the lab, jalan pisang.
bought a groupon and went for a saturday dinner with my mum, carrying no expectations whatsoever. the café wasn't a big one, but they had quite a lot of outdoor seating, out in an alleyway. we were told that to get a table indoors we'd have to wait for fifteen minutes, so of course we waited. the girl who served us was friendly, giving us a good first impression of the place.
we got a table inside after a short wait. ventilation didn't seem to be good- it was stuffy and didn't seem to have much air-conditioning (making me think that perhaps sitting outside would've been a better choice).
as usual i was indecisive about what to eat. i'd half decided on the dutch meatballs ($16) already, but the waiter walked by with a burger and my mum pointed out that it looked good, thus distracting me. my mum'd already decided on the monthly special, a salted egg yolk pasta ($16), so it was only me who was faffing about trying to decide. still went with the meatballs in the end, because the burger came with fries and i'm just not a fries person. to make up the value of the voucher, we decided on getting waffles ($10) for dessert.
i went up to the counter to order, but there were several people ahead of me in the queue, and i had to wait for quite a bit. when ordering i was told that the voucher would only cover mains, no desserts, which meant that i couldn't get the waffles. weird, really. so i quickly decided to get the bao sliders (2 for $12) instead of the waffles.
the food came really quickly. given the crowd, we were expecting a wait. turned out that getting meatballs was a great choice. the menu stated that it came with "the lab's red sauce", which sounded vaguely dubious, but the sauce was actually really good. it was kind of like rendang- sweet and a little spicy at the same time. in fact, it was so good that my mum was mopping it up with the steamed baos. the meatballs themselves were good, too. there were only two, but they were large (and oddly enough, each held a cherry tomato inside). the dish also came with potatoes and asparagus, making for a wholesome eat.
my mum's salted egg yolk linguine was pretty good as well, though i preferred the meatballs. i would've liked more salted egg yolk in the sauce, though. they were pretty generous with the prawns in the linguine, too.
we shared the two bao sliders. one was a duck cranberry slider, and the other was a salmon dill cucumber one. i didn't quite take to the sliders, but my mum liked them. i found the fillings to be too minimal- one bite and the rest of the slider was left with nothing much in them. or perhaps i am being too unfair, because i can't help but remember those i had at bao in london, as well as full of luck. the baos came with cassava chips, which were frankly quite addictive.
we both really enjoyed the food. the food was simple, but full of flavour. plus, it was value for money, especially with the voucher. portions were extremely generous too- we both left feeling stuffed. i'd come back for the meatballs. yum.
1 jalan pisang
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