Relish

A food blogger’s life is tough. On the glamorous part, we always travel around in search of good food.

“Wow, you all always get to eat good food at expensive places!”

Behind the scenes, not many people understand what the group of us (foodies) go through. When others are happily enjoying their meals, we labored on to take perfect shots of the delicacy for the sake of showing to our share-readers. Pictures after all tell a thousand words.

And thats just the beginning, thinking of the way to describe the food, how to phrase the sentence, what to write so as to make the review more reader-friendly and interesting. All these take times, and writing a review nowadays is not a laughing matter.

We have to be creative in our writing otherwise all our readers run away (who wants to read a boring review?). So foodies have to crack their brain (at least for me) and spending at least 3 hours on a review has become part and parcel of my life.

But don’t get me wrong, i was just ranting about our “tough life” because Relish was supposed to LIC first food outing. Tons of people were supposed to turn up, but for some reason or other almost all of them cannot make it last minute. For the sake of reviewing though, i bravely forged on and went to Relish with a friend.

Organizing a food outing is no easy feat. I learned a few lessons, never do it on weekends, and at ulu places like Bukit timah. Hopefully the next food outing in May will go out smoothly.

Burgers, when we think of them, fast food chains like MacDonald’s, Burger King, Mos Burger, Carl’s Jr instantly comes into mind. Understandably, the price range associates with fast food are naturally cheaper.

Relish is the sister restaurant of the more popular-known Wild Rocket @ Mount Emily is a casual chic joint dedicated to burgers. Putting it in a simpler term, Gourmet Burger Restaurant.

Now the question is, how do we define a Gourmet Burger? Other than the prices are at a hefty $17-$19 range, Relish also provides special creations like the BBQ charsiew soft-bone pork open foccacia burger, a garam masala lamb and mint hummus pita burger and even a portebello to-fu burger with eggplant salsa.

Seafood Burger with lemon mayo ($19) The Seafood burger comprises of crab, fish, prawn, squid, and toppled with generous serving of the lemon mayo and veggies. Every burger at Relish is accompanied with fries.

Colossal is the word to describe the seafood patty! We were quite astonished when the staff served us the burger, and the surprise soon turns to excitement as we figure out whats the best way to consume the burger. Should we ignore everything and just pick up the whole burger and bite, or should we take the fork and knife to cut? Well in the end we took the first massive bite, after that we came to a decision that using the knife is a better option.

This burger is for all the seafood lovers out there. The lemon mayo is the key here. It combined well with the seafood patty, & added an refreshing taste to the patty. The burger was really huge and it took quite an appetite to finish the whole thing.

One special thing to note about Relish, they actually came up with gourmet beers to go along with the gourmet burgers, interesting idea right? For the seafood burger, it’s best with Titje (Belgian beer)

Curry Chicken Burger ($17) Chicken Pattie dished up with curry mayo, caramelized onions and curry leaves. The curry mayonnaise mix was nice, with the inclusion of the curry leaves further enhancing the “curry flavor”.

However, the chicken pattie was a tad too dry for our liking. The curry mayonnaise sauce in a regular burger would have been enough “wetness” as mayonnaise is a main ingredient for making a burger not too dry. But because the pattie was a chicken and not beef, it tends to dry out due to the longer cooking time required.

We lamented the fact that the chicken mayo was not enough, and the Curry Chicken burger was overall too dry to finish. Anyway, the burger is best served with Australian Rogers beer.

LIC discussed the definition of good fries with my friend. To us, good fries mean that it should have a salty start in the first bite, but it should not be too salty to the extent that you can’t taste the slightly sweet finish of the potato. A bit buttery flavor of the fries will also be good. But unfortunately, the fries at Relish are also too dry and lack the “buttery” taste.

Total Bill for 2 was $42.37. Relish is a interesting concept, by far there isn’t any restaurant that delicates to serving gourmet burgers. Kudos to lawyer-turn-chef Willin who came up with Relish!

However LIC still find the price of a gourmet burger slightly on the high side. If the price will drop a little, or there is some other promotions, you will surely see the other burgers surfacing at LIC. Perhaps we didn’t order their signatures like the wild rocket burger, and other interesting ones like the BBQ char siew burger, Ram-lee burger. My friend doesn’t eat beef (most of the inclusion), lamb and pork. This left us with limited options.

If you are the type that doesn’t conclude burger as a under $10 dish, then Relish could just be the place for you. Do remember to make a reservation before you go, when we went there at 1pm on a Sunday, it was packed to the crowd. By the way, do try the wildrocket signature cheesecake, we didn’t had any because we went to Melvados (just opposite) for our brownie dessert. But their cheesecakes are really awesome, i had it the last time i went to Wild Rocket

You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written above are my genuine feelings expressed in words that may be subjected to my personal distortion or biasness. Please do not feel emotional or distress should you have any violent objections. Kindly click the little X at the upper, extreme right of your screen if negative adjectives would be derived. Otherwise, feel free to furnish me with comments, may it be positive or negative : )

” Casual chic gourmet burger joint “