this is an empty bread bowl, in case you're wondering.

buko nero doesn't allow pixs of their food being taken, hence the empty bread bowl. bread was yummie - freshly baked and generous with herbs & dried tomato chunks, followed by a lovely veal-on-crackers amuse bouche. so the meal started out promising but the mains turned out very mediocre. dessert was some chocolate-caramel combination which tasted rather like a fairly good imitation of stroobwaffles and a mango sorbet which was ok, not too sweet but a tad too fibrous (had me wishing i brought my floss out).

i think my expectations were just so distorted after having waited 3 wks following a walk-in reservation. we tried calling since oct 2006 (no kidding) but NO ONE save for the answering machine (a misnomer since it doesn't answer cos you can't leave a message) picked up. even then, dinner was fully booked for the next 3 wks so had to settle for lunch (different menu, apparently). they're closed the entire CNY wk and they don't take reservations more than 1 mth in advance. i suppose i can see how hard it is for them to pick up the phone, with a full house everyday (or rather, 5 times a wk that they're open) and often only the husband (chef) and wife (waitress-cum-cashier) manning the place.

so, you can imagine i had sky high expectations for this place. that was brought down to earth by my recent experience. i thought sage had more to shout about. also another one of those hard to book places but at least the food was way more impressive. a little slice of french heaven. no pixs too this time cos the camera didn't fit in my clutch. ;) we will be back.