Happy Birthday Joanne!

My wife turned ..... oops... today. Nearly spilled the beans. Anyway what's in an age really? Just mere numbers to me. I'm 35 this year and she's 1 year older ok. So there you go.

il Lido
We arrived at il Lido, a fine dining Italian restaurant at the Sentosa Golf Club, at 6.40pm this evening. Just managing to catch the fading bits of a beautiful sunset. We'd requested for an outdoor seating and the ambience was very pleasant. Even the many tankers and freighters dotting the horizon became less of an eye-sore as it grew darker and colourful lights on the ships lit up the sea.

The staff was quite attentive and took our orders efficiently. Munching on a huge bowl of yummy, super-thin, savoury toasts (could taste bits of garlic and sea salt), we settled in comfortably and admired the designer decor which featured Philippe Stark ghost chairs and colourful windmill-like standing fans.

The food came relatively quickly as there were not many diners yet. Jo had ordered the gourmet set dinner which included an appetiser of roasted goose liver with poached pear and fennel, homemade tagliolini with lobster in tomato sauce, beef tenderloin with mushroom and mashed potato, filo pastry with molten chocolate and ice-cream, and coffee. But she'd decided that she would prefer to have the duck leg confit with baby spinach and balsamic vinegar for main course, so I took her beef dish and added a seafood soup.

The soup was chock-a-block with scrumptious chunks of seafood and tasted just right. And I really enjoyed the beef tenderloin which was nicely seared on the outside and juicy and pink on the inside. I also slurped up most of Jo's lobster pasta (quite delicious but tasted rather like mini mee pok, hee hee...) as she was quite overwhelmed by the very rich goose liver appetiser. Jo shared some of her duck confit with me and we both loved it! She even said it tasted like roast pork, with the crispy skin and succulent meat.

By this time, we were so stuffed we were about to roll off our chairs but we still had to wait for the dessert which took a while to prepare (in fact, the staff told us they had to re-do our dessert cos the first one didn't bake properly, high standards ya?). In the meantime, we witnessed 3 birthdays being celebrated as the staff brought a cake to different tables and sang slightly off-tune birthday songs. Jo and I both agreed that we don't really want the attention so we kept mum about her birthday.

The dessert was nicely presented and tasted ok but didn't knock our socks off. When we left about 8.30pm, the restaurant was almost full. We drove round to the beach carpark, hoping to take a leisurely stroll by the beach. But decided to go home after seeing all the hoardings and construction equipment set up around that area.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable and relaxing evening. And Sentosa is actually just 10 minutes away from our house, plus you get free entry if you dine at il Lido. So it's definitely gonna stay on our radar for future special occasions.

PS: You may have guessed that Jo wrote the paragraphs describing the food : )