Riders Cafe

Hello everyone (:

The first week of school's over and I'm glad that most of us survived it pretty well. I think I've said it before but I shall mention it again: first day/ week back at school always makes me feel slightly raw. I am still hoping that as time passes, I'll get more used to first days back at school and I'll feel less uninitiated but I wouldn't be surprised if this dejavu experience remains as such.

Anyhow, I'm going to blog about Riders Cafe today because we just visited this place not too long ago for lunch (: The day we lunched there coincided with one of my sisters' birthday and because she has somehow managed to not step into this place until that fateful day, it made the trip to Riders a little more special because she managed to dine at a 'new' cafe that's near our place (:

We didn't think that we would need to make reservations since we were visiting on a weekday afternoon and we were thankful that Riders wasn't packed so we managed to get a table without having to wait.

 One thing that makes Riders stand out from the other cafes that we've been to is that it's not airconditioned so it can get slightly warm/ stuffy during extremely hot/ humid days so if you're the kind who perspires easily, I don't think you would appreciate the heat but fortunately, you can always order some cold drinks to keep yourself cool while waiting for your food.. which is exactly what we did.

 Plain white coaster with horse-shoe print

Vanilla Milkshake ($7) It was pretty alright but not as thick as the milkshake from Once Upon a Milkshake. I still maintain that OUM serves the best milkshake! (:

Iced Lemon Tea ($5) This was pretty normal.

Orange Juice ($4)

Appletiser ($3.50). I actually quite liked this drink! It tastes like Zapple except that it's clearer and fizzier!

Hot chocolate ($4). I love the pretty musical note on the foam and I also think that this was one unexpectedly good cup of hot chocolate! You should try this if you feel like having something warm!

My sister is a water guzzler so she was more than pleased to see that we were served with a jug of refillable water!

For starters, we decided to order one of their daily specials to share and since we were feeling quite adventurous that day, we ordered Seafood Aioli ($16), which is seafood baked with cheese and some cream if I'm not wrong (I'm describing this based on how it tasted, not based on my knowledge of the dish!). We'd some thin slices of toasted bread to dip into the seafood aioli to eat like nachos with salsa sauce. It was pretty okay but I think the taste of seafood aioli gets a little too gelat after a while so it was good that we decided to share it and not order other sidedishes!

Each of us also ordered one mains each and here are photos of what we had:

Roast Black Cod ($27). This was what I ordered and I absolutely loved it! The black cod was extremely tender and it had this melt-in-my-mouth-buttery taste that made me feel extremely indulgent! The couscous that came along with the cod was also fragrant and they complemented each other well. I loved this dish!

One of my sisters ordered the Scallop Risotto ($23) and it was lovely as well. I tried her risotto and it was very well-cooked! I think they got the texture right and my sister was happy to finish it!

Another 'specialties for the day' that we ordered was the Porto Linguine ($23) which was okay but it wasn't very appealing to most of us because we felt that it could have had slightly more flavour. But I guess the taste was kept light so that people will be able to finish the dish and not get sick of the taste after a while.

Those are two shots of the famous Riders Burger ($17) because one of my sisters and Jeffrey decided to order the same dish. I guess you can't really go wrong with this dish since it's purported to be one of the cafe's signature dishes! The fries carried a hint of truffle with them and we thought that they were pretty nice (:

In short, I think the dishes available at Riders during lunch are more than decent and we were all pleased with what we ordered (: We were slightly too stuffed after our mains to order desserts (plus we were going to have another feast at night) so we decided to give dessert a miss. I'll definitely go back again to try their desserts and I am hoping that the to-die-for chocolate cake with icecream is still on their menu!
Alright that's all for now! Have a great weekend everyone! (: