Food Picks: Alice Boulangerie’s new dinner dishes and Bakery 1946’s buns

Alice Boulangerie’s new dinner menu

After undergoing a month-long revamp, home-grown restaurant Alice Boulangerie has reopened with refreshed interiors and a new dinner menu. 

Its popular cakes and pastries are now displayed in full glory at the shopfront, making it more convenient for takeaways. 

The dining area – awash in warm wood tones and green hues – has an expanded capacity for up to 70 diners. 

Now, it looks to draw in the dinner crowd with new Asian-inspired offerings. These include starters of otak prawn croquettes ($19), made with halibut and tiger prawn and served with kaffir lime mayonnaise; and seared foie gras toast ($32) with a fig and balsamic compote, pistachios, herb salad and pickled golden raisins. 

I also enjoy the tender binchotan-grilled sakura “cherry blossom” pork loin ($60, good for two people), with charred mustard greens and spiced apple puree. 

The standout dish is the pork belly claypot rice ($42), in which Japanese rice is cooked in a housemade mushroom kombu broth and topped with salted fish, Chinese sausages and preserved olive vegetables. 

Braised pork belly and asparagus are mixed into the rice – cooked just right with the must-have crispy charred bits.

Signatures such as tiger prawn capellini ($29) and wagyu beef cheek risotto ($37) remain on the menu. 

Save space for sweet treats too. The new Pebbles dessert ($22) features black sesame mochi – shaped like pebbles – on a bed of peanut butter crumble with black sesame gelato, dark chocolate “twigs” and raspberry jam. 

Or go for its famed Squirrel ($14), a flourless chocolate cake layered with chocolate biscuit, pecan brownie and a luscious, salted caramel cremeux, coated with a dark chocolate crunch. 

Where 01-05/11 Icon Village, 12 Gopeng Street 
MRT Tanjong Pagar
Open Mondays to Saturdays, 8am to 10pm; Sundays, 8am to 6pm
Tel 8874-3300
Info

www.aliceboulangerie.com.sg

 

Famed Bakery 1946 at Suntec City 

You have seen its viral apple-shaped K-Apple bread ($5.90) stuffed with cubes of sweet apple and cream cheese. 

After running successful pop-ups, the famed South Korean Bakery 1946 – also known as Suhyeongdang – set up its first physical bakery-cafe at Suntec City in July. 

Finally, I can skip the queues and pick from the wide array of buns in a leisurely fashion. So far, I’ve liked everything I’ve tried.  

For my latest visit, I head straight for the selection from the National Day collaboration (till Aug 31) with home-grown Keong Saik Bakery. 

There is the special First Love pastry – a seven-inch-wide charcoal pastry with a centre of Korean strawberry jam and fresh cream – as well as bandung cheese cruffin ($6.80) and ondeh ondeh sor hei ($6.10), a spin on Keong Saik Bakery’s signature pastry. 

The latter is also available at Keong Saik Bakery outlets, along with my favourite of the lot – chilli crab cheese croissant cube ($7.30).

I also pick up other items I had marked out on my previous visit, such as the peanut crumb mochi bun ($3.80), Korean mochi bread stick ($3.50) and the original Daegu sweet red bean bun ($3.50). 

Bakery 1946’s adorable vegetable-shaped bread items remain my top picks. The carrot bread ($3.90) and corn bread ($3.90) taste as good as they look – both chewy and filled with sweet cream cheese. 

The equally tasty – and hefty – sweet potato bread ($5.20) is stuffed with sweet potato paste.

You can choose to dine in at the cafe, and pair the bakes with bingsu, coffee, smoothies and K-style drinks such as a “ginsengccino” (from $7.90). 

Bakery 1946 will open its second outlet at Bugis Junction soon, one of its previous pop-up venues. 

Where 01-604 Suntec City Tower 3, 3 Temasek Boulevard 
MRT Promenade
Open Weekdays, 8am to 9pm; weekends, 9am to 10pm
Info

www.instagram.com/bakery_1946