To celebrate Damian's 18th birthday, we went to this restaurant at VivoCity to have dinner. It was such a quaint and cute little place. It's called Marche (French word for 'market'), and is located at the roof of Vivo. The place is designed like one of those olden days villages you would find in medieval France (as it turns out, it's meant to be Swiss) or the Shire, and if you look really really closely, you could almost see the Hobbits wandering around the place. Step into the restaurant (which took around 15 minutes thanks to the queue) and it's like you're transported back in time, to the era where love and valor still meant something.
A little bit of that feeling disappeared when I saw that they charge $5.20 for a glass of squeezed juice. Surely it doesn't cost that much back then, unless the oranges are plucked from the king's garden and watered with the tears of the compassionate and beautiful queen or something.
Our little wooden table was by a rock cliff, which gave the feeling that we were having dinner in Heidi's backyard. The entire place was buzzing with the atmosphere and urgency of a marketplace (imagine a clean, flowery one, not that kind of gross smelly wet markets), and it didn't feel right just sitting there while others are getting food. That's right, you have to get your own food in Marche. The stalls are in the middle, and you get your own card thing and go around ordering, charging them to your card. At the end of it, you'll surrender your card (and your cash) to pay.
Joanne, who came before (but couldn't be there 'cause she wasn't feeling well), told us that if we didn't try the rosti (around $13 a plate), we should go hang ourselves for missing out such a joy of life. She didn't exactly put it like that, but it was the feeling I got when Damian so enthusiastically urged me to go get the rosti. We both got it (which turned out to be mistake number 1), mine was rosti with chicken cheese sausage, his was with smoked salmon. Rosti's basically fried potato strips, served with cream cheese. It was like nibbling on chunks of heaven, but after a while when I realized I was eating such a gigantic plate of potato, the magic disappeared and it just became like eating carbs. It got harder and harder to put the spoon in my mouth each time when I'm reminded of how much fatter I'm going to become. (And stop thinking that I'm not fat!)
It turned out to be a mistake to have gotten the same thing, 'cause we didn't realise how much eating at Marche was like being on Survivor. You have to outwit, outplay and outlast. What we should have done was to get different types of food (there's pasta, savory or sweet crepe, rosti, etc) and share. In that way, we can get to try more stuff. We also shouldn't have succumbed to getting their magic juice that cost as much as the cake, when we had mineral water in our bags. Also, only get one slice of desert (cause it's a really gigantic piece) to share, and one small salad bowl. Simply pile on lots and lots of stuff into the minuscule bowl while ignoring the reproachful glare of the lady behind the counter.
The most important thing is to hold on to your table for as long as you can. You spent so much time getting a table, it's only right you use it for as long as possible. Damian doesn't trust them enough to leave his bag at the table (and he subsequently left his phone there without knowing), so he brings it along when we go hunting for food. The very eager waitress around our table probably asked us around 3 times whether we're ready to leave. I find her enthusiasm to get us out highly irritating. We later only dared to leave the table when she was no where in sight, then rushing out before she could get to us.
They're very clever in coming up with the card system, so you forget how much you have already spent. So always be very clear of how much you have spent. If you're still hungry and over budget, you can always get chunks of bread for seventy cents each. If you're going with your friends and preparing to share the cost, you can choose to use one card to pay for everything, then dividing the balance.
It's really a beautiful place to eat. The prices are a bit steep, but the atmosphere and ambiance of the place is wonderful. It feels very Europe-y with its bare wood decor. A nice place to celebrate stuff, but remember to strategize, or risk losing out to the ever-eager-to-banish-you waitress.
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