Rock & Ash [photos below]

Finally…a food post!!! There's this nice food outlet called Rock & Ash which I found out by accident on twitter. Yup, twitter. It was like last week where HGW (Hungry Go Where) advertised this Rock & Ash. Anyway, Rock & Ash do have its own twitter account, https://twitter.com/#!/RockAndAsh

So me ventured further down and found out it had a few outlets already, with 1 at Novena, Marina Square and the new Clementi Mall. Intended to try the one at Novena yesterday…but I'm feeling lazy to get there. Ok, basically because there's nothing at Novena. I once worked at the area and I knew it. Great food at the area? There's donut factory, pastamania, the usual fast food joints. And no, seldom take the MRT to Orchard or Toa Payoh for lunch break…now to think about it, why we did not take a MRT ride to Toa Payoh/Orchard? Especially so when we always extend our lunch break from 12.30pm to 2pm. However, the lift took about 10 minutes at the longest to get to 30-odd floors. The express lift is NOT at all express.

Anyway, now the people working at Novena could now enjoy Rock & Ash. Jealous…please have one at Tampines soon, perhaps by 25 April 2011??? Haha, because that's when the new term starts.

Anyway, back to the food. The time I went in was quite odd, because I missed all the lunch deals (which cost 9.90). When I first heard of this establishment a week ago, I just thought it was just another "Fast-food, but not fast-food" joint. Something like Freshness Burger (which is not to my liking btw). However, the concept is quite different from Freshness Burger. Because firstly, there's free WIFI, and from the seats…there's sockets for your laptop!!! Ok…there's WIFI connection, and it's protected! That's great, because it would then not allow people who are not customers at this establishment to use the WIFI. So it is password protected(the password could be found at the receipt).

The next time the Starbucks nearby (there's 7 Starbucks in the area…Citylink mall, 2 at Marina Square, 1 at Raffles City, 2 at Suntec, 1 at Millennia Walk) is full, which is always the case for me, one could just pop-in there. With a cup of ice-blended coffee (we called it frappe-chino over at Starbucks) costing about $5 plus, and the nice ambience, it is definitely a good substitute to your usual Starbucks. Unless you had a Starbucks card, where every Thursday, there's a free shot. Oh, and I've yet to come to the FOOOD.

I ordered just a Tiramisu and the fries. A small one to be exact. The fries cost 2.90 with an additional one dollar for the dip. Judging from the menu, the lemon curd is one of their specials. And it IS ONE OF THE NICEST DIP I've HAD!!! It taste like lemon, yet it is sweet. And it is quite soothing on the first bite. There is this sensation where you felt like you are about to devour one of the freshest lemon. It is refreshing. However, after 10 odd sticks of fries with the dip, I get a bit sick of the taste. I think it is usual for me, since I grew sick of such weird mixture, of fries and lemon. The furthest I've heard of is fries with sweet and sour sauce (from McDonalds). And if the dip is 100% natural without any chemical/colouring/produced in factory, I think it is quite a remarkable feat.

Now to the fries. The fries are way better than McDonalds. Way better than Burger King. Way better than KFC. Way better than Swensen's. Is slightly better than MOS Burger. The fries are huge and thick. I had the decency to forget to check if there's any potato skin in the fries. As in potato which is semi-peel and fried together. Because that would be way better, since eating potato with the skin is YUMMY! I love to eat potato with the skin, be it boiled or fried. For the salt, I think it is a little bit saltish for me. But since I'm way tooooo sensitive to salt than the average person, this would be just fine for you.

In all, the fries are a nice alternative from your usual one at Swensen's. The way they serve the fries is interesting too. I meant in terms of the design of the paper bowl. It looked like the type of bowl one could use to buy mee sua from shi-lin. Yellow and looks interesting. I think Rock & Ash is from Taiwan or Hong Kong??? Not very sure of this.

As for the tiramisu, I could not taste the alcohol. Perhaps the alcohol content is near zero? I for one believe that tiramisu must contain alcohol, else it is not nice. But though I couldn't taste the alcohol, I could taste coffee in the tiramisu. And it is nice, with tiramisu with coffee. To make it sound wrong, it is a coffee-based tiramisu. I'm calling it coffee-based tiramisu because it contains coffee. Unless there is real high alcohol content in the tiramisu which makes me drunk, thus thinking I'm tasting coffee. And did they keep the tiramisu in the freezer? Because I could taste ice. And that harden the biscuit/sponge and thus it makes a loud banging noise when the spoon hits the plate. Felt so embarrassed when I make the nose. LOL. But this tiramisu is biscuit based, which is unlike what other tiramisu I had have recently. Not that nice tiramisu, but for the price one is paying, just over 4 dollars plus, it is quite reasonable. Think I shall head there to try the lunch time specials. The fish and chips look nice.