Cookie

20th June 2012

After deciding that a group of us hadn't caught up in a while, the four of us decided to go out for dinner again, after heading to Papa Goose for the first event. After various places were suggested, we settled on Cookie, which i had never been to for food, and added a fifth member to our group (not a sixth, sorry Meg).

Having booked a 7pm dinner reservation, we were still required to wait and have a drink in the exceedingly cramp, noisy and busy bar area. After a short while we were shown to our table located at the back which was also a bit cramp and close to the other tables. A mix of cartoon art and reasonably loud music gave the place a hip vibe but also not a place to enjoy a long relaxing meal.

After taking a seat we were offered extensive menus of both food and drink (the wine list was upwards of 50 pages and there was a separate menu for a non wine drinks). The food menu was broken down into 3 areas of small, medium and large dishes. Given the varied tastes we decided to eat order our own food and i decided on a having both a medium and a large item both served at the same time as everyone else was having one dish.

For the small dish i decided to compare a dish on this menu with one i had previous eaten (at Longrain), the egg net salad with minced chicken, spinach, chili and cashews. Compared to Longrain's version the ingredients were of a lesser quality and the egg net itself was slightly thicker and less delicate and the flavours were less complex and balanced but overall a more than acceptable dish.

The large course was served on a huge sizzling plate with several fat pieces of squid stuffed with mice pork, lime leaf and served with an abundance of hot and sour sauce and dried herbs. The pieces of squid were decently cooked and had good flavour and the hot part of the sauce packed a decent punch, however the sourness of the sauce was overdone and it added a weird after taste that didn't go down great.

With the selection of deserts being fairly limited and most of Asian themed (except one random tiramasu) nothing jumped at me and we decided to skip desert. The food overall was of a decent quality but nowhere near the quality of Longrain or hat worthy. Very decent value and the portion sizes were plentiful and service was actually reasonable considering how busy it was. But would go back back to Longrain every time rather than here.