Best DINNER EXPERIENCE Western

There has to be a reason for Andre Chiang’s longevity in our dining scene, from the time he carved out his memorable creations at Jaan to his current full-fledged restaurant at Bukit Pasoh.

Portrait of Tammy Strobel
My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

RESTAURANT ANDRE

41 Bukit Pasoh Road, S(089855) T 6534-8880

There has to be a reason for Andre Chiang’s longevity in our dining scene, from the time he carved out his memorable creations at Jaan to his current full-fledged restaurant at Bukit Pasoh. When we dined here, we experienced flawless service the moment we stepped into the restaurant, until the last crumb was cleared from our linen-clad table. However, it is the technically assured cooking and ingredient-driven nouvelle cuisine that sets this restaurant apart from other places in town.

 There are eight savoury courses in the degustation menu. But before that, a parade of snacks is served – some with a playful slant. Textural contrast is given to small wakasagi or smelt fish snugly wrapped with shredded potato and topped with vinegar powder. This is “our take on fish and chips”, says the waiter. You will get fresh peas stuffed with smoked eel or miniature wild mushroom tarts to nibble on, followed by warm charcoal brioche that’s “hidden” amid a pile of real charcoal pieces. All these items pave the way for the rest of the courses.

Chiang appears to have reinvented his vegetable dishes, offering many pleasant surprises along the way. The chef understands the seasons well. He shares that in early spring, you’ll get more green coloured vegetables, and towards late spring, the colour changes to a pinkish shade. One of his most striking creations is the millefeuille of vegetables comprising delicate slices of black daikon, shiso, cucumber and seaweed sandwiched between wafer-thin layers of smoked swordfish and chrysanthemum flower jelly, and perked up with a piquant jalapeno sauce. It’s culinary wizardry on a plate. There’s also the 17 artisan veggies flown in from Chiang’s farm in Taiwan. Ribbons of carrots, zucchini, daikon etc. are draped around mackerel sashimi, and flavoured with umami-packed tuna belly oil.

My Reading Room

After a whole procession of savoury dishes, we are served the the pre-dessert. We are utterly mesmerised by the beauty of the thinly sliced Muscat grape blanketing a dollop of airy raspberry mousse. The accompanying peach coulis offers palate-cleansing acidity and light sweetness. Finally, a wooden tool box of petit four (kaya toast macaron, root beer lollipop, nougat, and hay-smoked financier) is brought to our table, signalling the end of the meal.

Our dinner lasted several hours yet there was good pacing of the courses. This is a special occasion spot where you will need to set aside all deadlines, worries and guilt, and simply indulge. Our advice is to make sure reservations are made way ahead of time.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

RESTAURANT LABYRINTH

#02-23, Esplanade Mall,  S(039802) T 6223-4098

Few dare to challenge the genre of Mod-Sin (modern Singaporean) cuisine – really, you can count on one hand the number of restaurants who do so, and only owner-chef of Restaurant Labyrinth Han Li Guang has decided to go the route of deconstructing well-known dishes that have been part of the Singapore lexicon forever. The dining experience plays with the mind, while at the same time delivering familiar textures and flavours to the palate.

The restaurant space is entirely in black and rather utilitarian, which just means you can turn your entire attention to what is being served. Three menus are available at dinner: Labyrinth Classics (three- or four-course), Labyrinth Classics Degustation (seven-course) and Chef’s Tasting (10-course).

The starter of the Labyrinth Classics Degustation that we picked is a tingkat (a tiffin container) of charred radish cake, rojak puffs and nasi lemak chwee kueh. The radish cake is cylindrical and served on a stick looking like a toasted marshmallow; the rojak puff is a puff containing rojak sauce making it an explosion of flavour; and the nasi lemak chwee kueh is coconut-flavoured and topped with a dollop of sambal. Such is the promising start to a mind-boggling meal.

My Reading Room

Other creative riffs on the Singaporean theme include Hokkaido scallop bak chor mee and Japanese A4 wagyu hor fun. The former is an intriguing dish served in a retro rooster-motif bowl of sliced squid “noodles”, anchovy meat balls and Hokkaido scallop made to look like fish cake – toss for the evocative melange of flavours. The latter is made from thinly sliced radish in place of the hor fun and perfectly seared beef slices.

Would we get what chef Han is trying to do if we didn’t grow up eating Singapore’s street food? Perhaps not; for those dining at Labyrinth without the reference points – signposts, if you will – this would be an incomplete experience. We recommend doing a crash course in local food first. For the rest of us, it was a wow a minute.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

SAINT PIERRE

#02-02B One Fullerton, S(049213) T 6438-0887

Exceptional service is a rare commodity, which is why Saint Pierre’s team is superlative. I’d barely rested my knife and fork on my plate, before a sharply suited gentleman is beside me, asking in a French accent, “May I?” If not for the warm smiles and demeanour of the waiters, and the view of Marina Bay Sands lit up across the water, one might mistake this for a restaurant in Paris. 

Saint Pierre’s je ne sais quoi extends to the food. French cooking techniques are at the heart of Belgian chef Emmanuel Stroobant’s elegant dishes. Yet there are innovative nods to Asian cuisine too. Like the entree of almond-crusted, hand-dived scallop with spicy avocado cream and Thai coconut emulsion, or the roasted Atlantic lobster ravioli in lobster bisque with a touch of yuzu zest.

My Reading Room

It’s well-balanced fare – just enough, never too much. Consider the delightful crunch of the skin on the main of hibachi barbecued duck breast, coated in a lime-chilli glaze and accompanied by organic carrots. Or the hint of cloves in the oxtail consomme that anchors the steamed Atlantic cod – wrapped in a paper-thin veil of carrot and daikon. The pacing of the dishes is spot on. And the presentation? Exquisite. For instance, the herb-crusted artichoke, whose heart is hollowed out and stuffed with a mixture of pine nuts and marigold leaf; a turmeric emulsion is poured onto the plate as it is served.

The visual feast continues to the last course: an intricate chocolate sphere filled with chocolate mousse, vanilla cremeux, pear-passion fruit jelly and praline. And one cannot neglect the cheese trolley laden with 15 to 20 slabs of dairy-filled decadence, ranging from creamy brie and goat’s cheese to a 15-month-old gruyere. Consume your pick of cheeses with a glass of 1998 Niepoort Colheita. Now this is the very definition of joie de vivre.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

SALTED & HUNG

12 Purvis Street, S(188591) T 6358-3130

A cut above other beef, the marbled meat from South Australia’s acclaimed boutique cattle farm Mayura Station is carved from “open grass-fed cows, wet-aged for two to three months”. This explains the buttery, slightly nutty flavours that glide across our palates, while we relish the juiciness from its well-calibrated meat-fat ratio.

It’s nuggets of information like these – courtesy of the modern Australian restaurant’s clearly knowledgeable manager – that differentiate our meal from your typical slapdash business lunch in the CBD. Today, in an elongated space with fun, tongue-in-cheek murals (picture a painting of a pig with the words “All animals are equal, but some are more equal” scrawled across it), we’re ordering from the a la carte menu.

This consists of small plates that are dished out from an open kitchen. Our courses are served at a sensible pace – swift but giving us enough time to savour the organic Lucy Margaux Pinot Noir from Adelaide Hills. The dish of hamachi collar with lard and beans nudges my senses into near overdrive as I pick out the silkiness from the fish oils, the charred top notes from the grill, and a slight brininess accentuated by a hint of salt.

My Reading Room

But the most engaging treat to discover is the charcuterie. We mop up oxtail rillettes and other cured meats with toasted flatbread. There’s the creamy lardo, pig fat that we’re told has been cured in salts and aromatics. Chef Drew Nocente, an Australian of Italian heritage, tells us that all the flavours are in the fats, and that he likes working with lesser-known cuts of meat. I remark that the velvety pate tastes like a sweeter, more mellow version of pig liver. Nocente replies that it’s actually pig head terrine I’m slathering onto the flatbread. “I usually tell my guests to just try what’s there, before telling them what it is,” he offers cheekily.

What’s interesting is that there’s even a beer pairing option ($58 per flight) to go with the chef’s tasting menu ($75 per person) – perfect for those who want to indulge. Salted and Hung is also serving a weekend brunch featuring charcuterie, antipasti and meat platters.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

SHINJI BY KANESAKA

Lobby level, Carlton Hotel Singapore, S(189558) Tel: 6338-6131

The first overseas branch of one-Michelin-star Sushi Kanesaka in Tokyo, opened by executive chef Shinji Kanesaka, has moved out of Raffles Hotel (due to the iconic establishment’s renovation plan) and into Carlton Hotel across the street.

We visited this new location, with its blink-and-miss-it entrance off the side of the hotel bar leading to a ramp walkway. It was only when we turned the corner at the top that we saw doors that led to cosy dining rooms. 

We were fortunate enough to have master chef Koichiro Oshino, who leads the Singapore team, in charge of our little dining room. The other guests along the sushi counter comprised a group of businesspeople, and a lone female guest enjoying a glass of champagne as she waited for her sushi course to start. Without windows, time seemed to stand still.

My Reading Room

For lunch, there were three choices of sushi course sets (nine-piece, 12-piece and 15-piece), as well as two omakase special sets that include cooked dishes. Oshino checked with us about any dietary restrictions and then launched straight into preparing our sushi course. While he looked very intent and serious, he did banter with his guests smilingly, in between making sushi.

As what is served depends on the freshness of the seafood flown in, every morsel was a delightful punctuation in our meal. Some of the sushi we had included aji (striped jack) with spring onion, squid with lime and salt, maguro zuke (marinated with shoyu), otoro (the fattest part of a bluefin tuna), uni (sea urchin), bonito with lime, and unagi – all were of the right temperature, compact mouthfuls of beautifully balanced fresh bites.

When we left the restaurant, we agreed that Shinji by Kanesaka does some of the best classical Edo-style sushi in town, if not the best. The lunch not only satisfied our hunger but also lifted our spirits, creating a little bubble of respite in our day.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

SUMMER PALACE

Level 3, Regent Singapore, S(249715) T 6725-3288

For a quiet spot to enjoy flavoursome Cantonese cuisine, Summer Palace is a choice venue. The menu, crafted by executive chef Liu Ching Hai, features a number of distinctive dishes such as deep-fried frog legs with Chinese five-spice salt, and pan-fried Hong Kong dried oysters with turnip cake.

While the steamed dim sum needs work, the crumbly baked chicken tart with baby abalone, and baked buns with barbecued pork and pine nuts (aka bolo buns) are delicious. Slices of crispy suckling pig that hold minced shrimp and almond flakes in between (similar dishes are usually done with slices of roasted chicken) and the chef’s signature wok-fried crocodile meat with homemade spicy sauce are also recommended. The gluten-free menu, rarely seen in Chinese restaurants, features dishes such as fried chicken with garlic served with plum sauce, and wok-fried diced beef with lily bulbs and asparagus. A selection of vegetarian dishes is also available.

Service is attentive and personable, and the staff are always on hand to help apportion food or answer questions. We appreciate that they checked for dietary restrictions at the start of our meal, and made sure we had a fresh pot of hot tea just as orders for dessert were being placed. The gracious staff took the trouble to include slivers of coconut meat in our bowls of apportioned almond cream dessert, originally served in a young coconut. They even took the initiative to verify if they should pack the unfinished food into two portions, and offered a choice of condiments such as green chillies and chilli padi to accompany the food. Needless to say, we were suitably impressed and are very likely to return for more good food.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

SUMMER PAVILION

The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore, S(039799) T 6434-5286

Lauded as one of the best Cantonese restaurants in Singapore, Summer Pavilion has received numerous accolades, including its first Michelin star in 2016. The fine-dining restaurant remains a perennial favourite for business luncheons and formal family meals.

With 25 years of culinary experience, executive chef Cheung Siu Kong is as skilful with the wok as he is with coaxing even the most subtle of flavours from ingredients for his wholesome soups. The team at Summer Pavilion, both front and back of house, do their very best to ensure you enjoy your meal.

You can request dishes that aren’t listed on the menu, such as fresh soon hock fish fried till crispy on the outside but still delicate and tender on the inside. If you are craving a stir-fry of sliced beef with bean sprouts and shredded spring onions imbued with wok hei, the kitchen can happily accommodate.

And should your table of four prefer two types of tea, plus additional condiments to accompany your food, the adept service staff will ensure that everything is neatly placed on the table, while still serving your lunch with poise.

When given the chance to recommend dishes, the staff do well. The barbecued iberico pork with honey sauce is fatty and luscious. We particularly enjoy the well made dim sum items, such as the pan-fried crabmeat, mushroom and onion dumpling, and the baked abalone puff. The poached rice, which comes with a light lobster broth and chunks of fresh lobster meat, is comforting and satisfying.

The modern and elegant dining room (think dark wooden panels and booth seats), beautiful Richard Ginori tableware, rather extensive wine list, and artisanal tea blends (the lychee oolong tea is popular) curated by Tea Bone Zen Mind add to the charm. But at the end of the day, it is the warm hospitality and exquisite cuisine that keep Summer Pavilion at the top of its game.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

SUSHI KIMURA

#01-07, Palais Renaissance, S(238871) T 6734-3520

Sushi Kimura, which opened in December 2016, offers a storied trip across Japan through chef Tomoo Kimura’s omotenashi (Japanese hospitality). The meals here begin light, but are big in texture, with an appetiser bowl of Kyoto yuba (beancurd skin), plum jelly, ikura, uni and freshly grated wasabi root. The temperatures then get raised, comfortably, with a silky chawanmushi made with mineral water from Hokkaido – water Kimura prizes for its “softness”, he tells us.

The chef takes pride in the sourcing of his ingredients – it’s in the way he explains their origins. “The tomato is grown below Mount Fuji and water is cut off so the tomato survives by retaining more sugars. The farmers have to check (on the crop) every six hours,” he explains, after plating our oblong platter of sashimi. For his sushi rice, the chef mixes the grains with aged vinegar exclusively sourced from a brewery in Kyoto. This vinegared rice is also presented at the end of the meal, topped with sweet uni, ikura and fresh organic egg.

While Kimura is the frontman at this 12-seat counter, his team makes its presence known in timely ways: the service staff brought out the Dewazakura Dewanosato sake in striking gold cups almost seconds after he recommended it as a three-time-champion he procured exclusively. The quiet prowess of his supporting kitchen cast of three is also shown, particularly in the tamago (Japanese omelette) done two ways – Tokyo and Kyoto styles.

In case the efforts taken aren’t evident, the last course is the ultimate show of dedication to the craft: Monaka rice wafers toasted over binchotan charcoal, turned at regular short intervals from the beginning of our meal, eventually served with toasted brown rice tea pudding. It’s like we went full circle to the beginning with this final dish, sated with quality food and knowledge.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

TAMASHII ROBATAYA

#02-01, 12 North Canal Road, S(048825) T 6222-0316

Most establishments that have been bestowed the G Restaurant Award expect their diners to observe a certain sobriety of manner and decorum. Such as not hollering your order across the dining room directly at the chef. But at Tamashii Robataya, youthful local chef-owners Patrick Tan and Max See have no such rules. They are only too happy to engage diners in banter across the kitchen counter, enthusiastically introducing the latest seasonal produce from Japan, all beautifully displayed atop said counter which spans the length of one of the restaurant’s two dining rooms. The atmosphere is a little like being in a marketplace, except here the “grocers” are your chefs, who will also grill your chosen ingredients to perfection.

The extensive a la carte menu features over 80 dishes, mostly grilled and given minimal seasoning to highlight the ingredients’ natural flavours. While the texture of just about every dish we sampled – from spears of white asparagus to a whole kinki fish – was almost perfect, we found some of the items wanting a little more salt. That said, diners are free to season the morsels to their taste with the assortment of salt, sansho and shichimi placed at each seat.

Apart from seasonal specials, some interesting items include a snack of kiku tatami – compressed sheets of chrysanthemum petals lightly grilled so that they are delicately crisp in texture and lightly smoky and floral in flavour. On the other end of the taste spectrum is a tender grilled pork jowl, its natural sweetness and richness lifted by a house-made yuzu and Japanese pepper paste. To note, the restaurant receives top-quality meats and seafood air-flown from Japan four times a week – and the freshness is apparent in the taste.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

TERRA

54 Tras Street, S(078993) Tel: 6221-5159

Chef-owner Seita Nakahara of Terra is sort of a high priest of Tokyo-Italian cuisine in Singapore, if you will, marrying authentic and classic Italian cooking with the best of Japanese ingredients. He’s spent years honing his culinary skills not only at Tokyo’s best Italian restaurants but also with extensive training stints in Tuscany, Sicily and Piedmont. He’s also spent much time scouring Japan for the best producers of various precious ingredients.

The omakase is the recommended course of action at Terra. For dinner, there are three omakase menus; what is served depends on the season and the ingredients that Nakahara has managed to fly in. The restaurant is casual, sans table linen and with tables placed quite close to one another. Although the kitchen is considered open, those who want to peer in have to peep round the crockery and other stuff placed on the shelf partition.

The chef believes in celebrating ingredients and in showcasing their seasonal best, a case in point being the duo of bruschetta that kick-started our omakase: a generous amount of Hokkaido uni on one and botan ebi on the other – a simple preparation that allowed the ingredients to sing. Another dish that’s part of the omakase was a sauteed squid with pine nut sauce and Hokkaido vegetables served in a little cast iron Staub pot.

While we didn’t get to try the signature uni pasta, we did enjoy the prawn spaghetti – the prawns were fresh and the spaghetti was cooked to perfection. But the dish that really wowed us was the one after – the famed acqua pazza (“crazy water”) – a seafood soup with a firm and delicious piece of golden eye snapper with crackling-like skin and mussels and clams. It’s heady stuff; fragrant and potent to the last drop.

They say the sign of a great chef is knowing when to show restraint, and Nakahara did just that – a slice of Tochigi wagyu was seasoned just right, seared and pan-roasted till medium-rare and served with half a Hokkaido brown mushroom. Every bite was slowly savoured to make it count.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

THE KITCHEN AT BACCHANALIA

39 Hongkong Street, S(059678) T 9179-4552

The Kitchen at Bacchanalia is a cosy 36-seater with one show table in a prime spot near the floor-to-ceiling glass frontage – for the beautiful people, probably. Australian-born head chef Luke Armstrong, who’s worked at Michelin-star restaurants Pied a Terre and The Ledbury in London, and Oud Sluis in The Netherlands, may be newly arrived but he’s already putting his touch on Bacchanalia’s modern European menus. 

We were there on a rainy day for a Working Lunch (as Bacchanalia’s midday menu is called). There is the option to choose two or three courses from the selection, or opt for the Chef’s Tasting. To kick off the meal, two complimentary amuse-bouches were served: beef tartare on brioche and a shot of warm white asparagus soup. They certainly raised our anticipation of the meal to come. 

Of the two appetisers, the Shizuoka fruit tomato was a pretty dish with its vivid colours of red and green. We found it refreshing because of the sweetness of the tomato contrasting with the slight tartness of the tomato pearls vinaigrette; the quinoa grounded the dish with its earthiness. The braised short rib main course served in its roasting juices with roasted king oyster mushroom, kohlrabi and fresh wasabi was tender and intense in flavour, while the pan-roasted grouper fillet was perfectly cooked and set off well by the pickled pumpkin, toasted kabocha (a type of winter squash) puree, lentil falafel and a light vermouth sauce.

My Reading Room

The dessert of Gariguette Strawberry Breton – a French butter biscuit with a yuzu mousseline, topped with strawberries and a scoop of strawberry sorbet – was a nice and balanced end to what was a great lunch.

The talk about diners being in the middle of the action at Bacchanalia is not really accurate though; for one, the cooking action is confined to the kitchen island and not surrounding the diners, most of whom would not have the kitchen in their line of sight anyway.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

THE KNOLLS

Capella Singapore, Sentosa Island, S(098297) T: 6591-5046

The Knolls at Capella may not be a typical place you’d traipse to on a busy weekday. But it is a wonderful spot for relaxing Sunday brunches where free-flow Taittinger champagne, wines and cocktails can be had. You may choose to dine on the terrace facing the reflecting pools and the sea, or in the cooler indoor dining area.

The spread may not be as massive as those available at some other city hotels but the kitchen team does turn out dishes using high-quality ingredients. At the cold appetiser section, you will get wholesome salads like tomato caprese, grilled calamari salad and tuna nicoise salad, alongside platters of Italian and Spanish charcuterie.

The outdoor live stations focus on barbecue-style mains, including fall-off-the-bones baked ribs coated with sticky barbecue marinade, and grilled grain mustard-crusted rib-eye. Like other guests, we’re drawn to the sizzling sausages and lamb chops, which the chefs fire up in a huge pan. As if that is not enough, the waitress brings plated dishes such as roasted pigeon to our table for us to sample. These rotating dishes may include Mediterranean fish beignet (deep-fried fish in batter) with aioli sauce, flavoured with kaffir lime and saffron, and other savoury items.

The selection of desserts is equally impressive. There’s an elegant display of mini cakes such as orange baba and matcha dome, alongside macarons, kueh and pralines. Meanwhile, a cheese trolley makes its rounds so that we can take our pick. Roving musicians keep these brunch sessions lively by going from table to table to serenade diners. If you want to get away from crowded spots, this is a great place to go for an intimate meal coupled with excellent service.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

THE SUMMERHOUSE

3 Park Lane, S(798387) T 6262-1063

The Summerhouse is set in a beautiful conserved black-and-white bungalow at the former Seletar Air Base. Amid the shady trees, the vibe here is relaxing. Flanking the building is a lush edible garden filled with herbs and flowers. On the upper floor is the main dining room, while the casual Wildseed Cafe and Bar occupies the lower floor.

Helming the kitchen is chef Florian Ridder, who focuses on using as much local seafood and produce as possible. He even churns butter from scratch. The leftover buttermilk he derives from the process is served as a spread for sourdough bread.

We kick off our meal with a popular starter – raspberry pickled beetroot. Soft, creamy burrata and crispy buckwheat are cocooned in a hollowed-out beet. The burgundy-coloured root veggie is drizzled with a tangy sweet beetroot and roselle gazpacho whose acidity is offset with buttermilk. We’re off to a memorable start.

My Reading Room

For mains, the meat dish impresses, particularly the chocolate-fed beef (the cattle, from South Australia’s Mayura Station, indulge in chocolate). To garner a welcome smokey flavour, this wagyu is cooked in an Inka oven. The meat is paired with pickled pumpkin and grapes for a touch of acidity. Sharing plate space are local mushrooms and a sauce of aromatic Earl grey-infused veal jus.

The iberico pork is excellent too. This large slab of meat is partnered with caramelised onion infused with chamomile, alongside pistachio nuts and chervil beurre blanc. We are told that the meat is smoked in the Inka oven and then finished sous vide. The result of about 80 hours of cooking? Pork that’s superbly tender and satisfying.

After a refreshing dessert of guava sorbet with raspberry puree, go for a walk in the garden and soak in the balmy air before heading back to town.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

USHIDOKI WAGYU KAISEKI

#01-01, 57 Tras Street, S(078996) T 6221-6379

At Ushidoki Wagyu Kaiseki, everything about the cooking embodies the tenet that Japanese dining in Singapore is as refined as in Japan – so long as you have the right ingredients; here, it’s premium Ozaki wagyu from Japan’s Miyazaki prefecture. It certainly helps that in parlaying his philosophy of head-to-tail cooking onto the plate, executive chef Hirohashi Nobuaki cleaves close to the Japanese concept of mottainai – waste nothing. This might explain the tender tiles of beef tongue simmered in a beef consomme with a touch of yuzu, or roasted slivers of lung flavoured with sweet miso, or even the nuggets of oyster wrapped in carpaccio. In a shallow pan, Nobuaki keeps the maison’s sukiyaki sauce on a barely trembling simmer.

The mother sauce was started one and a half year’s ago when the restaurant opened – its extraordinary sweet meaty flavour deepens in intensity every time strips of raw beef are dipped into it to cook for mere seconds before they’re served with a soft-boiled egg and topped with black truffle shavings.

The pacing of the kaiseki meal is perfectly judged as Nobuaki shifts gears with, say, a granita of kumquat and tomato, an icy yuzu-scented broth of beef tail and ramen, or a handroll stuffed with fatty ribeye. And just to prove that even desserts can manage a bovine note, Nobuaki serves ice cream made from Hokkaido milk paired with a bed of snowy burrata and gula melaka. In a meal already filled with so many nuanced surprises, this quiet homage to his adopted home is probably Nobuaki’s sweetest triumph.

My Reading Room

Award of Excellence

WAKU GHIN 

L2-01, Level 2 Dining, The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, S(018956) Tel: 6688-8507

Waku Ghin emphasises the Japanese heritage of Japan-born Australian celebrity chef Tetsuya Wakuda, with four private dining rooms centred on the teppanyaki (Japanese hotplate) and serving modern Japanese cuisine. The dishes in the 10-course experience change every day, with the exception of a couple of signature items. Part of the ritual is for the chef to present the fresh ingredients that will be used for your dinner; our Canadian lobster is alive but not for long!

One signature dish that is instantly recognisable as a Tetsuya Wakuda masterpiece is the marinated sweet, raw botan ebi served in a sea urchin with its creamy roe and oscietra caviar. It’s a luxurious play of freshness and richness on the palate. The hata (a highly prized grouper) is cooked in shabu-shabu broth until just firm. The Hokkaido king crab legs are steamed on a bed of salt under a cloche, which really brings out the sea-sweetness of the crustacean.

My Reading Room

The meal then moves up another gear with the braised Canadian lobster in tarragon jus – the firmness of the lobster meat and the potent sauce that we mop up with a bread roll are sublime. Consuming the two beef dishes that follow makes us feel like we are in heaven. The famed Cape Grim Tasmanian beef  is charcoal-grilled and finished off with soya and mirin, while the Japanese Ohmi wagyu from Shiga prefecture is simply seared and seasoned with salt and pepper; wasabi and citrus soya are served on the side.

We adjourn to the main dining room, which offers views of Marina Bay and the Fullerton Heritage Precinct. We pick the cold somen with myoga (Japanese ginger) and junsai (water shield plant) to end the savoury journey. We are served gyokuro, a highly regarded green tea, which is grown in shade for two weeks before harvest.

The two desserts – Japanese musk melon with Cointreau granite and fromage blanc sorbet, and the glossy ganache-coated chocolate mousse with vanilla and macadamia – bring the experience to a very sweet and complete ending.