Man, I really wish I could get my blog posts up as quickly as some other bloggers, but it's been pretty difficult, what with the job applications, preparation for interviews, wanting to chill and hang out with my friends or just basically, stepping away from the computer. 

I called this the "Eh, you want to buy copy watch?" photo.

In any case, here is my two week overdue post on The Bountiful Cow, the restaurant I chose to redeem my expiring toptable points on. The Bountiful Cow is, as you might guess, a restaurant devoted to beef. To be more specific, it's a pub which serves steaks and burgers, and had movie posters featuring cows and cattles adorning its walls. Some call it a gastropub, but that just sounds a little too upmarket for what this place actually is.

I was here because I figured P. and I should have a decent meal out. And by decent, I meant meat-filled. P., being a typical male, loves his steak. Me, not so much. I grew up on black pepper steak from Seng Huat at the old Zion Road hawker centre, but I'm not really a steak fan. I do like burgers, but am most definitely not a burger afficiando. My favourite burger happens to be the BBQ burger from Carl's, Jr., an American chain which set up in Singapore two years before I left, and which I hope will still be there when I return home next.

The pub wasn't exceedingly welcoming when we first walked in. The waiter stared at us curiously, and I had to make my way to the bar to explain we had reservations. As it turned out, our toptable reservations - made two weeks in advance - had not been conveyed to the restaurant, and they asked to see our e-mail confirmation as proof. Fortunately, I had it on my new BlackBerry. They also accepted that I had opted for a toptable treat and a set meal offer (which had actually expired a few days before, but I had sneakily changed the date of my reservation from before to after the expiry date so I got by on a loophole) even though this wasn't mentioned in the e-mail.

So, P. ordered the 13 oz. T-bone set special (£19.50 for the steak, £20 including dessert), while I ordered the 13 0z. Bountiful Burger toptable set menu (usually £12.50 for the burger alone, though mine came with a starter and dessert). Together, that's about close to 800 g of beef and bone between two people. To my mind, that's a lot of meat.

The steak wasn't bad. I had read reviews that the T-bone usually consisted of far more bone than meat, but I can personally vouch that that wasn't the case, although P. was getting rather tired of having to cut through so. much. meat. This was possibly due to his confusion between whether it was easier to cut along the grain of the meat, or across.

My burger was huge. I opted for cheese on my burger, and as you can see from my photo, it consisted of a solitary square of cheese on top of the patty. I don't know if that's usually what happens, but I was a little taken aback. Possibly it just looked worse than it really was because of the sheer size of the patty.

The burger had the smokey charcoal burnt taste that reminded me of home-style barbecues. I happen to like that, although I'm not sure it's entirely healthy. I don't really know what else to look for in burgers, so my only other comments would be that the bun wasn't soggy, and was generally okay to eat, and that the chips were very nice.

All in all, we managed to get through most of the meal, with P. helping me out on part of my burger. Still, as you can see, we actually left stuff behind. Knowing how much of a human garbage can P. is, that's actually saying something.

So, would I come back? Sure, I would, but only if they were holding a special promotion. As I said in the beginning, I'm not a big meat fan, and in spite of my occasional cravings for burgers, I really do eat them once every four months or so, so it's not as if this kind of food appeals to me. Still, for the portions, and the price (even if one was free), it wasn't bad. 

That being said, I rather unexpectedly got the chance to eat at Lucky 7 the day after. More on that in another post!