Bite sized updates from the F&B scene.
01 FOOD FROM THE HEART
Honest, tasty cooking gleans some fine dining twists at this new Amoy Street restaurant. The name might sound chi-chi but its roots are as heartland as they come. Avenue 87 is named after the childhood homes of chef-founders Glen Tay and Alex Phan, who grew up in Hougang Avenues 8 and 7 respectively. The food also reflects a deep connection to their roots.
Most dishes in their fine-casual, degustation-only set-up are inspired by hawker and regional favourites and matched with flavours uncompromisingly tuned to local palates.
For instance, there's a nod to sambal seafood – grilled octopus leg topped with house-made sambal and served with charred market greens as well as a confit egg yolk. There's also a fish soup reinterpreted with locally farmed sea bass sitting in a rich stock of traditional fish soup flavours amped up with anchovy butter and milk sauce to boost umami and richness. It also comes with sliced bitter gourd, compressed with salt to tame its bitterness and give it a crunch, and tomatoes, semi-dried to intensify their flavour.
Another highlight is a Vietnamese-style baby lamb rack marinated in a lemongrassbased mix and served with grilled Thai eggplant as well as a tangy-sweet stingless bee honey sauce.
02 WINE, ONLINE
03 ON A ROLL
04 NEW BAR GRUB
05 HERITAGE EATS
06 EATING YOUR BOOZE
Temporarily closed during the circuit breaker – and for a little longer following that – Barbary Coast, spread over two floors and three historic shophouses in the Boat Quay district, has reopened with new drinks and food as well as safe distancing measures.
Among its fresh libations are overproof (also known as navystrength) gins and the Pea-Ness, a spirit forward, refreshing lactofermented apple cocktail laced with gin, pea water and lemon.
07 DINNER WITH A VIEW
We had to check out the new Riviera Forlino (formerly Forlino), a modern Mediterranean lounge offering fine dining with a view of the stunning Marina Bay waterfront and Merlion Park, at One Fullerton.
Executive chef Remy Carmignani’s menu is a winner. Celebrating the finest culinary influences from the coasts to the mountains of this diverse region, including southern France, Italy and Morocco, each dish gives you a unique taste of the Mediterranean.
We enjoyed the tortellini stuffed with pulled tangiastyle lamb shoulder slowbraised with preserved lemons – indispensable in Morrocan cooking – as well as saffron and goat cheese cream. We also liked the wild-caught New Zealand langoustine with refreshing tomato jelly, vinaigrette and seasonal microgreens.
Do we really need clear ice in the bars?
“Cocktail bars that bother with good ice also tend to have it all together.”
I remember my first encounter with a piece of clear ice. It was as if Scrooge McDuck had leapt out of the TV to place a cartoonishly large diamond in my glass of whisky. I spent most of that night captivated, watching the crystal clear ice catch whatever scant light there was in the bar. Then I snapped out of that – and I bet this is a sentence you've never heard before – ice-induced reverie, disturbed that I was being seduced by what was just a chunk of frozen water.
But was it honestly that simple? I consider myself a consummate cynic, one that far values functionality over form, and this clear ice, in my books, belonged in the same category as gold flakes and charcoal powder – frivolous and with a presence that was likely masking some kind of flavour inadequacy.
I was dead wrong.
The immediate argument is that one tastes with their eyes first – and this is doubly true for the theatrics-filled world of cocktail bars. But, far beyond that, clear ice has practical benefits. There are no air bubbles trapped in it, so it is harder and denser, and its large size minimises surface area, keeping your drink cold for longer.
What really blew me away though was the amount of craft and effort that goes into producing this relatively tiny detail in a cocktail. This takes days to make and involves a technique called directional freezing – when water is slowly frozen from one single direction. Doing this pushes the impurities towards the end of the block. Without these extraneous particles, there are no nucleation points for the water to crystallise around, resulting in clear, glasslike ice.
Once frozen, it is cut to fit neatly into corresponding glassware: cubes for tumblers and rectangular “spears” for high ball glasses. Sometimes, they are even painstakingly carved a la minute into multifaceted “jewels” for not-inexpensive orders of Japanese whisky.
It turned out that every subsequent encounter with this new form of ice was followed by exceptional boozing. Cocktail bars that bother with good ice also tend to have it all together: incredible attention to detail, great service and quality ingredients. And, unlike those gold flakes, I have come to associate clear ice with enjoyable experiences and, at the risk of hyperbole, some of the greatest nights of my life.
