@cavemen_sg aren’t just a butchery & wine cellar that cooks up your meats for you, they’ve got a a surprisingly comprehensive selection of food that aren’t beef, lamb or pork on their menu. They’ve got a broad range of appetisers, and the pancake ($14++) is a shoo-in for the most interesting starter on the menu.

It’s a Korean seafood pancake, complete with a paltry serving of prawns, a smattering of squid, and a sprig of spring onions on it. It’s tasty, but it’s definitely doughier than I’d like. The layer of flour certainly seems to be thicker than average. While the edges are still charmingly crispy, a thinner layer of flour would’ve resulted in a stunningly light & crispier pancake. And as everyone knows, dough hoovers up oil while cooking like nothing else.

The exterior is actually relatively grease-free, but all that oil is concentrated in the innards of the pancake, which does get overwhelmingly rich after a while. There’s some mildly spicy chili oil provided on the side, and I strongly suspect that it’s based off the chimichurri that comes with your main meat order. Sharing is most definitely recommended for this delicious but decadent starter.

I ran into Instagram’s character limit on the last post, but I really cannot commend the stellar service staff enough. The lady I assume to be the service captain kept my dad & I engaged in boisterous banter, and she managed to convince us to buy two bottles of world class wines home with some help from one of the ladies at the butchery, who seemed to double up as the resident witty sommelier. As for the rest of the service staff, they were absolutely on the ball despite getting slammed with the Christmas Eve throng. I did not find myself lacking for water or anything else I desired all night long.

And that, my friends, is why @cavemen_sg has eternally etched itself into the primitive, caveman part of my brain, if not the entirety of my consciousness.