Food For Thought- Ample Time For Your Thoughts

It was a bright sunny day, parents were abroad, the car is ours, everything seemed perfect EXCEPT our decision to head to FFT @ Botanic Gardens on a public holiday. I was really impress by FFT (the previous time round) so much so I woke Jo and Jie up early and swore FFT's All-Day Breakfast would make up for their loss in sleep. 

Frankly, I wasn't shock to see the number of people at FFT. I mean, who am I kidding? It's a Sunday and a public holiday; there are bound to be rowdy kids and family get togethers. However, what surprised me was their long waiting time for food to be served; granted they did warned us about it. Upon ordering, there's a big sign that says "It would take us 30 minutes to serve you your food". I thought 30 minutes shouldn't be a problem, plus I thought that may be part of their tactic: to please us with unexpected fast service. Unexpected? yeah damn right! Unexpectedly slow. Jie's Full Works came after a 45 minutes and the pancakes took a whole hour!! I mean... seriously... how long does it take to griddle up 2 stacks of pancakes? I reckon they make the batter earlier on, so seriously why 1 hour!?! It is wise move on their part to make their customers pay upfront, or else....

Long waiting time aside, Jie's Full Works was huge! I was famished and stole 1 of each component. The scrambled eggs were beautifully cooked; smooth and creamy but might get too jelak after awhile. The greens were normal but I was surprised at the generous portion of greens. The hash browns were crispy, not too oily and really tasty, way better than McDonald's- the only comparison I've had sadly. I also found the sausages really good; they had a really nice chew and had a smoky flavour. Sadly, the mushrooms did not make the cut for me as the earthy raw flavour of the mushrooms were too overwhelming. I didn't quite care for the bacons as it was dripping with oil and was made up of mainly fats. I left the toast for Jie hoping my pancakes would come soon.

Full Works @ $18

It was way past 45 minutes and I got real pissed, I got out from my seat and head for the counter only to find my pancakes ready and waiting to be served. I would have taken it by myself if the waitress had not arrived at the nick of time. Frankly, all that waiting did spoil my whole pancake experience. Seriously, even if you were to serve me pancakes made of Gold I would have been still pissed (but not until I sell that Gold pancakes for extra cash). Nonetheless, I am forcing myself to be really objective while typing this post. 

Banana & Walnut @ $10

The Banana & Walnut pancakes were moderately fluffy and much better than the ones I had at Little Pancakes, albeit Spruce was still da bomb. I think it would have been much better if they served their pancakes with maple syrup instead as the Gula Melaka had a really strong herbal taste and tasted weird. I liked how the pancakes actually had bananas incorporated into them however they were a tad too dry and drizzles of maple syrup would have done wonders. I would appreciate more walnuts as it was really well roasted and provided a nice crunch to the entire dish. In short, nice pancake for $10, however not worth 1 hour of my life. I would either top up $4 more for Spruce or head to Micky Ds and save a few bucks :)

Sufficiently Fluffy Pancakes

Next up, Jo's Pancakes. Actually Jo was the one who titled this post.

Jo: "ZOMG its taking so long, I got conned.
Me:" Yar man, shit sorry."
Jo:" They really live up to their name man.."
Me:" Huh? why?"
Jo:"They give you ample time to think about your food cos their service is so f-ing slow"
Me:""-__- *too famished to care*"

When Jo's pancakes arrived, he wasn't too pleased. He didn't like the way the pancakes looked and thought it was really shabby for a $12 pancake. He hated the Gula Melaka as he says it tasted like Cha Ye Dan (Herbal Eggs) and he hated the rasberries as it was too sour. I thought the combination of raspberries and dark chocolate was excellent however they were too stingy on the dark chocolate couvertures, so much so the entire pancake was dry and inched towards the sour side. Some embedding of chocolate couvertures in the Pancakes would have been lovely; otherwise a sprinkle of chocolate on the 2nd layer would have made it work as well. At $12, this pancake is a rip off.

Dark Chocolate & Raspberries @ $12

In the previous post, I had mainly praises for FFT. However, FFT let me down real bad this time round. I wouldn't forsee myself heading to FFT anytime soon, definitely not for a weekend brunch, that I'm sure. I guess that's what happens when you can accomodate almost 200 people in your restaurant; a price to pay for a communal setting.

FFT flooded with families