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The food here is Japanese-French fusion. The colonial black-and-white bungalow setting is gorgeous, and we liked it. In all, the meal was good, and in fact, more than decent, but there was just something lacking. Comparing it to heavyweights such as Ember, Bistro Soori (but only for dinners) and Buko Nero, which serve up similar fusion cuisine, I've found that B@Rochester is just lacking in that extra spark, that extra something that makes the meal pop. The finishing of the dishes just lacked that particular finesse and masterful execution.

That said, we genuinely liked the service, the chef and head waiter were very down-to-earth, almost homey, and chatted us up like old friends

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The Thunder Tea Rice ($3.50) is a traditional Hakka dish chock-full of greens, really great for unclogging your digestive system.

It's really a love-it-or-hate-it kind of dish. It's got a very strong herbal and green tea taste and scent. And very grassy texture. But, it has flavour from the salty fried ikan bilis, so you get a great tasting dish with lots of anti-oxidants and fibre

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Please note that the coffeeshop is completely non-air conditioned, so it's probably advisable to eat there on a cooler day instead. Otherwise, be prepared to sweat it out.

We got the Spare Ribs Soup ($7.80), which was quite disappointing. I usually measure the tenderness of a spare rib by testing how easy it is to use a pair of chopsticks to pry the meat from the bone. The spare rib was not tender enough to warrant its $3.90 price-tag. I eventually had to use my fingers and incisors to tear the meat apart. The soup was alright though, rich with the flavour of pork bones without the overwhelming taste of pepper

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While their breads are indeed awesome, their other stuff were relatively sub-par.

We had:

1) Croissant ($2.43): an aromatic, fresh out of the oven confection. Its crisp flaky exterior peeled away to reveal soft chewy and airy insides. It was totally addictive. It's definitely comparable with Antoinette's version, and a worthwhile alternative. Anytime Antoinette runs out of their croissants, I'll know where else to get my croissant fix! If I had to choose between the two, I'd say that Antoinette trumps Maison Kayser, because their mains, and not just their breads, are delicious.

2) Tuna Sandwich ($10.65 for the lunch set with a soup), with emmental cheese, cucumbers and tuna mayo (made unique with the addition of diced pickles) wedged between a crusty ciabatta, didn't fare as well. It was a little plainish, plus, it didn't help that the cucumbers were bitter.

3) Cream of Broccoli (soup-of-the-day part of the lunch set) had way too much milk and cream but too little broccoli. It was insipid and watery. I could hardly make out a taste the broccoli in this.

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The New Harbour Cafe & Bar is an quaint English-styled restobar at the slowly-being-revived-once-again Duxton Hill area. The cuisine here is basically bastardised western food with Hainanese leanings.

We had:

1) Hainanese Pork Chops ($16.80 as part of the Thursday special set lunch) juicy, albeit fatty, breadcrumbed-coated pork cutlet flash fried and drenched in a thin tomato-gravy, with a side of peas and onions, chips and a fiery chilli. This is one of the better renditions around. A mound of chicken-flavoured rice completes the main.

2) Grilled Salmon Fillet Florentine ($18.80): 2 thick slabs of salmon, seared to retain its moistness is doused with a florentine sauce, and served with with mash, creamed spinach and buttered mixed vegetables. This could have done without the rich and a little cloying florentine sauce

3) Grilled Pork Chops ($18.80 as part of the weekday set lunch): flavoursome and moist, just the right attributes needed for a delicious hunk of meat. This was tasty on its own even without the brown sauce

4) Hainanese Roast Pork ($12.80): This was seriously good stuff. Meaty, and salty and juicy and with the perfect crunchy skin. Both the thick black kecap manis chilli mix and sambal were great accompaniments.