've been having really bad experiences with F&B deals. With a perfect title of 3-course set meal, and Grand Salads reputation to boot, I was pretty confident not much can go wrong. How naive of me.

First off, location is stealthy. After leaving the One-North station, you've gotta navigate and walk over to Solaris. We encircled the building before finding the bistro beside the carpark entrance on the outside (when there was a restaurant placard on the inside of the glass doors - super misleading).

Anyways, the place had a nice ambient feel to it, rather relaxing and serene. Too serene, which irked me. When I made reservations for 7pm that day, they were 'fully booked'. I settled with 7.30pm. My friend and I decided to try our luck anyway, so we were at the bistro at around 7.10pm (thanks to the mystery location) and GUESS WHAT. It was filled with a grand total of 3 people. How is that fully booked, excuse me?

So we started with appetizer - Homemade quiche. Anything 'homemade' allows for weak presentation, but boosts strength in taste. Being a fan of shortcrust related pastries, it was passable with a rather good texture albeit having too little ingredients (spinach and.. nothing), not fresh (could totally tell it was re-heated) and accompanied with browned greens (pun intended).

By the way, at this time, we were the only customers.

For mains, we had Scandinavian and as described on the menu, 'Toasted bagel, smoked salmon, cream cheese with purple onion'. It wasn't bagel and there was not a dollop of cream cheese. We had a slice of stale country loaf, such that it hurt your hands trying to slice it, waged a war with your teeth and tasted like cardboard, save for the butter. Smoked salmon looked like it was cut by a three year old, and I seriously can make MUCH better scrambled eggs at home. It looked like an omelette, I asked for scrambled.

Dessert was too appalling. It was an Orange-chocolate pastry. More like Orange-chocolate failure. Caramel orange peels all over the place, completely ruining whatever decent chocolate they could have been using. Orange is meant to enhance the richness of chocolate; just a tinge of zest to bring out its flavour, not fighting for recognition in your mouth. And the accompanying marshmallows were just sad.

Wait staff was fine. 2 persons attending to the 3 of us, feeding each other in the kitchen..

I felt ashamed bringing my friend here for her birthday. Should have stuck with a known place. Never again am I visiting.

No queue on a friday night, we walked into Thai Express ravenous. (We were here for Sushi Tei but the queue was frightful)

There was a curry promotion going on. $12.90++ for the chicken curry set. It came in a little claypot atop a wooden board, rather pretty I would say. There were slices of paratha to drip into the curry; tasted like the frozen ones I always get at NTUC. Curry was not spicy and a tad too sweet.

Staff was nice enough to get more sauce for us when we asked.

My hub had the Tom yam rice Sa-nook set $8.90++. Lemongrass kinda overpowered the rice, but prawns were nice and crunchy. Didn't fancy the too oily fried fishcake and dessert was quite pathetic.

Knowing Thai Express' standards, we weren't expecting much. Passable meal to get by.

Went there twice in the last 2 weeks. My In-laws simply love that place.

Both times we had the Assam Fish Head which was served on a metal warmer instead of the claypot the Curry Fish Head was served in. Fresh fish with lots of flesh.

We had the set meal for 4-6 which fed 6 of us very well.

Would recommend that you choose the Claypot Golden Chicken for the Poultry option. Tender sweet chicken chunks in a little claypot. We had the Thai Basil Chicken once and that was rather disappointing. The amount of basil used was too much and greatly overpowered the dish.

Braised Beancurd was nothing much to shout about. If you choose Kangkong, they give a rather large portion.

Reservations must be made especially if you're dining in a large group. Even then, you may not get a seat. We witnessed a customer kicking up a fuss as he was not given a table even after making his reservation. Apparently, they decided to sit a family of 4 at his table for 10. Anyway when we left, he looked pretty happy tucking in to his Curry Fish Head at the other side of the restaurant.

Overall, a rather yummy air-conditioned Zi Char place. As I said, my In-laws love that place and had the same fish twice. Highly likely you'll return too.

I suppose it was the rainy, gloomy weather that made this hide-out expectionally cozy.
There were a decent number of hungry patrons looking for breakfast, and with only one (thank God) sobbing tod.
We wasted no time checking up the menu (Scribbled on blackboard walls) and quickly made our orders.

Chef's fry up $19.90
Served on a small plate, this dish was literally overflowing with food.
With your choice of eggs and bread, you get chipotle sausages, field mushrooms, shallot potato croquettes and vine tomatoes.

Eggs Benedict $16.90
This was just a little more than half on quatity from the fry up, however, no less impressive. Smooth hollandaise sauce over perfectly poached eggs on Ocean Trout and Rosemary scones!
My winner.

Though fairly stuffed, the dessert menu could not go unnoticed. We chose the Poached pear with brandy snap and rhubarb ice cream $5. It's not often you see Rhubarb anything here in Singapore so I was delighted and very much welcomed the tangy, refreshing dessert after the heavy meal.

The place is not large, but fitted just the right number of people. You may make reservations (Yay) and for bigger groups they have an alfresco area to accomodate the higher volume, pardon the pun.

Would return to try sandwhiches, wraps and other sides!

I bought a Groupon voucher for Sol Tasca - $20 for $40 worth of food.
I had a hard time making booking on Friday nights, as apparently they were fully booked.

So, I made a reservation on a Wednesday night. A night they promised had a live band performance. We made our way there at about 630pm, and the place was COMPLETELY deserted. The Starbucks beside was full and a stark contrast to Sol Tasca.

So, anyway, feeling a little awkward, cos the restaurant had a open concept, ie all walking passers-by could see us, we picked a high stool table near the middle.

Prior to buying the Groupon, I had a look at the online menu and prices seemed reasonable at $28-30 for a paella and we'll have enought for more tapas. Upon reaching the actual venue, they jacked up the prices so much that it was $32-35 for paella, $8 and above for the tapas! Not only that, the tapas were so so so tiny.

The White wine Parsley mussels ($22) were too miserable. Resembling more like cockles, with a way too salty sauce. Having been to Spain in the early part of the year, this place saddens me. Unlike the fleshy juicy shellfish I was expecting, what was presented before us was nothing more than a metal plate of shrivelled mussels.

Deep-fried calamari ($10) was had like 10 pieces?

Lucky for them, Salted cod croquette ($10) was at least hot and Olive, Anchovy and Brie on toast ($8) was pretty authentic.

Still, portion is lousy; nothing to speak of for ambience. Over-zealous waitresses clearing your plates as there were no others in the restaurant for the entire stay.

We maxed out our Groupon voucher and left for dinner elsewhere.
I will never return.