podi, raffles city.
i love cedele, and podi is by cedele. but... i've held off visiting podi, because of mostly negative reviews online. that, however, was a couple of years back, so i suppose it's time to give them a try, especially when their menu looks so tempting. they had quite a few items that caught my eye. i figured that it was also a place that X would want to try, so we met for dinner there on a weeknight. i'd made a reservation, but it wasn't necessary. still, we got an awesome table right by the fountain, so i guess it was worth the effort.the first thing i noticed upon receiving the menu was that it was different from what i'd seen online. the new menu was a pared down version of the old one, with several items that had interested me taken out. meh. still, i was hoping that with a more focused menu means better execution. their menu has a lot of pulled meat items, which is right up X's alley. we spent quite a while poring over the menu and deciding. i wanted the pulled beef flat wrap ($19), but it came with sweet potato fries and salad. i didn't want sweet potato fries, but the kitchen was quite rigid about not letting me change it to anything else but more salad. the waitress was really helpful about it though- i'd already decided to just not have the pulled beef wrap, but she came back and asked what i wanted to change to, and then went back to the kitchen to ask!
in the end i got the ginger plum chicken ($20), while X went for the ginger plum pulled duck flat wrap ($19), topping up $2 for truffle fries. the food came fairly quickly, which was good because... i was starving.
so glad i got the chicken, because it was really good. the chicken was undeniably the star. two generous slabs of chicken thigh, complete with light, crackly chicken skin- yum! i could hardly taste the ginger plum on the chicken, though, but the chicken was so well-cooked i didn't mind.
the ginger plum sauce seemed to be more apparent on the wild rice. the wild rice wasn't quite what i expected- i was expecting brown grains, i suppose, but these were purplish. kind of like black glutinous rice, actually- in terms of texture as well. i did like its slight nutty flavour though, especially combined with the mushrooms, beans, broccoli and roasted cherry tomatoes. i cleaned up the entire plate easily. (X was convinced that portions would be tiny and i would be able to eat two mains easily, but no. it was actually a good sized portion.)
X's ginger plum pulled duck wrap looked impressive, but she was complaining about how it was lacking the ginger plum sauce (and even suspected that the chef'd left it out) and that there was very little pulled duck. still, she said that it was a light and refreshing eat.
X was craving waffles, so she got the waffle with a scoop of earl grey fig ice-cream ($8). i stole a bite and quite liked it. it was not the crisp, airy type (that i don't like)- instead it was more cakey.
i quite liked the food, and so did X. whatever negative reviews that they'd had previously, they seem to have taken into consideration and fixed. this place definitely warrants a return with X.
PODI
raffles city
#b1-45
https://www.facebook.com/podisg/
