Refuge of the weary soul

Summer Pavilion
7 Raffles Avenue
3/F Ritz Carlton Millenia
Singapore 039799

Stepping into Summer Pavilion is stepping into a world of calm, one with an aura of refined elegance and luxuriating grandeur. This is not the place for business lunches, nor is it particularly appropriate for large celebratory banquets. Rather, one comes here to escape. The restaurant is set within a garden, with windows on three sides to let in the wonderful midday light and to afford a view of the greenery. The interiors are designed with a touch of the Oriental, tempered by restraint and an appreciation of understatement. For years it has been one of my favourite places to visit, let alone eat - and it was with great anticipation that I revisited this Singapore culinary stalwart for brunch on Sunday.



I appreciate a good place setting. Most times it is the first portent of the organisation and the attention to detail practiced by the restaurant and its staff. The devil, as always, is in the details - and a crooked set of chopsticks or a teacup facing the wrong way is a mark of disrespect towards the small things. I have a lot of pet peeves, and I am sure everyone else is no different. It boggles my mind whenever restaurants do not provide a chopsticks rest. I don't even care what it is made of and what it looks like; in fact - at lower end restaurants where they provide disposable chopsticks that come in a wrapper - I am perfectly happy to make my own makeshift rest with the wrapper. I just need something to rest my chopsticks on. Fortunately Summer Pavilion - as befitting a restaurant within the Ritz Carlton - is the model of excellence and hospitality, and I want for nothing as I sit down at the table to wait for my family.


The restaurant has never been known for its dim sum, but to reach out to Singaporean sensibilities it has started offering a limited dim sum selection to accompany its main lunch menu. There were a couple of highlights - the pei dan chok with salted egg yolk was quite extraordinary, with generous helpings of pork strips and century egg bits. It was cooked for so long that the individual grains of rice that made up the porridge had long since broken down, and you tasted the full flavour of its slow-cooked goodness. Also, this "butter bun" - basically a buo lo bao with coconut filling - was sweet and delicate and the pastry made to buttery, airy perfection.


They did not have the standard pai guat, but both the law pak gow and the fung zao were exemplary. The former was steamed and deep-fried such that the outer skin was crisp, yet the inside still soft and starchy. The latter was marinated in a sauce that was so light that I wondered if it was there at all, and yet I felt the tang of the spice and when the aftertaste hit me I marveled at how it could be so complex, have multiple ingredients and yet retain that lightness of essence so as to almost escape detection.



We also ordered the har gao, which was yet another empirical data point that proved my Grand Dim Sum Theory (cf: my previous post). The version here had the best skin I have eaten in a while - moist and so well-made that I temporarily forgot that it had once been flour.


Also worth mentioning but not particularly praise-worthy were the lobster roll - shaped like miniature curry puffs - and the deep fried prawn dumplings with century egg.



There were, unfortunately, a couple of misses. This vegetarian dumpling was very good to look at but tasted too much of shrimp paste and plum sauce. It also had pineapple in it, which gets points for innovation but unfortunately did not work out al all.


The captain had also recommended this honey spiced spare rib to satisfy my pai guat fix, but unfortunately it was too sweet and the meat was too tough. It was neither like pai guat nor like that other Singaporean honey-spiced pork delicacy: bak gua (pork jerky) - caught somewhere in the middle and reflecting the best qualities of neither dish.


To be fair, dim sum is not the main draw at Summer Pavilion. They have several specialties - from silver cod fish with Champagne sauce, through zucchini flowers with prawn, chicken and mushroom stuffing, to sauteed sliced ostrich in satay sauce. The chef is one of the most innovative Chinese chefs in Singapore and not afraid to stray from the classics. If there were such a thing as nouveau Chinese, Summer Pavilion would be one of its foremost practitioners in Singapore. They are well known for their barbequed meats and especially their preparations of duck - the most notable being the Peking duck and the "pi-pa" duck. We could not make up our minds, and so ordered the combination platter. Indecision can sometimes have favourable results, and in this case both the roast duck and char siew were quite delicious. The duck in particular (pictured, background) was salted perfectly and tender to the bite, while the skin was roasted to the point where you could crack it and break it off with the slightest touch of your chopsticks. It crackled as I chewed down on it, and the juices of the fat beneath the skin oozed delightfully out into the sides of my mouth.


For dessert we had egg tarts (not pictured), tang yuan with sesame filling, and chilled mango and white cream rolls. I recall many Sunday afternoons spent at my grandmother's house making tang yuan, and the dish has a special sentimental significance for me. It is curious how we always hanker after the foods of our childhood, as if trying to recapture a moment in time, a taste of an era that is otherwise slowly being forgotten. My mother says that she craves the foods from her childhood because she grew up in a large family and there was never enough food to go around - so whatever she ate seemed particularly special because of its scarcity. That may be one explanation, but I defied her to explain to me how it was that I spent my childhood stuffing my face with ungodly amounts of anything I could lay my hands on - and all these years later still hankered after those foods.



I like Summer Pavilion for many reasons - the impeccable service, the restraint and sophistication in both the decor and the food, and the innovation of the kitchen. But chief among the reasons is the fact that the restaurant is a refuge from the harried world that we live in: a dining room nestled within a tranquil garden and cocooned from the hustle and bustle of the skyscrapers and malls that surround it. Upon exiting the place I was momentarily disoriented as I tried to regain my bearings and figure out which direction to head. It was as if I had left the world temporarily for some quiet sanctuary, and now that I was back out again all I wanted was to head back in.