In-mall dining is about as romantic as a Saturday afernoon in IKEA, but even though the latest PS Café is stationed in the Palais Renaissance, this third, demure outlet surprises with its charm. The space – a cross between a sewing workshop and a colonial conservatory with rattan seating – is divided into three sections: a bar/patisserie where the famous PS cakes are displayed (though it’s a different selection from the other branches, with the exception of the Double Choc Blackout and carrot cake); a large, dimly lit section favoured by hip media types; and the pièce de résistance, a white-tiled terrace with colossal windows that open on to a view of the verdant Thai Embassy grounds (though blinds shoot down at the first sign of rain).



The menu leans more towards fine dining, complementing the ‘breezy brunch’ PS off Harding Road and ‘coffee-and-cake-central’ PS stationed down the street in Paragon. Nearly everything listed looks tempting, including a load of intriguing specials – so many that we must have exasperated our surprisingly charming waiter as we debated our options. Overcoming my normal ‘no prawns or shellfish in Singapore’ rule (my local experiences with ‘insects of the deep’ often lead to a night spent in the loo), I gamely ordered the tamarind prawn salad ($22) as a starter. Prepared in a rich tomato sauce with olives, capers, chorizo sausage and pomelo, the prawns were bursting with flavour – an impressive opener. My dinner partner’s feta-centric salmon salad ($22) also went down well. The normally bland foliage had a zesty punch of its own and didn’t rely on the dressing, while the salmon was plump and juicy.

The mains arrived a little too swiftly (this PS is far more efficient than the more lethargic Harding Road outlet), but my absurdly succulent, grain-fed Australian tenderloin beef was worth each of its 55 dollars. The oven-cooked Moroccan lamb skewers ($35), at times both tangy and smoky, came served with a hearty bed of couscous and lightly buttered roasted vegetables (including perfectly done peppers).

Desserts ranged from excellent to disappointing: it was encouraging to hear my dinner partner describe her Chocolate Crunch Doorstep Cake ($15.90) – moist brownie at the bottom, nuts in the middle and topped with chocolate mousse and Maltesers – as a dish that ‘would make fat people feel justified in being fat’. My sherry trifle ($14), however, was a little too soggy, didn’t include chopped bananas, and only served to make me miss my mother’s far-superior version.

A week later, during a second dinner at PS with friends, we sampled the comfort food that it also excels at. While gorging on my medium-rare, onion-heavy PS steak burger ($28) in a sesame-seed bun, one companion’s voice rose above the rest, giving her roast spatchcock ($36) particularly high praise for its bed of moreish ginger mash topped with edamame and buttered carrots. As on the previous visit, our suspended-disbelief reverie was pleasingly sustained until the bitter end, when we walked through the closed-for-the-night shopping centre. At which point the illusion rapidly vanished.