{"id":498,"date":"2005-02-22T09:58:48","date_gmt":"2005-02-22T09:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=498"},"modified":"2005-02-22T09:58:48","modified_gmt":"2005-02-22T09:58:48","slug":"not_enough_cocoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=498","title":{"rendered":"Not Enough Cocoa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a sure sign of stress at work and just thinking too much about life in general, Slumbering Girl commented last night over dinner that she had never seen my eyes this small and that puffed up. She said I looked as if I had just cried. Oh no, I really need some concealer now!!!<br \/>\nSlumbering Girl, Monomonia and I had dinner at this Indian restaurant (oops, can&#8217;t remember the name now, but it&#8217;s at the Peninsula Excelsior) last night which is run by volunteers. Serving North Indian vegetarian food, the unique part about the restaurant is that you pay whatever you want at the end of the day. It&#8217;s left up to the integrity of the customer. Proceeds go to supporting Indian arts and cultural groups and also to scholarships for young people wanting to further their studies in Indian arts and culture.<br \/>\nHowever service was extremely slow because there were many customers (Bizarrely so, &#8216;cos it was a Monday night!) and too few waiters and waitresses. And there weren&#8217;t enough menus to go around! But since it&#8217;s run by volunteers, I guess it&#8217;s forgiveable. Well, somewhat.<br \/>\nThe vegetable curries were pretty good. The samosas passable. The naans were   ok too. The paratha I ordered took ages to come. And in the end I told them not to bother as by then we had already finished all the curries.<br \/>\nWe then headed off to <b>Menotti<\/b> where we figured all the waiters there are trained to sweettalk the ladies who patronise the place&#8230;calling us &#8220;beautiful ladies&#8221; and all. Anyway, we ordered the <b>Favorti<\/b> which was the bittersweet chocolate tart and the <b>Messina<\/b> which was really three scoops of gelato (mandarin, pistachio and vanilla) served together with a huge brioche and some whipped cream.<br \/>\nThe two desserts looked very lovely. We couldn&#8217;t wait to dig into it. The Favorti was a tad disappointing though. Not enough chocolate (therefore not enough kick to give that chocolate adrenalin rush) and too much raspberry. I think the chef must have gotten the proportion of ingredients wrong. For a really good chocolate tart, I suggest going to <b>Marmalade Pantry<\/b> at Palais Renaissance. As for the Messina, the mandarin gelato was probably the best. Loved the tanginess. The brioche was huge (a little too big I think) and made the whole dessert very filling.<br \/>\nOverall though, a 6.5\/10 for the dining experience at the Indian restaurant and 7\/10 for the one at Menotti.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a sure sign of stress at work and just thinking too much about life in general, Slumbering Girl commented last night over dinner that she had never seen my eyes this small and that puffed up. She said I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=498\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}