A matter of timing

Life is a matter of timing. Take today. I had just dropped my sis Daffy @ her Ming Teck Park home n was heading for my own for a quick snooze be4 tonite’s Surabaya Johnny performance (about which more will be written in a future post) @ GM’s home.

When I hit the top of Sixth Avenue and was stopped by the red light at the junction of Bukit Timah Road n Sixth, I noticed some people running along the section where Tin Hill Bistro Winebar used to be and which now houses a Standard Chartered branch.

Traffic cops appeared from all directions and more surprisingly they turned into Bukit Timah Road against the flow of traffic — till i noticed there was strangely little traffic but more and more people were running.

Had I been anywhere else but in Singapore — my country, my home and where, despite having been robbed at gun point yonks ago in Katong Shopping Centre, I feel safe — I would certainly have panicked, thinking something really untoward had happened.

As the red light seemed stuck, I had plenty of time to note that a large crane was entangled with something. Then the lights changed and I was on my way along Dunearn Road and home.

Traffic was heavy but moving as more traffic cops appeared to close off slip roads turning back into Bukit Timah Road, where, across the canal, I saw bumper to bumper traffic, moving slower than a crawl.

I wondered what the cause was. The roads weren’t flooded today although there had been intermittent light to heavy rain.

Got home safely, had my snooze and then on waking, I was horrified to see from my balcony, that traffic was now also slowing to a crawl along the road outside my home.

The mystery was solved later when a neighbour I met on my way out said excitedly she heard on the news that a crane had hit an overhead bridge near Sixth Avenue and the bridge had collapsed.

After the Surabaya Johnny performance, I returned home and checked the net. My neighbour’s version of the news is only half correct.

The crane hit the overhead bridge in the morning and it was around the time I was leaving my sister’s that the decision to cut the bridge and close part of Bukit Timah Road was taken. I had witnessed the start of the process to execute that decision.

“Heng Ah!” is what some people would say. Had I dillied and dallied at Daffy’s –as I sometimes do — I would have been caught in a massive jam and might never have made it home to rest up for maximum enjoyment of tonite’s performance!

Life, as I said, is really and truly all a matter of timing, although it isn’t always entirely in my hands to get it right. It just happens sometimes.  

Road blocked for six hours

A SECTION of Bukit Timah Road had to be closed off for six hours on Saturday after authorities decided to saw off a portion of an overhead bridge which was struck by a crane earlier in the morning.

A lorry with a crane on it had crashed into the 4.5m-high bridge at about 10.30am, punching a gaping hole into a part of its base.

A woman in her 50s was crossing the bridge on her way to work when the crane stuck it. She fell and injured her elbow. She was later sent to hospital but was discharged by noon.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) decided to remove a portion of the bridge due to safety concerns. It said that the other parts of the bridge were unaffected and would not fall down. The bridge will be repaired after assessment.

To facilitate removing the damaged piece, a stretch of road from Fourth Avenue to Sixth Avenue was closed to traffic from about 2pm onwards causing massive jams stretching back to Newton Circus.

The section was eventually brought down just before 7pm and the road was reopen to traffic about an hour later. The driver of the vehicle who is in his 40s was not injured and is assisting police with investigations.

Tin Hill Bistro Winebar closed down?

Or merely relocating or refurbishing?

I ask this because yesterday, when I turned into Sixth Avenue from the Bukit Timah Road end, I was surprised, shocked, to see the corner of a stretch of shophouses that was occupied by the bistro as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

I tried calling the bistro number — 64633811 — and was answered by a Singtel recorded message to say that it was temporarily unavailiable!

Then I checked Hungrygowhere and found there was the bald word “CLOSED” atop the 18 reviews done on the bistro, with the last one sooooooo negative that even if it wasn’t closing, it would probably have no choice but to close.

Or, if it wasn’t closing down, then Tin Hill’s owners could have threatened Hungrygowhere and the reviewer with legal action, just as Obolo did over Kaelyn Ong’s sincere but not overly flattering review.

Fact is, I had my premonition regarding Tin Hill from the first time I stepped into the place in September 2008. While the first impression was very good, I worried how it was going to sustain itself, with only two tables and four diners the first time I was there.

Also, a question mark hung over the untrained service staff, even if the owner was all toothy smile and helpfulness.

I liked it well enough to return a second time within a few days but then was thoroughly put off by the offhand manner of the owner, to sincere queries.  Perhaps she had already tired of the venture.

My impressions were recorded in these posts: 

https://singaporegirl.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/not-so-great-2nd-time-around/

https://singaporegirl.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/hip-hip-hurry/

I guess the moral of Singapore’s highly competitive food and beverage scene is that it isn’t enough to be hip and happening. If you want to keep the customers coming, you must work hard at pleasing their stomachs and self-esteem!

Not so great 2nd time around

One week later, (Sep24) I went back to Tin Hill about which I had written earlier. I took two guests.

First, the good news: Tin Hill, at the corner of Bukit Timah Road and Sixth Avenue, may be going stronger and longer than I had prognosticated after my first visit on Sep 18. 

The restaurant had about 20-24 customers on the afternoon of my 2nd visit, including us three. And each probably spent more on average than I did on myself and my guests. Also most of its neighbours were practically deserted.

More good news: this time round, the wait didn’t 4get the milk for the coffee and we weren’t shoved with the bill, be4 we asked for it.

The bad news: the smiling Jaime (the owner) wasn’t all toothiness during this visit. Perhaps she wasn’t in her wait uniform but some expensive looking garb. Or perhaps it is a pain to be doing Bugs Bunny non-stop.

Still, she shouldn’t get into the mode of her erstwhile neighbour Corduroy & Finch, as there are more than enough options for diners not to have to take any snootiness.

When I asked why the two sets (Basic or Pide Set and Executive Set) had exactly the same items offered on Sep 18, she said the items in the sets were Tin Hill’s popular items.

“Er you mean you don’t offer different items on different days?”

“No” was her short reply.

However, she did allow us to change the soup in the pide set for a salad but definitely no-no when it came to swopping the linguini (the main course for the Executive Set) for something else.

This one-menu set lunches for everyday makes me take back any comparisons I had made of Tin Hill with Au Petit Salut. There are different items and choices every day at Au Petit, for heavens sake.

TC and I opted for the pide (a type of bread, I was told) set and C went for the Executive Set tho she chose fish n chips for her mains instead of linguini.

this i won't bite

The E-set came with dessert: a slice of carrot cake, which retails for $6. This time there was no ice-cream to go with it, and given the pole face looks we were given, I decided not to query.

$6 worth

Still, there is no quarrel at all that the Ex-set is value for money. And the food was good — at least that was what C and TC, the ever thoughtful guests, kept stressing, uttering in between bites, “delicious”.

They and I ate up every bite and crumb, either testament to the tasty food or that we were all hungry and I, as host, was rather abstemious with the orders.

My own salad of assorted greens with balsamic vinegar was satisfactory though it isn’t something I would die-die go back for.

in place of soup

TC claimed to like her onion soup with the baguette-like crouton while C repeatedly pronounced her caesar salad “delicious”, the same description she used for the fish n chips. (The chips were more like potato wedgies than the straw like stuff called “French fries”).

good to last drop?

We shared the slice of carrot cake which was moist enough and displayed nice fine strips of carrot. C again proclaimed it “delicious”. In a subsequent email, TC enthused that it as “one of the best I have savoured”.

I was again pleasantly surprised that the camomile tea I asked for was real loose camomile and not in a bag. It had fragrance and body. What a pity that the pot with its short spout and tea dregs clogging the exit, it was almost impossible to pour the tea into the cup without it getting everywhere. And no wait around to help or notice!

everywhere but the cup

So all said, the 2nd time around wasn’t so great. While I won’t be in a hurry to return, I will, once Tin Hill decides to vary its daily sets. There is decent value. Unless Jaime ups the prices.

Hip, hip, hurry…

to Tin Hill Bistro Winebar at the corner of Bukit Timah Road and Sixth Avenue, because it’s one of those places that’s too classy for the neighbourhood and so may not be there for too long…

I went there for lunch on Sep 18 by default. Mrs T had invited. Perhaps she had read an earlier posting abt her, this time there was none of the usual to-ing and fro-ing abt where to go.

She suggested an Indian restaurant with a Russian sounding name at Sixth Ave Centre. I was none too keen because the parking situation there is quite a nightmare but I bit my tongue, in case she would flare up and say “I suggest u don’t like; ask u to suggest u don’t like..”

Thankfully, as I was queuing to go into the carpark below Cold Storage supermarket at Guthrie House, she called to say the restuarant she had chosen was closed and she would walk over and we could then decide where to go.

When she arrived, I suggested and she gladly accepted my suggestion, to try Tin Hill, a place I had just passed when my car turned into Sixth Avenue. I didn’t know much about the place except from what I read in a friend’s kid’s blog.

Weylin had written some nice stuff abt the place: The meal was very good, the mains aren’t expensive ($18-25 and less for the daytime sandwiches), the appetizers and the desserts are the same price at $10.90 which to my mind, does make the appetizers much more worthwhile.”

But since Weylin and the owner, Jaime, know one another, one can’t expect the review to be brutal, even if the food wasn’t so hot.

Still, i thought I should give it a shot and taste for myself.

When Mrs T and I walked in, the wait staff were friendly and wreathed in smiles. Indeed, as we learned at the end of the meal, one of them turned out to be Jaime, the owner.

“I’m glad we came here, the other place looked really tacky,” whispered Mrs T, obviously delighted that my suggestion turned out, on close-up, to be good to look at, and not long after, we found the food was good to eat too, particularly the desserts.

But I’m rushing ahead, so re-wind, re-wind: the menu was quite extensive but what attracted us was the basic set lunch and the executive set lunch, the difference between the two being the price, $14.50 versus $22, be4 all the pluses.

We hummed and hawed a bit and then both settled for the executive set, since the normal set had a sandwich ( Tin Hill called it “pide”) as the main.

For $22 + etc, we had for starters a choice between a Caesar salad with croutons and a tomato soup. We both chose the salad and I quickly asked if the croutons could be set aside.

The waitress said they won’t be mixed in with the salad but be put on top. I was pleasantly surprised when the salad came and the “croutons” turned out to be half a hard-hard biscuit-like mini baguette (I love biscuits). Also, there was a nice touch of red baby radish slices.

colorful Caesar

For mains, we had a choice of fish n chips or linguini carbonara. Again, we both opted for the linguini. It’s a long time since I’ve eaten anything carbonara, probably not since the last time I visited Pasta Fresca, n that’s perhaps a good decade ago.

So, I felt a bit uneasy when the linguini appeared swimming in a yellowish white cream sauce. Heck, it’s ages since I had a cream sauce.

“Er, can I have some vinegar please, balsamic vinegar?” (My fail-safe method for reducing the yukiness of cream or oil altho I always wonder silently whether I won’t make things worse if the dish curdled).

If the waitress was a bit non-plus, she neverthless kwai-kwai brought a thimble full of balsamic vinegar, and both Mrs T and I happily sprinkled our food with it.

And thankfully once again, the cream didn’t curdle and in my view the vinegar gr8ly improved the taste of the dish. Which was also helped gr8ly by generous portions of bacon bits that were more lean meat than fat.

 Unfortunately the pix (below) I took hasn’t turned out to be so gr8: so much for the Nokia 6500 boasting of a 3.2 megapixel cam with Carl Zeiss lens some more! 

balsamic to the rescue

 Then came coffee/tea and dessert. We both took coffee and were offered a choice of two kinds of dessert: passion fruit tart or chocolate cake. I opted for the first and Mrs T for the second.

“With or without ice-cream?” the wait person asked.

“Does it come with the lunch,” I asked, ever cautious not to raise my hostess bill needlessly, as I don’t take ice-cream normally, anyway.

“Yes, comes with the lunch.”

“In that case can I have it separately? I’ll put it into my coffee (my waste-not want-not principle kicking in).”

“Would you like expresso then?” the wait asked, helpfully.

“Expresso, oh no, normal coffee will do, thanks!” (As it was, I’ve started to live dangerously of late, going back to drinking coffee after lunch– something I had skipped for some time, imagining that it affected my bedtime. But seems not as recent venturings have shown).

“Normal coffee for me too,” echoed Mrs T, “with milk”.

The desserts came and wow! They were huge! As illustrated by my passion fruit tart pix below..

abt 6 cm in diameter enough for 2

We were so carried away by how to finish such large helpings that I 4got to snap the chocolate cake which we asked to be packed to take away and which the restaurant obliged willingly.

The vanilla ice-cream went well with the coffee, and after Mrs T asked for her milk for her coffee a 2nd time and nothing appeared, she too did the peasant act like me: tipped her ice-cream into her coffee.

So how did Bukt Timah (Tin Hill) score?

I won’t say that prospecting for timah we found mas but I would definitely return because:

Value for money: check. Indeed reminded me of the days when Au Petit Salut was starting out in Holland Village.

Food good: check. Generally good, as reflected by the fact that Mrs T who isn’t a big eater finishing both her starter and her main up to 95% and we both finished the shared dessert 100%; ditto the coffee and the ice-cream.

Service good: check. Eager to please, as reflected by how the wait pple responded to all our requests, except one — milk for coffee, although that could have been a misunderstanding, due to my asking for the ice-cream to be put into my coffee, while Mrs T asked for both ice-cream and milk. 

One thing that annoyed a little but didn’t mar our experience overall is that after the coffee was served, one wait came and presented us with the bill in a folder, even tho we hadn’t ask for it.  Compounding this, someone came by twice to check whether we had done anything about the bill.

I can understand if the restaurant was full and there were other guests waiting. But after one lone diner ate up and left, there were only four guests remaining at two tables, including us.

This is one lapse that will make more picky diners swear off a repeat visit. Hope Jaime can spruce up on this aspect.

PS What almost gave me indigestion after lunch was that on driving out of Guthrie House, I was charged $9.64 for parking. This must surely be one of Singapore’s most expensive carparks, if not the most expensive — at least in the suburbs!

I had been there from a little after 12pm to perhaps 2.35pm!

PS2 My second visit to Tin Hill one week later left me less enthusiastic: https://singaporegirl.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/not-great-2nd-time-around/