Pique Nique

March 23, 2014

It's been a while since I last ate at Pique Nique, the roughed-up, all-American diner to Antoinette's classed-up, dainty French cafe. Time has clearly had its ravages; the quality of the former's savouries, as well as the size of its dining crowd on a Thursday evening, seems to have gone down. Service has remained the same as before though; completely inattentive and unresponsive. We might as well have served ourselves the iced waters that only arrived at the very end of our meal.

The Sausage and Egg Gratin ($14.80) from the all-day breakfast selection caught our eye, mostly because we're so in love with Antoinette's awesome egg gratin. However, this turned out a lot more rustic than we'd expected. Grilled sausage bits and diced yellow peppers texturised the tomato sauce which was topped with 2 glaringly overdone fried eggs, and sided by a couple of plain white toasts and mesclun salad.

The Swiss Shrooms Burger ($13.80), with a moist-and-thick-but-not-juicy-enough beef patty, sauteed mushrooms, and melted gruyere, was decent, but lacked punch (read: greasebomb dripping with juices). Not the best burger we've had, but not the worst either. That said, the fries were pretty damn good; we actually finished them yummy babies up!

The side option of a Petit Mac & Cheese ($7.80), with a trio of gruyere, parmesan and mozzarella, while surprisingly substantive, was boringly one-dimensional and lacking that oomph factor.