Day at Marche

It's the weekend at last! Headed down to Vivocity today to have lunch at Marche. It's the first time I ate at the Vivo Marche and it's either that I was really ravenous or the food tasted better than that in their now defunct outlets at Heeren and Suntec City! Almost everything we ordered was really good - the salad spread, the mushroom soup and the salmon crepe have ensured that I'll be back for more.

Vivo Marche is all the way up on the third level of Vivocity, and takes up a pretty little glass house. The premise is much smaller and more crammed than the old ones, and thus it gets really squeezy during lunch and dinner times. Prices have gone up too! Grumble.

Anyway there are two things in particular that shall be mentioned. Firstly, the "fruit cake":

As you can see, it's almost all fruit-and-jelly and hardly any cake. Another things is that this should really just be called "grape cake" instead of "fruit cake" because all the fruits are green and red grapes (did I mention that they are all seedless? mmm.) Marche has to be credited for being so generous with the fruit - I think there are at least 15 whole grapes on that slice of cake!

Here's the thing: the jelly is just WAY too sweet. The grapes are nice and sweet, and the cake is, well, passable for a sponge cake, but slightly to the hard and dry side. It would all have been fine if the jelly had, perhaps, half the amount of sugar that was put into it. It was so sickeningly sweet that I could hardly get through a quarter of the cake (and I have a sweet tooth y'know). It tasted like concentrated sugar syrup. Not worth the $4.50 we paid.


Then there's this:

*cries out in joy* Hot Cross Buns!! For some strange reason it's not easy to find hot cross buns in Singapore, and the only ones I've ever eaten are the plain ones. These at Marche had 2 choices of fillings - custard or chocolate cream. I walked by the pastry section and saw a huge tray full of these gleaming beauties, and grabbed one to try on the spot.

Mmmm. The bread, although no longer warm, was still fluffy and soft and sweet. And there was the custard that wasn't overly sweet, thus giving a lovely combination that wasn't too sweet (unlike the fruit cake) overall and was very very yummy. They were pretty generous with the custard too. From the outside all you can see is a blob of cream sticking out, and at first I was afraid that it was just a thin line running through the bread, or even worse, that it really was just that tiny glob (you know, like some cheat-your-money bakeries). Thankfully, a thick stream of custard is revealed upon biting into the bun. It kind of oozes out as you bite into it. Yum yum.

I liked it enough to buy two back - one custard and one chocolate, and I've just taste the chocolate. Whoa the chocolate sauce/cream is more liquidy than the custard and just flowed out of the bun! Oh so good. For $1.50, it's more than worth trying when you pop by Marche. There's even a large bowl of unsalted butter that you can help yourself to, just in case you want to butter the bread. Not necessary in my opinion though.

I'm definitely going back there to eat again. I heard something about this new Marche outlet being under a new management - it is now under the direct management of Marche International, which is the founding company of Marche. Previously, the two outlets in Singapore were run by Singapore franchisee Chee Swee Cheng & Company. Perhaps that'll explain the better standard of food. Whatever it is, I feel it is now better than Vil'age, though slightly pricier.