Peace and quiet at the Gallery Hotel

I think it is a sure sign of age that one begins to appreciate property cycles. The Alkaff Mansion recently went under tender after a few unoccupied years – an undignified period in an otherwise glorious history. I remember going to the Alkaff Mansion as late as 2003, as a fresh-faced intern accompanying my bosses for a lavish team dinner. The food was uniformly terrible, but the Old World luxury and decadence that the place evoked was something else indeed. Yet on subsequent trips back to Singapore I learnt that it had closed, and late last year when I found myself in the area I decided to drive by on a whim. The place was deserted and the grounds had fallen into disrepair – leaving the Alkaff Mansion a shell of its former self. I mourned it silently and went on my way again, completely forgetting about this place until recently. The news that the property was put up for tender gave me a good feeling, but also reminded me of my age. Who knows what manner of other establishments I have seen come and go – in the world of slim margins that is the F&B business?

I went to the Gallery Hotel twice recently, both times in search of good food. This place is similarly a wonderful space for dining and drinking outlets, but in danger of being forgotten and made irrelevant. Both times when I was there it was quiet, far removed from the heyday of Mohammad Sultan Road, and seemingly far removed now even from the hustle and bustle of the Clarke Quay area, which is but a stone’s throw away.

To explain, the Gallery Hotel is a boutique hotel located right at the very end of Robertson Quay, on Mohammad Sultan Road. The stretch itself used to be chock-full of bars and pubs, and I recall many a fun night out there; but SARS proved too much of a blow for many of these places to recover from. Consumers fled the place, and so did the businesses not long after. Now, the place is a little less boisterous, and there are more restaurants than watering holes. The foot traffic has gone down significantly, and the area’s businesses are kept afloat, I’m sure, only by its affluent, largely expatriate, residents.

What I’ve always appreciated about the Gallery Hotel is its architecture – something that I haven’t seen it get much public recognition for. The Mondrian-eque windows on the main tower block are probably its most recognizable aspect, but there are many other postmodern characteristics of this building that make it very distinctive. The building – if you can call it that – is really a collage of different building forms. There is a main tower block, and various incongruous “satellite” building forms attached to it, each with unique shapes and sizes. Chief among these “satellites” are three cylindrical structures fronting the road – each containing F&B outlets. The one inconvenience that this “disassembly” creates manifests itself if and when you are going to the Gallery Hotel and looking for a restaurant for the first time. Nothing is intuitive – you can’t even follow the numbering patterns of the outlets – and of course the building forms are so surprising that you don’t expect to find dining outlets in some of them.

But to the hotel’s credit there is a lot of signage, and if you are observant enough you will not even need to stop and ask for directions. And once you get to the place you are going to, the calm and quiet that the whole compound exudes is enough to make you want to kick your shoes off and settle in with a nice warm mug of tea.

Satsuma Shochu Dining Bar

Satsuma is located in one of those three cylindrical structures, and is a Japanese place famous for its collection of Japanese shochu – liquor typically distilled from sweet potatoes. The word on the street was that the food was very good too; so when I lost a bet to Kevin recently and had to buy him dinner, I exercised my option to choose the place and took the opportunity to try Satsuma out.

I arrived first, and had a few minutes to settle down with a nice mug of citrus tea and check out the surroundings. The teak paneling with sakura motifs may be stereotypical, but it just looks so damn good in the warm lighting that you forgive them that much. I assume this place is frequented by Japanese expatriates or tourists (and indeed we did see several groups of them), because the waitstaff greet you in Japanese, and it seemed that most of them at least spoke a little bit of the language.

The one thing that you can be assured of going to a Japanese restaurant, and especially one that is actually frequented by Japanese, is that the service is going to be good. Indeed, it is a far cry from the normal service standards you get elsewhere in Singapore. The people who waited on us were warm, patient, and friendly – which, as shocking as it may sound, is a lot to ask for in Singapore. I think there are a few things to look out for in restaurant service. Most basic of all is functional competence – whether someone can bring the food to your table, refill your water, and do all the basic tasks involved in waiting tables. Second of all is their attitude – you always want the friendly ones, not the ones who look as if they would rather be somewhere else, and definitely not the angry ones. The best of the best also have technical competence – they know enough about the food and the wine to make informed recommendations. And underlying all of that is their passion – whether they have the passion for food and the passion to do a good job and ensure you have a great night out. I have met people with all four characteristics, but usually two or three is good enough. In Singapore even the functional competence is not a sure thing, and anything beyond that is a tremendous bonus.

The food at Satsuma is pretty good too. We stuck with the sumiyaki – basically meat on a stick, grilled over charcoal. This place compares well with Kazu in Cuppage Plaza, but the interesting thing is that the sumiyaki in Kazu was a lot smokier and you could taste the char. Satsuma’s sumiyaki is a little more refined and visually more pleasing. I’m not saying one is better than the other, however, just that they are different and that I enjoyed both. I was impressed that they could ask for our doneness preference for the steak skewers (medium-rare), and even more impressed when they actually delivered on their promise. It must be difficult – or if not difficult must take some skill at least – to ascertain perfectly the doneness of tiny squares of meat on a stick which are being held over a charcoal flame. Because the squares are so small, and the proximity to the flame so close, the room for error is a lot greater – so kudos is definitely due the kitchen staff at Satsuma. Since we are Asian we also ordered some rice dishes, but neither the garlic fried rice or the curry rice with pork belly was very outstanding. I think the trick here is to just stick to the skewers – most of which were very good – and avoid the rest of the stuff that is on the menu.

Sapporo Ramen Miharu

The Japanese people’s love of ramen has been well-documented and has served as fodder for popular culture – with good reason, too, for there is nothing like a bowl of noodles and hot soup in a harsh winter. This love of ramen has been exported worldwide (through lesser “instant” variants of the dish), but these instant noodles do no justice to the quality and quantity of the many Japanese regional variations of ramen. Indeed, very few places outside of Japan can truly claim to do so, for several reasons. Japanese flour is typically milled to a higher quality than others (lower ash content, etc); and their water is generally softer than that which can be found in other countries. This has positive impacts on, respectively, their quality of their noodle products, and the flavour of their broths.

Miharu was recommended to me by ML, who I didn’t know very well at the time she made the recommendation. (I still do not know her very well.) Typically I am wary of following up on the recommendations of strangers, for not everyone has the same standards of quality. (That’s just a nice way of saying that I am a snob.) But you have to admit that clearly the recommendations of people whom you are confident know and appreciate their food – would carry more weight than someone who you barely know, someone you may not even have broken bread with. Yet there was something about the way ML recommended this place that made me put it on my list of places to try. She was insistent, yet not overbearing, and the way she described what she appreciated about Miharu as opposed to some other places made me think that at the very least, she knew what she was talking about.

So the other day when I again found myself in the vicinity of the Gallery Hotel, I decided to give Miharu a shot. Miharu imports their noodles (Nishiyama brand noodles from Hokkaido), and several other ingredients from Japan, and so in that respect is considered quite “authentic”. But I have long since realized that even the same ingredients cooked in different locations can produce vastly different dishes, especially in Singapore, with our temperature and humidity. Besides, I have never been to Hokkaido, so what would I have to compare Miharu against?

What I could say, though, is that Miharu is good without being spectacular. The noodles had good texture, but retained a slight waxy taste from the alkali salts, which may not have been washed out thoroughly. The broth that I tried (tonkatsu tonshio – pork-based broth with salt) had good flavour, but not enough spice for me, and I regretted not picking the chili miso broth. The strip of pork loin (char siew) and the hard boiled egg were both ordinary at best.


What I can’t decide on – is how I feel about the addition of corn as a topping. My grandmother used to do this on the first day of Chinese New Year (when she kept vegetarian) – in effect using corn to substitute pork bones as a flavour enhancer for stock. It produced a sweet stock vastly inferior to anything you can get with animal products. Now, it may not be bad if it did not have to suffer this comparison, but in my mind I always compared the corn-based broth that my grandmother made – with the other broths that she made the other days of the year, with pork bones or chicken bones or dried scallops. At Miharu they add corn as a topping, which I didn’t like; but given my childhood I doubt I can call that a fair or objective indictment.

While I cannot say that I did not enjoy my experience at Miharu, I have to be honest and say that it was quite mediocre. Unfortunately, that means that ML – who I hope is not reading this – is henceforth struck off the list of people worthy of making recommendations.