Truffs & Friends

Two of my friends from Singapore, EL and JL, came to London recently and bunked in chez moi. The thing we all have in common is the love of food (as with most of my friends!) and one of them has taken this passion further and opened his own chocolate atelier, Truffs, in Singapore. In this cosy open kitchen, he makes and serves only 2 products - hand-rolled truffles (4 varieties - 55%, 66%, 70% and a sugarless one) and a chocolate cake. Talk about specialising!

Photos are courtesy of Truffs, from their Facebook Fan Page

I do attest to the quality of the truffles and you have to try one for yourself to know. Unfortunately, they are only available in Singapore at the moment though I've been trying to persuade him to open Truffs London hah! The chocolate cake is also amazingly moist, dense and chocolatey. Don't take my word for it, since I'm a friend (though I have no shares in the business!) but there have been several reviews posted in the Singaporean blogsphere and magazines, latest being a hilarious one from Mr Brown (you may not fully appreciate it if you don't understand Singlish, the colloquial English spoken in Singapore). TimeOut Singapore has also voted Truffs' Chocolate Cake as Top 5 in Singapore. If you're in Singapore, do check Truffs out. They're located on the 2nd floor of a shophouse at 79a Telok Ayer Street, Singapore 068627.

So while EL and JL were here, we went along to William Curley, apparently Britain's Best Chocolatier 2007-2009, for a class in chocolates and ice cream. We made sea salt caramel pralines, vanilla and chocolate ice-creams (using a pacojet!!). As it was just the 3 of us, it was really personalised with Suzy the pastry chef entertaining our many questions about ice-creams and chocs. I would highly recommend their classes, although I'm not too sure if they regularly conduct classes at the Belgravia branch (which is where we went to) instead of the Richmond branch. Check their website for more details.

We also dined at Viajante, a new restaurant located in the newly converted Bethnal Green Townhall Hotel. I will put up a separate review with pictures another time, unless C beats me to it :) but suffice to say that the four foodies weren't wowed by the food nor service, and the second half of the meal dragged on needlessly, especially after the chef owner Nuno Mendes left. Hopefully it's because they're still in soft opening stage, and they get their act together as it is quite different expectations hosting supper clubs (as Chef Mendes was doing prior to this venture) and serving paying guests in a high-end restaurant environment.

To send them off in style, as well as to mark a special appearance by Wan on his quick stopover en route to South Africa, we had a massive dinner of roast pork from Tang Freres (siu yoke), specially hand carried back from Paris by EL, roast duck from Four Seasons here in London and sambal kangkong, all washed down with Pimms!



The roast pork from Tang Freres/Tang Gourmet is my absolute favourite and possibly best roast pork in the world! I was in Paris the week before and was completely devastated when Tang Gourmet ran out of roast pork when we went in the evening. They sell it both at their main supermarket takeout counter at 48 Avenue d'Ivry and Tang Gourmet deli along Avenue de Choisy, right outside of Place d'Italie metro stop. Try to get there in the afternoon, or it'll be sold out!

It was a decadent couple of weeks of eating as we had cakes after cakes, ice-creams after ice-creams, chocolates after chocolates. I guess that's what happens if you hang out with chefy foodie types :) At one point, we had 8 different cakes in a day and on another, 8 different ice-creams sitting in my fridge. Now that they're gone, who's going to help me finish all the leftovers??