There are rare occasions that the co-owner of Deliciouslogy appears on Deliciouslogy.
In this case, it was because we were buying him dinner.
Ezel is a '5 days after new year' baby so our visit to twenty.one was somewhere near that date.
The restaurant has nice ambiance - fresh air flows in and there's just enough lighting to keep your shaking hands from taking blurry photos.
A free appetizer of bread cubes with olive oil and a herb crumb mixture is served when you're browsing the menu. The best description I can come up with for the herb crumbs is that it tastes Indian.
The man of the hour showing off his new Google Nexus' photography capabilities. He's usually never the food porn type.
We ordered a breaded calamari with dip (2 dips of your choice) to share. Not too overcooked or heavily breaded. Choice of dips is a plus point.
Ezel's lamb shank (braised in tomato reduction with winter vegetables) came with big chunks of crusty bread. We didn't try the dish but he enjoyed it thoroughly. It looks really good and comes highly recommended.
LC had a penne pasta drowned in 3 cheese sauce with diced chicken and sundried tomatoes. It was rich and tasty and definitely drowned with sauce. The diced chicken was surprisingly not tough or dry.
Juin's fish burger with wedges and homemade tartar was good. Big portion too.
The 4 dishes were all good and impressive but the star of main courses for the day is the next photo.
A mushroom risotto with tempura oyster mushroom and parmesan wafer.
This vegetarian dish was cooked to perfection. The risotto well done - just enough bite but not hard. The mix of mushrooms was just right, the tempura mushroom added a nice texture to the dish and the parmesan was deliciously salty. I would come back for this dish despite its lack of meat.
We had 2 desserts to share.
The artistic meringue dish has to be photographed from bird's eye view to show you the treasure inside.
The meringue with berry sorbet, crumbled cream cheese and chocolate crumbs (I totally made that up cause I couldn't find it on the menu but rest assured, it does taste like that) was a delicious combination. The sour sorbet and sweet meringue were contrasting flavors that made up for what the other lacked. The crumbs were fun and yummy to nibble at.
A lovely Banana and chocolate pie with vanilla ice cream was the last to arrive. The bittersweet pie crust is made of crushed biscuits (main suspect: Oreos) while the pie filling was creamy and satisfying. The vanilla ice cream however was lackluster.
Since it was ladies' night, certain drinks were free after 9pm. No photos (because I forgot and) because the drinks were awful on my tongue - the balance of the concoction was totally off.
One thing to note is the bar is upstairs while the kitchen is downstairs so loud music is to be expected. That night we were there, the DJ kept adjusting the volume of the music that it made it quite annoying to keep adjusting the volume of our voices as we spoke.
twenty.one kitchen+bar used to have a branch in Bangsar Shopping Centre but an announcement surfaced recently on their website stating that they're closing.
Their website: http://www.drbar.asia/#twentyonekitchenbar
Their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/twentyonekitchenbar