Would you go for food or the ‘experience’?

After this experience, I’m proud to say, I’m definitely a food person, and a ‘gourmand’ to top it off!

The restaurant:
***Dozo***

 

 

 

 

 

Serving a fusion of French and Japanese. My two favourite cuisines. At S$58++, this sounds like a dream come true.

Unless of course you love overkill. Should have sensed it from it’s tagline: “Fine Modern Japanesque”! Eeeeeeeek!

AMBIENCE:

I’m not an ambience person but I also like places that are pleasant and not in your face. Step right in and I thought I was in a high-class karaoke joint. A noisy table with yuppies toasting wine was a tip off that this is anything but ‘high class’.

We were shown to a table along the walkway, that had 1) POLYESTER table cloth that was TOO LONG (a Martha Stewart nightmare!); 2) tacky colour; 3) too noisy and bustling

However, upon request, they did accommodatingly give us another table that was less frenetic.

SERVICE:

Now the service. Some service staff have it (that is poise, charm, eloquence and wit). Undoubtedly the wait staff at Dozo were trained to be friendly. BUT, come on, repeating the SAME CORNY jokes to the next table is a real turn off. If you haven’t got natural chattiness and charm, please, save it! Not to mention, their spoken English was absolutely appalling that our poor assigned server had to repeat what he was saying at least 3 times. Even then, we had to guess what those rolled together words with hideous pronunciation, were. On top of that, the service was very intrusive. I mean, come on. I don’t need to be attended to every 30 secs! Too much of a good thing is a waste.

FOOD:

What was I eating? Actually, I know what I was eating, but I do not need the wait staff to explain to me as if I had just stepped out of my home for the first time in my life. Please. Oh, and to use my cutlery to cut my steak to explain ‘doneness’…well, I thought that was plain rude and inappropriate. Service staff should NEVER touch my food with my cutlery. And besides, I like my steak rare…It came medium/medium well. And I was told that truffles are ‘very very expensive mushrooms’ which is why I only got a 1sqcm worth! Why thank you very much. I’m not worthy!

My guess is the chef has high hopes of being recognised and someday working in a michelin-star restaurant. His presentation, I must say, was impeccable. However, I can’t say very much for his food and the flavours. The food came off over-presented, over-manicured, overkill overkill overkill. It wasn’t exceptional. It was forgettable. Then again, what do you expect for $58? Threw me for the loop the way it was all brought out. What’s with all the gimmicks? So cheesy!

A truly great restaurant never has to rely on gimmicks and cosmetics to draw people back. It’s like a plain looking girl that wears too much make-up in order to get noticed! Sad but true.

7-courses – that’s how good ‘value’ this place was supposed to be.
But 7-courses of what? Tiny bite sizes of overly presented, forgettable food that had no distinctive flavour – nothing French nor Japanese about any of it.

My ‘favourite’ was the 6th course. Our server boasted it’s an ice refresher! What’s that? Call a spade a spade, it’s a glorified name for fruit juice with cut fruit bits and tea. The dessert, our server was boasting once again, was the ‘best choc lava cake’ in Singapore. Didn’t rock my world. In fact, didn’t even make history in my books.

The Japanese bit wasn’t really good. Then again, the French bit was a huge disappointment too. Pity. It didn’t encapsulate the essence of Japanese (simple concepts, natural flavours, freshest ingredients) and French (robust flavours with simple home-grown ingredients) cuisines. Once again, too much cosmetics! And way too cheesy.

VALUE:
$58++ for 7-courses initially seems like a good deal. On hindsight, I’d rather pay more to have a beautifully cooked 2-course meal, than pay less for SO-SO, FUSSY, FORGETTABLE (neither here nor there) and GIMMICKY food that’s nothing but cosmetics. Not so good value after all.

To sum it up, Dozo pretends to be a fine dining restaurant without the 5-star price. Isn’t that just pretentious then? The old adage of quantity does not equal quality is applicable here. Always best to be good at a few things, then to try to be overly ambitious and not be very good at many things.

What would Gordon Ramsey say? Most likely scale down from 7 forgettable bite-size courses, and focus on 3 or 4 good size portions of signature dishes and do it really really well. In the end, ultimately it’s great food that wins. Not the number of courses and gimmicks a restaurant throws in.

Smart Tart rating: +

I am not recommending this place nor will I be responsible for what you eat if you decide to try it for yourself

Dozo
491 River Valley Road
#02-02/03 Valley Point
Tel: 6838 6966

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