coffee-flavoured.
We thought too highly of ourselves. In the end we only managed to finish half of each cake, what a waste, because we were simply too full. Despite the bad reviews on service, the service staff that night were attentive and helpful and patient in explaining to us the confusing promotions. Food was good. We'll probably come back again some time or another, especially if there's still 1-for-1. Good place for couples or girls' night out. Guys' night out maybe, haha!
How much was spent: Around $35 per pax
Would I come back? Probably. Just to eat the rib eye and enjoy the ambience!
Address: Istana Park
Orchard Road
Singapore 238823
Tel: +65 6334 4653
