The image I have about French cuisine is that it's usually in very small portions i.e. not filling and it's eaten at a classy place where you have to be really conscious about your table manners. I once had very exquisite French food before but it was a bit stifling and I got hungry quite quickly after that meal because the portions were very small. That doesn't mean the food was bad but I guess I am of the type who prefers a balance between quality and quantity.
Poulet gives a very different vibe where you can easily enter the place without feeling too intimidated or worried about not being able to pronounce the French name of the dishes and I'm pleased to see that the portions are big enough (at least to me). First up was the cream of mushrooms served with croutons. The soup was creamy but not too overpowering but the mushrooms were minced so finely that it was a bit difficult to taste them. It might have been better to cut them into bigger pieces so as to taste the different flavours from the mushrooms used in this soup.
One note of caution to those who don't eat beef, it would be best to check with the staff on which dishes use beef stock. Luckily for me, the waitress alerted me to the fact that the onion soup uses beef stock so I switched to the mushroom soup instead. As such, for those who have the same concern as I do when eating out, be sure to check with the staff.
Of course, when you go to Poulet, you've got to order their signature dish i.e. the roasted chicken which can come in different sauces. Again, thanks to the gentle reminder from the waitress, I avoided the other two sauces which use beef stock and chose the signature version i.e. mushroom sauce in Chardonnay. The skin of the chicken was flavourful due to the overnight brining and the meat was juicy on its own (even the breast meat portion). When eaten together with the sauce, the taste changes so you can have different flavours within the same dish. However, when I ate the same dish at another outlet months after this visit to the Raffles City outlet, I was less than impressed because the chicken felt too dry and the sauce was too watery. Maybe the quality of the dish got affected because the second visit was on a very busy Saturday evening while my visit to the Raffles City branch was in the early evening of a weekday. It would have been better if the quality can be assured across branches and regardless of the time of visit or else customers would be turned off if they happen to have a less-than-satisfactory version during their first visit.
This is a pretty common dish in most restaurants but at Poulet, they call these prawn fritters. I was wondering what they were until the dish were served on my table. Frankly speaking, I don't know if this dish exists in French cuisine or they are including this in a bid to add local flavours to the menu. On its own, there is not much of a wow factor because this dish is so common elsewhere but thankfully, the size of the prawn fritters are big enough so it's a substantial snack and when eaten with the Thai-style chilli sauce, it's quite delicious. It's just that to find something resembling a Thai dish in a French restaurant feels a little odd somehow.
The tiramisu here is said to be their signature dessert item so it would be weird to give it a miss. I have tried many versions of this well-known dessert before but there have only been a few which impressed me. Luckily, Poulet's version does not disappoint and being served in a glass jar like this makes it slightly different from most places which serve it in a small cup or as a single slice. However, the only drawback from serving in this manner is the slight difficulty in trying to remove the different layers in a single scoop so you may not get the same taste with each mouthful as compared to when you eat from a sliced version. Nonetheless, I think it's not that of an issue to most people so overall, I think this is a pretty good dessert.
In all, it does seem like the quality of food may differ slightly across branches but the overall impression I have of Poulet is still good. It looks as if Poulet is rapidly expanding these days so it would be best to keep an eye on the food's quality regardless of when and where we go.
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