Forget about pedestrian ladies night deals like cheap housepours and saccharine lychee mojitos.
These days, restaurants and bars are pulling out the stops to let you hang out with the girls in style: Think along the lines of cheese and charcuterie platters, and baskets of lip-smacking dim sum. After all, we’re in the era where good food is of supreme importance.
So clink your champagne flutes and get noshin’ on some gourmet grub while you catch up on the latest goss.
$78 per person (women only). Thursdays, 8-10pm. Mitz Restaurant & Bar, Level 4, Grand Park Orchard, 270 Orchard Road, tel: 6603-8855.
Dim sum and cocktails, anyone?
We’re already huge fans of Chef Nicky Ng’s dim sum items, traditional in flavours but with an unexpected modern twist, and always sublime. So it’s a real double joy to learn that their Ladies Gourmet Night has put together a free-flow selection of some of our favourite items and a solid list of booze.
Photo: Jasper Yu
Food first: There are a total of eight snacks, four of which are steamed/poached dim sum dishes, and the remaining consists of scrumptious deep-fried bites. They’re manageable enough for you to order one serving of each item before honing in with repeat orders for your favourites. But definitely, definitely, get the char siew bun. The charcoal bun is so soft and fluffy, and the barbecued meat is a wonderful melange of sweet, smoky and salty.
On the drinks front, there are six cocktails, two choices each of white and red wines, a prosecco, a sparkling, and four craft beers. There are spirits like Beefeater gin and Stolichnaya vodka too. Whether your boozin’ style is, there’s definitely something for everyone.
PS. The hotel’s lounge, Bar Canary, also has a booze-only Girls Night Out promotion on Wednesdays nights, at $50/woman for champagne, wines, spirits and cocktails.
$48 per person (women only). Wednesdays, 6-9pm, excluding eve of and on public holidays. Atrium, level 1 Pan Pacific Singapore, 7 Raffles Boulevard, tel: 6826-8240.
Sometimes, all you need to unwind is good wine, and some charcuterie and cheese to fuel great conversations.
Pan Pacific Singapore has built quite a name for the extensive cheese spread at its buffet line, and their deli counter has been our go-to when it comes to charcuterie, so you’re definitely in good hands.
And it’s dead affordable too, at just $48 for your free-flow of cheeses, cold cuts and sausages, and alcohol.
For booze, you’ve got two choices each of white and red wines, Tiger and Heineken beers, as well as house pour spirits including Maker’s Mark bourbon and Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey.
The food selection is frequently updated to keep the menu fresh. For cheeses, they usually keep a mixture of creamy and semi-hard styles such as the likes of camembert, brie, and edam. All the charcuterie are handmade in-house (you may even have spotted the Pan Pacific brand at supermarkets!) without any artificial fillers. We really liked the pork garlic sausages and chorizo, and the prosciutto is pretty legit too.
$50 per person (women only). Wednesdays, 6pm-10.15pm.
Unlike the other two promotions, this one is a set menu rather than an all-you-can-eat proposition, but it still holds its own very well: an appetiser and an entree, bookeneded by a welcome glass of champers, and a sweet cocktail for a nightcap.
You’ll be greeted with a glass of Perrier Jouet Blason Rose, before you start off on your choice of cured mackeral with housemade pickles and juniper dressing, or a Japanese tomato salad with cottage cheese and sweet pea sprouts.
Mains are a toss-up between a poached free-range chicken with white asparagus, peppercorn sauce and garlic flowers; or a poached red grouper fillet with couscous and champagne beurre blanc.
And it only seems fitting to end it with their cocktail take on dessert. If you’re the type to go all out for the rich flavours, get the Milk & Honey Reviver, a shakeup of whisky, espresso, vanilla cream and honeycomb crumble. Alternatively, the Lemon Posset should freshen up the palate with its silky, custard-like combination of beefeater gin, blackberry liqueur, and lemon-and-lavender-infused sugar.
But here’s another advice: Should you manage to reach the restaurant for an early dinner, you really should take advantage of Oxwell & Co’s daily (yes, including weekends) Happy Hour, which runs from noon all the way till 8pm with everything on tap going for $10 each.
The best thing about it is their Cocktails on Tap list. It usually rotates, but we’re extremely partial to the sweet spice hit of their Gin & Chronic; the uber-refreshing Pimm’s Cup with strawberries, cucumber and mint; and the pièce de resistance ─ the Pina Colada, lighter than convention thanks to the use of coconut water instead of coconut cream for the cocktail base, but capped with a blowtorched-and-caramelised pouf of coconut cream meringue.