[CLOSED] DON HO - Social Kitchen & Bar

Delicious appetiser

I think they’ve taken the duck off the menu; it was cooked nicely and quite tender. The flatbread was my favourite, as this was pretty tasty and delicious with the creamy labneh. The crispy eggplant was okay, but the batter could have been lighter!

This Halloumi & Squash ($16) number comes with sweet pickled beets, collard greens, almond flakes, and a nutty burnt butter dressing. Sounds fabulous, but unfortunately the seasonings were a wee off and it turned out a little meh. The squash for one, though well roasted, was completely unseasoned. Would’ve been fine if the burnt butter dressing had a touch of salt, but there was also way much of that sweet pickling juice added in which tipped the whole salad onto the sweeter side without good balance. They were also too heavy-handed with the dressing, leaving me eating basically greasy vegetables sitting in melted butter. The biggest disappointment however has to be the halloumi: the semi-hard cheese was fried to the point of being just crazy tough. Honestly if they’d just refine each component and pay a little more attention, this could be a fabulous salad.

Especially when you’ve got some crunchy hazelnut praline crumbled over, and decent enough vanilla bean ice cream to go with. Ainch gonna say it’s the best I’ve had or whatevs, as long as it’s oozy and gooey and flowy I’m good.

...but this place does really freaking good fries. Their Herb Parmesan Fries sees a medley of fried herbs (rosemary being the most obvious) and sharp, grated parmesan, sprinkled over a very generous serving of, may I say, very well done fries. Aioli on the side’s really delicious too!

Does any love sticky date pudding as much as I do? 🙋🏻‍♀️ Tried Don Ho’s recently cause my fave one at The Lokal was unavailable, and I may just have found an almost-as-good alternative!! They’ve got the uber moist, dense, yet fine-crumbed cake down pat, topped with a salted toffee sauce that, may I say, is a stroke of genius? My biggest and ONLY peeve with this is, why isn’t the cake hot?! I wouldn’t even call it lukewarm it was basically like room temperature, which of cause dropped the shiokness level by 50%.