The Place From the same peeps behind the now defunct Tao’s restaurant, SET is relatively a new restaurant in POMO, offering contemporary set lunch and dinner courses at affordable prices.

It occupies a big proportion of level 2 in POMO, with a main dining area, two private dining rooms and an outdoor dining space.

There’s even an alfresco dining area, and best of all, it’s kind of sheltered! Just be warned of the usual heavy traffic below!

The Food The main draw of SET is really the wallet friendly set courses, where lunch is 5 course at $28.80++, while the 6 course dinner is $38.80++. The options from the various courses are a mix of Chinese and western touches, from the Roasted Beef Tenderloin to the Huai Shan Carpaccio.

The Chef Starter was the Cheese Gratin paired with SET’s home-made toasted bread. The toasted bread reminded me of the traditional ones from old kopitiam, less the kaya and butter. We spread the cheese gratin on the bread, which was a great combination.
From the Cold Dish selection, we tried the Smoked Duck Breast, which had salad as well. The portion was just right for one person, given that we have 6 courses to complete for dinner set.
Tomato lovers would probably go for the Tomato Caprese, which is quite a healthy option for cold dish. We are not big fans of tomato unfortunately – but we still had a go at it, and tRP must say, the mozzarella foam was good!
The Huai Shan Carpaccio was not my favourite cold dish as I found the herb taste too strong. That said, huai shan is supposedly extremely nutritious.
The Salmon Gravlax was thinly sliced and is always a good starter.

Up next, the Grilled King Oyster Mushroom is only available for the dinner set. This was one of my favourite dishes of the night as I love the truffle cream sauce and the nicely grilled chewy gigantic mushrooms.

From the soup selection, the Mushroom Velouté with Peanut Butter seemed like a novel idea but we found the taste of the mushroom soup and peanut butter to be clashing. It would have been better if we had a plain mushroom soup instead.
The Roasted Pumpkin with truffle was quite decent, except that the truffle taste was really faint.
In terms of presentation, go for the Miso soup with sake, which was served in the mini cups.
On mains, we tried the signature Roasted Beef Tenderloin, which we felt was one of the most value for money option for steak lovers. The beef quality was decent for the price, with a surprisingly generous portion as well.  
The Baby Pork Back Ribs was quite tender, and the marination is truly a fusion of oriental sauce with western bbq style.
The Grilled Snapper with salsa was fresh and offered a much healthier option for mains.
Finally on desserts, we first tried the Poached Pear with gelato. I am not a fan of poached pear but the vanilla gelato was not too bad – though the scoop could have been larger!The Home-made cake of the day was chocolate topped with coconut, which I found too dry for my liking.
Adding on, we also had the Pistachio Panna Cotta, Espresso Crème Brulee and Huai San Jello.

Clockwise from top: Espresso Crème Brulee, Pistachio Panna Cotta and Huai San Jello

Rants The service of the staff was sincere but could definitely be more polished. Some hits and misses on the menu but we believed that SET would be capable of further improving the menu – remove the weaker selections, in fact make it 4 or 5 course and reduce the price even further to capture more of the students crowd in the area, and SET may be all set to survive for long.

Will I return again? Some fine-tuning required, but good efforts all-round. Will be keen to return if the menu gets a revamped and even more value for money!

TheRantingPanda says:
Taste bud: 3/5
Hole in the pocket: 3/5
Ambience: 2.5/5
Overall Experience: 3/5

SET
No.1 Selegie Road
PoMo Mall, #02-01
Singapore 188306
Tel: +65 6884 6884

Operating Hours
Daily: 11:30am – 10pm