Fosters, Holland Village, Singapore

Well, quite a few years ago before the funny tagline "an english rose cafe" appeared, Fosters was pretty much just known as Fosters or Fosters Steakhouse. I have tried them at their original location at Amber Road before they went to Specialist Centre and then Palais Renaissance (or was it the other way round?). Since I've never tried Fosters at any other location than the Amber Road one, I thought it rather interesting to see how they've changed over the years before arriving at their current permutation in Holland Village.

We decided to sample their fare by going for the roast beef dinner set. It's quite evident that Fosters is catering to a wider market now because certain corners have been cut to keep their prices competitive. Instead of cloth napkins are paper towels and the dishes the food was served in were not pre-warmed. The soup of the day was asparagus. Not too bad, tasted better than your regular Campbell's but not by too much. The breadrolls were delightfully warm and moist though and the butter was pre-thawed.

This was ordered as an appetizer in addition to the set becauce it was highly recommended. The breadcrumbs were crunchy albeit too salty but the calamari was not too rubbery. It was pretty ok, but not really as mind-blowing as I hoped it to be.

The roast beef came medium rare as we requested it. It was thinly sliced and since it was striploin; reasonably tender. The Yorkshire pudding was average, the external edges weren't crisp enough. I still prefer mine (way to go Homebrand haha!). I found the servings rather small though, these three slices were each only about half a centimetre thick. I practically inhaled the main in one breath.

We requested to have the tea before dessert because we wanted to cleanse the beefy flavor off our palates. English breakfast tea, it tasted freshly brewed as the tannic acid wasn't overpowering, the milk came hot and frothed too. I guess abit of the old school Fosters touch still remained, not many places heat their milk for your tea anymore.

The brownie did come after the tea was served. Like 10 seconds later. So we were rather annoyed that we had to start dessert first in the end and let our tea go cold. The brownie was not bad, quite rich and the ice-cream tasted slightly premium. I did notice that this was actually half a brownie cut across diagonally to create a triangle.

A quick glance around made me sort of realise that the a la carte servings were significantly larger. So I guess, you get ripped off on the set menu. Adding it all up, the dinner cost us about 80SGD, which wasn't much cheaper than if we went a la carte instead. I'll be back again (a la carte this time for sure) to see if their Carpetbag Steak and Fillet Fantastique were as good as when I had them back at Amber Road.

D

p.s: They used to do very nice afternoon teas between 3-6pm but a recent trip from a friend of mine reported that the afternoon tea had gone extremely downhill. I hope this is not the trend for the rest of their dishes.

p.p.s: I'm flying out again tomorrow night so I'll resume posting stuff some time next week. Have a happy Wednesday people!