Walking in the Garden

Au Jardin Les Amis
1 Cluny Road
EJH Corner House, Botanic Gardens
Tel: +65 6466 8812

A very good friend of mine once said about women, “You can’t live with them, and you can’t kill them.” I think that must be how chefs think about events – corporate luncheons or dinners, weddings, rehearsals, what-have-you. For these events. chefs often have to cede some measure of creative control over the menu, and they can be quite taxing on the kitchen because large orders of the same dish have to go out all at the same time. Yet they are a necessary evil, especially for restaurants with little walk-in traffic, and on slow weeknights. You have to do them to survive.

This is especially the case for Au Jardin, at the Botanic Gardens. It is a Les Amis restaurant, which means it comes from pedigree. (To explain, Les Amis at Shaw Tower is the grande dame of Singapore fine dining, akin to a Tour D’Argent in Paris or Le Cirque in New York: it’s been around for ages and by this point is surely more institution than restaurant. Whether or not the food is good is no longer relevant.) But Au Jardin (French for “in the garden”), one of their sister restaurants, is also tucked away in the deep recesses of the Botanic Gardens, in an old colonial bungalow surrounded by lush, well-manicured greenery. Needless to say, there is little to no pedestrian footfall, unless you count joggers and bird-watchers. In a sense it is more a “destination” restaurant than anything – everyone who eats there has made a pre-meditated decision to do so. So since it’s pretty far from likely than a random jogger is going to walk into Au Jardin after his run and ask for the degustation, doing events is an absolute must.

I went for an event at Au Jardin last evening (and in the process turned down an invitation from Karen to eat beef hor fun at Kim Moh, shucks). The whole converted pre-war colonial bungalow in the middle of nowhere concept has been done before (and failed before – see Alkaff Mansion, and that other famous restaurant that was in one of the old black and white bungalows along Scotts Road, but whose name escapes me). Au Jardin hews closely to the successes of these illustrious forebears. Stately teak-on-whitewash, little ornamentation, as much natural light as possible – all great things, and all make for a wonderful setting. It’s a little formulaic, but by no means unenjoyable.

It is always a tough thing organizing events over dinner. Do you have your speeches or presentations before, during or after dinner? If you have them before dinner, people get hungry and restless. If you have them during dinner, nobody pays attention. And people tend to leave once they are fed, so you can’t have them after dinner. It’s a no-win situation. Some people do the events in between courses, but that isn’t optimal either. Unfortunately, I haven’t been to an event where this has been handled gracefully, and I don’t have any ideas. It’s a tough one, this.

The food at Au Jardin was not bad, but ultimately quite disappointing. This was not the French cooking of bars and bistros, with their heavy sauces and their often lengthy, complicated processes. This was supposedly refined French cooking, with light touches and innovative flavour pairings. And one cannot fault them for trying, I suppose. All three courses – two appetizers and a main – were well thought through, not overly complicated, and promised fine ingredients. Lobster salad with vine-ripe tomato. Seared Hokkaido sea scallop with poached egg in a truffle emulsion. Wagyu beef filet. But the thing about cooking like this is that it demands quality, fresh ingredients. I assume the sea scallop was really from Hokkaido. Now I don’t doubt that if you eat sea scallop in Hokkaido, it might be a life-changing experience. But once that sea scallop is chilled, air-freighted, and transported to Singapore – travelling thousands of miles and changing hands several times – it loses a lot of what is good and great about it. The scallop I wound up eating in the Botanic Gardens of Singapore was cooked precisely, and flavoured well, but it paled in comparison to some of the fresh seafood I have had in the past.

(Side note: I don’t know where the Wagyu beef was from. These days the term is bandied about so casually, who knows what you are getting any more? But I do know that it cannot have been from Japan, since Japanese beef imports to Singapore have been suspended since late April, due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease at a cattle farm in Japan’s Miyazaki Prefecture. In any case the beef that I wound up having was a long way short of Wagyu beef standards, and for some reason looked deceptively blood-red. I think they poured some of the juices on top of the filet to make it look red, but when I actually bit into it, it was a lot less rare than it looked. A very strange phenomenon.)

The other thing I noticed about Au Jardin was the uncannily stealthy, almost ninja-like efficiency of the waitstaff. Plates were whisked away, drinks refilled, cutlery replaced – all wordlessly and unnoticeably. I don’t know if this is a good thing – sometimes I like a little banter with my waitress (especially if she’s cute). At Au Jardin you strangely get none of that – all the waitstaff are trained to remain silent and expressionless, and to go about their duties speedily and with no fuss.

I don’t know if I would go back to Au Jardin (especially after looking at their prices online). I have no doubt of the chef’s talent, and their cuisine is one that I enjoy. It’s just that for their cuisine to work, fresh ingredients are paramount. And in Singapore – that is a little difficult. It’s still a very enjoyable place to sit down and have a meal though, and you really feel cut off from civilization even though Orchard Road is only two minutes away. I suppose it’s a good place to impress someone with, but the more discerning of companions will be able to see that you’re trying too hard.