Dinner at Giraffe

My Sister, the Girlfriend and her sis took me out to dinner at the Giraffe, a new trendy fusion style restaurant to celebrate my birthday. The restaurant is situated directly opposite Plaza Singapore and the Istana in a modernist glass building. It certainly looked like an attractive place to dine situated as it was right next (and even on) the large public fountain on Istana Green (bedecked with pennants for National Day).

After we were seated (and the other three had passed the staff my birthday cake) we were each given a colourful, nicely decorated menu. What I had initially assumed to just be the dining menu (with seperate drinks menu) turned out to be a combination of both. Flipping through the pages, I was quite startled at the paucity of choices that were available. There were effectively only ten or so main courses to choose from, optimistically divided between pizza, pasta/noodles or seafood. Seafood in effect consisted of two items to choose from - both salmon, one done italian style the other Japanese.

We ordered a selection of 4 starters (from the ten available) and 3 mains in the end, though I must say that I was rather shocked that any self-respecting upmarket restaurant could survive on such thin offerings from the kitchen. For the starters, none of us were than inclined towards the house salad which had a strange tangy wasabi infused dressing mixed with greens and soft shell crab, while the calamari while acceptable, could have been better, especially the batter.

The mains weren't a vast improvement - the salmon while done decently wasn't really all that tasty and their chicken schnitzel was really nothing more than an ostentatious form of chicken cutlet that you could find at any western stall in a coffeeshop (though to be fair, that is more fundamentally due to the nature of the dish than the way it was cooked).

The service and ambiance did go quite some way towards making up for the limited menu and generally uninspiring food. The restaurant itself was created with a kind of semi-alfresco concept in mind, the building set in the midst of greenery and water. The entrance to the restaurant itself was set on a raised glass platform beneath which flowed water from the fountain set in Istana Park. If they were attempting to portray themselves as a little oasis in the city, Giraffe certainly succeeded.

I was genuinely impressed with the service - the staff were generally attentive and prompt with our requests but more importantly, they were all polite and quite friendly. There was, however, an unfortunate mix up where they brought us the wrong birthday cake which necessitated a long wait while the poor manager went around desperately hunting for spare candles. Overall though, they did enough to win me over service wise.

Final Verdict: Giraffe occupies a nice setting on Istana green and I enjoyed the open, spacious dining concept. Their service was prompt and more importantly the staff were friendly. However, there are serious limitations in terms of the menu and the food could at best, be termed adequate. I would recommend this as a place to come for a cocktail or two over finger food, or for a light meal. Not a venue for a full dinner.