Chu Fa (Pu Tian) Restaurant
楚发莆田（兴华）本地菜
In this era of ours where cooking as a profession, and food in general, has been slowly but surely fetishized – you get 24-hour networks dedicated to culinary shows, you get chefs enjoying a level of celebrity hitherto unseen, you get a million and one food blogs trumpeting the strengths and weaknesses of every new restaurant that opens. Don’t get me wrong, there are positive effects to this – chief among them being that, compared to generations past, the general populace is better informed and able to make healthy, sustainable choices in what they eat. But it can all get a little much for what is a pretty basic endeavour – feeding people.
It is easy to find reviews of the fashionable restaurants in almost any media these days – ranging from the pithy to the protracted. Almost everybody who has a camera or can string several words together is suddenly the next Fisher, or Liebling, or Reichl. And who am I to begrudge them their opinion? (I am, after all, one of those hacks.) But I have to say a large majority of the stuff you read is, unfortunately, noise. You can tell by the number of exclamation marks that are used, or the inability to describe anything beyond ‘good’ or ‘nice’ or ‘delicious’. Thankfully, there is still quality out there, the healthy smattering of blog posts that are able to provide one or more of the following: an honest-to-goodness opinion, a compelling narrative, engaging prose, and useful information – and the rare few blogs who can do so on a consistent basis.
I was thinking about this the other day and got to wondering about the restaurants that nobody likes to blog. Sure, everyone blogs the good restaurants. Some people blog the bad restaurants. And the new restaurants, especially those opened by famous chefs. But who blogs the middling restaurants – the ones that just get by with marginally decent food at affordable prices, tucked away in the heartlands with minimal publicity? These are the places just down the block that command the loyalty of your average Joe Sixpack, who takes his wife and two kids there on a Saturday night as a reward for the week’s labours. You don’t get fancy ingredients at these places. You don’t get elaborate preparations. You just get a hot meal, marginally better than what you could throw together yourself, in simple surroundings and at very reasonable prices. Who blogs those restaurants?
My mother took my brother and me to just one such place the other day, when none of us wanted to cook, or had an opinion where to eat. In her mind this place was cheap and decent, and if there is one thing my mother is a sucker for, it is value. She also loves Heng Hwa (Xinghua) cuisine, and had tried this place’s take on Heng Hwa lor mee, mee sua and beehoon. It wasn’t great, she cautioned, but it was good enough.
It was a little on the late side when we went, I suppose. Especially compared to New York, people in Singapore tend to eat dinner earlier, and 7pm is considered prime-time. By the time we got there it was nearing 9pm and the crowd at the restaurant – if there ever was one – had thinned to a couple of tables. This is not a place you go to for the décor, unless you are a fan of whitewashed walls and industrial tiling. One thing I wished they would change was their fluorescent lighting, which was bright, white and unforgiving. No restaurant should have fluorescent lighting. It kills the mood for eating.
Although this place puts out some Heng Hwa dishes, and is advertised as having Putian roots, they have expanded their repertoire to include all manner of Singaporean tze char staples (the ubiquitous yam ring, sambal kang kong, etc). In truth their cuisine was probably more akin to a foreign cuisine adapted to suit the local palate, and could not be called one or the other.
My mother, having been here multiple times, ordered two of her favourite dishes here – the spicy la-la, and the drunken prawns cooked in bamboo. Neither was very impressive, with the la-la particularly disappointing, but at least the prawns were large and fresh and the broth in which they came had the good, strong heft of Shaoxing wine. The Heng Hwa lor mee was poor – it had hints of the flavours that the dish was known for, but the overall taste profile was not a rounded one, and it felt a little uneven.
There was one thing here that surprised me greatly though. They did a wonderful preparation of deep-fried snapper. At least, I think it is a snapper – I’ve never known the English name, only the Cantonese one (马友鱼 ma yau yu). What they do is they slice the fish cross-sectionally instead of filleting it, so you wind up with oval-shaped pieces with a T-section of the spine in the middle. Then they dust it with flour and deep fry it. It’s a pretty standard treatment but difficult to do well, since the skin of the fish and the exterior have to remain crisp while the inside has got to cook through without drying out. The version here was flavoured just enough not to mask the natural flavour of the fish, and also deep fried to perfection. Also decent was the Heng Hwa mee sua – the noodles were springy and generously coated with the clam-based sauce.
I gave my mother a little stick for taking us here – and “wasting” a perfectly good meal on barely average food, but it was all in good fun, of course. As we left I mused to myself that this was a self-respecting business, with people doing good, honest work. There was no reason to let their limitations, real or imagined, diminish the dignity that they so rightly deserved. The family at the table across from us lingered for about half an hour after the last pair of chopsticks had been laid on the table, so they must have enjoyed it. And the enthusiastic goodbye of the waitress that showed us out could only have come from someone who felt a healthy dose of pride in her establishment and its offerings. Chu Fa may not be the next hawker made good, or the next blogosphere darling. But it is what it is, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise – so while criticism may be justified, it should be accorded nothing but the utmost respect.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Epic fail
Everyone needs one of those days to remind them that they are not invincible, that there is work yet to be done and hours yet to be put in. I think I know a fair bit about food. I think I can cook. But you wouldn't have known it today.
I can't remember the last time I was so disappointed with a meal that I put out. I over-salted the potatoes. My vinaigrette broke after I had tossed the salad in it. But most disappointing of all, I committed the kitchen's cardinal sin.
I over-cooked the steak.
Steak is one of those things that is pretty forgiving to cook. It's best when kept simple - salt, pepper, a nice pat of butter, grill. If you want to be fancy you can introduce garlic, or rosemary. In any case, you don't have to be Tom Keller to cook steak. The only thing that you absolutely cannot do is to over-cook it. Words cannot express the disappointment at carving through a piece of well-done meat and seeing brown instead of red or pink. Or gnawing through what could have been a tender juicy steak, but instead - for all intents and purposes - became nothing more than a dry piece of rubber.
That's what gets me the most when I eat a well-done steak - whether or not I was the one who cooked it. It's the fact that the cook abused the potential of that piece of meat. There is only so much good beef around, so really, every well done steak is one less steak that could have been done medium rare. So today I wasted three pieces of Australian striploin.
No point making excuses. I shat the bed, plain and simple.
A couple of photos from the meal:
(None of the said steaks, of course - that would just be offensive.)
Probably the only thing to come out right of the entire meal, because it required so little work. Asparagus, wrapped in some Spanish jamon that my sister had brought back from her travels, drizzled in olive oil, salted and peppered.
Salad of arugula, roasted red pepper, portabello mushrooms, red onion and leftover asparagus.
I can't remember the last time I was so disappointed with a meal that I put out. I over-salted the potatoes. My vinaigrette broke after I had tossed the salad in it. But most disappointing of all, I committed the kitchen's cardinal sin.
I over-cooked the steak.
Steak is one of those things that is pretty forgiving to cook. It's best when kept simple - salt, pepper, a nice pat of butter, grill. If you want to be fancy you can introduce garlic, or rosemary. In any case, you don't have to be Tom Keller to cook steak. The only thing that you absolutely cannot do is to over-cook it. Words cannot express the disappointment at carving through a piece of well-done meat and seeing brown instead of red or pink. Or gnawing through what could have been a tender juicy steak, but instead - for all intents and purposes - became nothing more than a dry piece of rubber.
That's what gets me the most when I eat a well-done steak - whether or not I was the one who cooked it. It's the fact that the cook abused the potential of that piece of meat. There is only so much good beef around, so really, every well done steak is one less steak that could have been done medium rare. So today I wasted three pieces of Australian striploin.
No point making excuses. I shat the bed, plain and simple.
A couple of photos from the meal:
(None of the said steaks, of course - that would just be offensive.)
Probably the only thing to come out right of the entire meal, because it required so little work. Asparagus, wrapped in some Spanish jamon that my sister had brought back from her travels, drizzled in olive oil, salted and peppered.
Salad of arugula, roasted red pepper, portabello mushrooms, red onion and leftover asparagus.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Goodness in a clay pot
I must admit that for someone as crazy about food as myself, I am rather indifferent when it comes to considering what I actually put in my body. I have friends who are continually curious about the origins of their food and what was done to it, and scrutinise every nutrition label thoroughly keeping a sharp lookout for artificial preservatives or other undesirable ingredients. I know people who treat their bodies as temples, and try not to pollute it with artificial colourings, sweeteners, or other flavour enhancers. I know people who insist on organic – even though that label has come to carry less and less meaning these days. In any case, I must say this mentality is highly commendable. Unfortunately I have always been of the “eat first, think later” persuasion, and to me pleasure has always trumped principle – if something is delicious, I’ll eat it regardless of what nasty ingredients are in it or what unspeakable processes took place before it got to my table.
One of the chief reasons I think the way I do is my weakness for Singaporean hawker food. From a purist’s point of view, hawker food is sin visited upon sin. It is unhealthy – meals are unbalanced, and food is typically oily, fatty, and high in calories. It is not organic – there is widespread use of MSG and other artificial flavour enhancers. Very little thought, if any, is given to processing methods when selecting ingredients – cost is the primary criteria. This means that if you are concerned about your chickens being free-range rather than battery-raised, your flour being unbleached rather than bleached, your sugar being natural rather than refined, then you probably should steer clear of hawker food. But, and to me this is a huge but, the good shit just tastes so fucking good.
This was weighing on my mind the other day as I returned to one of my perennial faves – Yew Chuan claypot rice at the Golden Mile hawker centre on Beach Road. To explain – claypot cooking refers to the cooking of food in clay pots (duh) over high heat. The pots are usually doused in water prior to use so that they release steam during the cooking process and create a steam wall around the food that locks in its moisture, ensuring a tender, flavourful dish. It’s basically one-pot cooking, with a clay pot. These clay pots also absorb flavour, so if you go to those hawkers who have been using the same pots for decades, the food is likely to be very tasty.
Claypot rice refers to a one-dish meal where rice is steamed in the clay pot, with the subsequent addition of ingredients like salted fish, chicken slices, sausage, and a few leafy greens to satisfy the Health Promotion Board. When served it is then typically topped with a generous serving of sweet soy sauce and drizzled with sesame oil, then tossed to coat the rice with the condiments.
For some reason I don’t remember eating claypot rice before my teenage years – I must have, but I just don’t remember it. What I do remember is eating at the Food Junction at Junction 8 after school, where my two go-tos were the claypot rice and the beef noodles. This was before food courts became even more corporatised and sanitised than they already were back then, so the food was actually decent. The best part about the claypot rice was the burnt bits of rice at the bottom, which I dutifully scraped off at the end of the meal and ate. Carcinogens be damned!
The version at Yew Chuan was introduced to me by my mother, bless her heart, and quickly became one of my favourites. Different people have different methods of introducing food to others – my dad always started with the basic premise that quality was not subjective, so if you didn’t appreciate anything he recommended then there was nothing wrong with the food, but instead it had everything to do with your standards. As a result he treated everything he shared with his children as an education of sorts. There was nothing high-handed or snobbish about it – far from it, in fact – but food for him was an induction into the possibilities of pleasure, so that was how he couched every recommendation. Everything was an announcement, something to be pointed out in a matter-of-fact way. You should eat this – it is good. End of discussion. My mother had a different tack, and always took on a conspiratorial tone when recommending something, as if each of her recommendations were some precious secret to be passed on only to those who can be trusted to use the information for good. Psst – I found this stall selling X, see if you like it. As for me, I try as much as possible to curb myself, but when I find something that I like I tend to beat people about the head to get them to try it. Some call it being a food Nazi, I prefer to think of it as exuberance. Maybe, just maybe, this exuberance sometimes takes on an almost indignant tone. Why for the love of all that is holy have you not tried this yet? You need to go there. And try it. Now.
The claypot rice at Yew Chuan has tremendous flavour, for several reasons. One, they add a healthy portion of salted fish, an unbelievable source of umami. Two, the pots look like they have been in use for ages, and I am sure that contributes to the flavour. Three, they give you the soy sauce (home-brewed, I assume) and sesame oil so you can add however much of it as you want. In addition to all this, the rice is always perfectly cooked (save for the layer of burnt rice at the bottom), the chicken chunks always succulent and tender (they use thigh meat, which is juicier).
This time, as I ate the claypot rice I thought a little harder about the various processes and ingredients that went into the pot of food before me. So many ingredients – each with their own little story, and each story with their own twists and turns. Take the soy sauce, for example. Was it brewed naturally by fermenting soybeans, or was it made chemically from hydrolyzed soy protein? What levels of sodium did it have? If it was sweetened, how was this accomplished – through the addition of refined sugar, cane sugar, or molasses? The soy sauce at Yew Chuan comes in a nondescript squeezy bottle, which completely belies the number of choices made prior to it appearing – as if magically – on your table together with your claypot rice.
But once the smell of the claypot rice hit my nostrils, with that insistent aroma of salted fish, the steam escaping as the lid was removed – all was forgotten. In that instant I could only think of how quickly I could stuff as much of that claypot rice into my mouth as possible. As I was wolfing it down (much too quickly, I might add) I felt my body temperature rise due to the ingesting of the still-hot rice, and beads of sweat starting to form around my temples. And yet I still kept reaching for more, more of this sweet, salty, savoury goodness in a pot – consumed solely by the desire to eat, blissfully oblivious to everything else. Conversation slowed. I gave monosyllabic answers to any questions I was asked, and ceded conversation-making duties to someone else at the table, I didn’t care who.
This is not to say that the claypot rice at Yew Chuan is artificial in any way. I honestly do not know. All I know is that I am a fool for it.
In short, I am a lost cause. In my line of work I am exposed to many processed foods, and am much more aware of the choices made in their production than ever before. I know what manufacturers do to enhance flavour, improve colour, impart aroma – naturally or artificially. I know that almost everything is a choice, and when you buy a finished product you often cede thousands of choices up to the many individuals who have worked to get you that finished product. Many of these choices are not made with your long-term well being in mind. I know all that. But when shit is that good, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
One of the chief reasons I think the way I do is my weakness for Singaporean hawker food. From a purist’s point of view, hawker food is sin visited upon sin. It is unhealthy – meals are unbalanced, and food is typically oily, fatty, and high in calories. It is not organic – there is widespread use of MSG and other artificial flavour enhancers. Very little thought, if any, is given to processing methods when selecting ingredients – cost is the primary criteria. This means that if you are concerned about your chickens being free-range rather than battery-raised, your flour being unbleached rather than bleached, your sugar being natural rather than refined, then you probably should steer clear of hawker food. But, and to me this is a huge but, the good shit just tastes so fucking good.
This was weighing on my mind the other day as I returned to one of my perennial faves – Yew Chuan claypot rice at the Golden Mile hawker centre on Beach Road. To explain – claypot cooking refers to the cooking of food in clay pots (duh) over high heat. The pots are usually doused in water prior to use so that they release steam during the cooking process and create a steam wall around the food that locks in its moisture, ensuring a tender, flavourful dish. It’s basically one-pot cooking, with a clay pot. These clay pots also absorb flavour, so if you go to those hawkers who have been using the same pots for decades, the food is likely to be very tasty.
Claypot rice refers to a one-dish meal where rice is steamed in the clay pot, with the subsequent addition of ingredients like salted fish, chicken slices, sausage, and a few leafy greens to satisfy the Health Promotion Board. When served it is then typically topped with a generous serving of sweet soy sauce and drizzled with sesame oil, then tossed to coat the rice with the condiments.
For some reason I don’t remember eating claypot rice before my teenage years – I must have, but I just don’t remember it. What I do remember is eating at the Food Junction at Junction 8 after school, where my two go-tos were the claypot rice and the beef noodles. This was before food courts became even more corporatised and sanitised than they already were back then, so the food was actually decent. The best part about the claypot rice was the burnt bits of rice at the bottom, which I dutifully scraped off at the end of the meal and ate. Carcinogens be damned!
The version at Yew Chuan was introduced to me by my mother, bless her heart, and quickly became one of my favourites. Different people have different methods of introducing food to others – my dad always started with the basic premise that quality was not subjective, so if you didn’t appreciate anything he recommended then there was nothing wrong with the food, but instead it had everything to do with your standards. As a result he treated everything he shared with his children as an education of sorts. There was nothing high-handed or snobbish about it – far from it, in fact – but food for him was an induction into the possibilities of pleasure, so that was how he couched every recommendation. Everything was an announcement, something to be pointed out in a matter-of-fact way. You should eat this – it is good. End of discussion. My mother had a different tack, and always took on a conspiratorial tone when recommending something, as if each of her recommendations were some precious secret to be passed on only to those who can be trusted to use the information for good. Psst – I found this stall selling X, see if you like it. As for me, I try as much as possible to curb myself, but when I find something that I like I tend to beat people about the head to get them to try it. Some call it being a food Nazi, I prefer to think of it as exuberance. Maybe, just maybe, this exuberance sometimes takes on an almost indignant tone. Why for the love of all that is holy have you not tried this yet? You need to go there. And try it. Now.
The claypot rice at Yew Chuan has tremendous flavour, for several reasons. One, they add a healthy portion of salted fish, an unbelievable source of umami. Two, the pots look like they have been in use for ages, and I am sure that contributes to the flavour. Three, they give you the soy sauce (home-brewed, I assume) and sesame oil so you can add however much of it as you want. In addition to all this, the rice is always perfectly cooked (save for the layer of burnt rice at the bottom), the chicken chunks always succulent and tender (they use thigh meat, which is juicier).
This time, as I ate the claypot rice I thought a little harder about the various processes and ingredients that went into the pot of food before me. So many ingredients – each with their own little story, and each story with their own twists and turns. Take the soy sauce, for example. Was it brewed naturally by fermenting soybeans, or was it made chemically from hydrolyzed soy protein? What levels of sodium did it have? If it was sweetened, how was this accomplished – through the addition of refined sugar, cane sugar, or molasses? The soy sauce at Yew Chuan comes in a nondescript squeezy bottle, which completely belies the number of choices made prior to it appearing – as if magically – on your table together with your claypot rice.
But once the smell of the claypot rice hit my nostrils, with that insistent aroma of salted fish, the steam escaping as the lid was removed – all was forgotten. In that instant I could only think of how quickly I could stuff as much of that claypot rice into my mouth as possible. As I was wolfing it down (much too quickly, I might add) I felt my body temperature rise due to the ingesting of the still-hot rice, and beads of sweat starting to form around my temples. And yet I still kept reaching for more, more of this sweet, salty, savoury goodness in a pot – consumed solely by the desire to eat, blissfully oblivious to everything else. Conversation slowed. I gave monosyllabic answers to any questions I was asked, and ceded conversation-making duties to someone else at the table, I didn’t care who.
This is not to say that the claypot rice at Yew Chuan is artificial in any way. I honestly do not know. All I know is that I am a fool for it.
In short, I am a lost cause. In my line of work I am exposed to many processed foods, and am much more aware of the choices made in their production than ever before. I know what manufacturers do to enhance flavour, improve colour, impart aroma – naturally or artificially. I know that almost everything is a choice, and when you buy a finished product you often cede thousands of choices up to the many individuals who have worked to get you that finished product. Many of these choices are not made with your long-term well being in mind. I know all that. But when shit is that good, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Dim sum dollies
Victoria Peak
181 Orchard Road (Orchard Central)
#11-01/02
Tel: +65 6238 7666
My love of dim sum has been well documented in these pages (and well evidenced by my physique), so when Winnie told me about the latest HK import to hit Singapore’s shores – Victoria Peak at Orchard Central – I immediately filed it away for future reference. Now, Winnie is one of my dearest friends and has many strong points – but a discerning palate is sadly not among them. She is also prone to hyperbole, especially when it comes to recommending restaurants, so I normally take what she says with a huge pinch of salt. But when the time rolled around for Winnie to buy us a meal, I suggested this place – so she could put her money where her mouth was.
(I felt a little tinge of guilt at going through with swindling the treat out of her, since the original reason for it was very trivial. But hey – who’s going to pass on a free lunch, right? I admit, I am a shameless person.)
Victoria Peak was brought here by the group that was responsible for Victoria City Restaurant in Hong Kong – apparently a multi-award winning restaurant but sadly, one that I have not tried. It opened atop Orchard Central, amidst a roof garden, about seven or so months ago. Any foodie worth his salt can tell you that you never go to a new restaurant within a month of their opening – instead you wait for them to iron the kinks out in their menu or in the rest of their operations. Then normally you wait a few months for your friends to try it and tell you what the good dishes are (and what to avoid).
Victoria Peak professes to be the only Chinese restaurant in Singapore that also specialises in wine, and indeed the glass columns that you see as you walk in are stacked full of bottles. But while I did not peruse the wine list carefully, my awe soon turned to a minor disappointment, for a different reason. The tea at Victoria Peak is a bit of a letdown – the selection is limited and the quality decidedly second-rate. Might it not have been a good idea to carve out some of the wine budget to get some good Chinese tea?
Now, I concede, it is a common gripe that Chinese restaurants typically shit the bed when it comes to wine – the large majority have laughable selections of undrinkable piss. If you go to the top end restaurants, granted, you can get very extensive winelists, with impressive arrays of premium wines. Most times this is because the best restaurants are typically housed within hotels and have access to the purchasing power and expertise of seasoned hospitality personnel. But I have never been to a Chinese restaurant with a thoughtful winelist, painstakingly crafted to match the restaurant’s cuisine while reflecting the individual character of the sommelier or wine director. Perhaps Victoria Peak’s winelist is just such a winelist, but I did not have the chance to find out.
In any case, it is a Chinese restaurant, and when I go to a Chinese restaurant, I want some good Chinese tea.
My other initial impressions of Victoria Peak, though, are more positive. The décor manages to avoid the cliché of typical Chinese restaurants, and the soothing green motif is complemented well by the natural light let in by the large glass panels facing east. The service personnel are delightful – polite and eager to please, all the while remaining the epitome of professionalism. Throughout the meal they were nothing but a credit to their profession.
The food is a little harder to place. It is not bad – far from it – and I can honestly say that I enjoyed almost everything I had. I cannot say it is spectacular – of all the various dishes we ordered not a single one screamed out at us, begging us to return. Yet it would be a tremendous disservice to the restaurant to pass the food off merely as good. It is more than that. As dim sum goes, it is definitely one of the better places to go in Singapore. Standards taste like they should, dishes are executed well and with care.
(Dishes to try: there is a dish of poached rice in seafood stock that is quite remarkable. Grains of rice are poached till they are partially cooked, then served with a consommé containing scallops, fish slices, prawns and other seafood. You add the grains to the consommé and eat it like you would drink soup or eat porridge. The grains are crunchy and have a tinge of wok fire, while the consommé is light and flavourful, and the freshness of the seafood rounds out what is a rather marvellous dish. Also worth trying is the shark cartilage soup – peppery and not as creamy as versions at other restaurants.
Dishes to avoid: the roasted pork – siu yoke. The slices of pork are cubed for uniformity, which means that the fat is cut away and you’re left with small, dry pieces of meat. The skin doesn’t crackle like it should, and the pieces of pork are paired with a very ordinary dijon mustard. Also not up to scratch was the XO carrot cake – the texture was too mushy and it was a pale shadow of versions that I have enjoyed elsewhere.)
At their prices, I suppose they would be considered a treat for a large majority of Singaporeans. And if they are viewed as such – as a place to go for a special occasion – then Victoria Peak disappoints. It is solid without being spectacular; it comforts without inspiring. But it is not excessively expensive either, and nowhere near the stratospheric prices you pay at your Humble Houses or your Hai Tien Los. If money were no object this would be a great place to become a regular of, to come for Sunday brunch every few weeks. I suppose that in this – as with all things else in life – it all depends on your point of view.
In sum, though, I rather enjoyed my trip to Victoria Peak. Good restaurants are easy to find. Good company – not so much, and I was more than grateful to break bread with a couple of good friends.
181 Orchard Road (Orchard Central)
#11-01/02
Tel: +65 6238 7666
My love of dim sum has been well documented in these pages (and well evidenced by my physique), so when Winnie told me about the latest HK import to hit Singapore’s shores – Victoria Peak at Orchard Central – I immediately filed it away for future reference. Now, Winnie is one of my dearest friends and has many strong points – but a discerning palate is sadly not among them. She is also prone to hyperbole, especially when it comes to recommending restaurants, so I normally take what she says with a huge pinch of salt. But when the time rolled around for Winnie to buy us a meal, I suggested this place – so she could put her money where her mouth was.
(I felt a little tinge of guilt at going through with swindling the treat out of her, since the original reason for it was very trivial. But hey – who’s going to pass on a free lunch, right? I admit, I am a shameless person.)
Victoria Peak was brought here by the group that was responsible for Victoria City Restaurant in Hong Kong – apparently a multi-award winning restaurant but sadly, one that I have not tried. It opened atop Orchard Central, amidst a roof garden, about seven or so months ago. Any foodie worth his salt can tell you that you never go to a new restaurant within a month of their opening – instead you wait for them to iron the kinks out in their menu or in the rest of their operations. Then normally you wait a few months for your friends to try it and tell you what the good dishes are (and what to avoid).
Victoria Peak professes to be the only Chinese restaurant in Singapore that also specialises in wine, and indeed the glass columns that you see as you walk in are stacked full of bottles. But while I did not peruse the wine list carefully, my awe soon turned to a minor disappointment, for a different reason. The tea at Victoria Peak is a bit of a letdown – the selection is limited and the quality decidedly second-rate. Might it not have been a good idea to carve out some of the wine budget to get some good Chinese tea?
Now, I concede, it is a common gripe that Chinese restaurants typically shit the bed when it comes to wine – the large majority have laughable selections of undrinkable piss. If you go to the top end restaurants, granted, you can get very extensive winelists, with impressive arrays of premium wines. Most times this is because the best restaurants are typically housed within hotels and have access to the purchasing power and expertise of seasoned hospitality personnel. But I have never been to a Chinese restaurant with a thoughtful winelist, painstakingly crafted to match the restaurant’s cuisine while reflecting the individual character of the sommelier or wine director. Perhaps Victoria Peak’s winelist is just such a winelist, but I did not have the chance to find out.
In any case, it is a Chinese restaurant, and when I go to a Chinese restaurant, I want some good Chinese tea.
My other initial impressions of Victoria Peak, though, are more positive. The décor manages to avoid the cliché of typical Chinese restaurants, and the soothing green motif is complemented well by the natural light let in by the large glass panels facing east. The service personnel are delightful – polite and eager to please, all the while remaining the epitome of professionalism. Throughout the meal they were nothing but a credit to their profession.
The food is a little harder to place. It is not bad – far from it – and I can honestly say that I enjoyed almost everything I had. I cannot say it is spectacular – of all the various dishes we ordered not a single one screamed out at us, begging us to return. Yet it would be a tremendous disservice to the restaurant to pass the food off merely as good. It is more than that. As dim sum goes, it is definitely one of the better places to go in Singapore. Standards taste like they should, dishes are executed well and with care.
(Dishes to try: there is a dish of poached rice in seafood stock that is quite remarkable. Grains of rice are poached till they are partially cooked, then served with a consommé containing scallops, fish slices, prawns and other seafood. You add the grains to the consommé and eat it like you would drink soup or eat porridge. The grains are crunchy and have a tinge of wok fire, while the consommé is light and flavourful, and the freshness of the seafood rounds out what is a rather marvellous dish. Also worth trying is the shark cartilage soup – peppery and not as creamy as versions at other restaurants.
Dishes to avoid: the roasted pork – siu yoke. The slices of pork are cubed for uniformity, which means that the fat is cut away and you’re left with small, dry pieces of meat. The skin doesn’t crackle like it should, and the pieces of pork are paired with a very ordinary dijon mustard. Also not up to scratch was the XO carrot cake – the texture was too mushy and it was a pale shadow of versions that I have enjoyed elsewhere.)
At their prices, I suppose they would be considered a treat for a large majority of Singaporeans. And if they are viewed as such – as a place to go for a special occasion – then Victoria Peak disappoints. It is solid without being spectacular; it comforts without inspiring. But it is not excessively expensive either, and nowhere near the stratospheric prices you pay at your Humble Houses or your Hai Tien Los. If money were no object this would be a great place to become a regular of, to come for Sunday brunch every few weeks. I suppose that in this – as with all things else in life – it all depends on your point of view.
In sum, though, I rather enjoyed my trip to Victoria Peak. Good restaurants are easy to find. Good company – not so much, and I was more than grateful to break bread with a couple of good friends.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
If you can't stand the heat...
G7 Sin Ma Live Seafood Restaurant
161 Geylang Lorong 3
Tel: +65 6743 2201
There’s a crying baby at Table 20. The rowdy college students at 31 want their waters topped up. The fussy couple in the corner is sending back a dish. That’s going to piss off the line cooks, who are harried and overworked, drenched in sweat and red-faced from the inexorable heat of the kitchen. The waiters are running to and fro, displaying almost balletic grace to avoid one another while balancing any number of large plates on their forearms. The busboys are out on their cigarette break, so nobody is clearing 15 and 36 even though the customers left ten minutes ago. Meanwhile there’s a group of 8 standing impatiently at the door, tapping their feet to the same beat. The yelling – so much yelling. Now, what would you do?
A restaurant, on any given night, is often an exhibition in controlled chaos. So many people – some of whom want to eat, some of whom want to drink, some of whom just want to make it through the night alive. Nowhere is this pandemonium better observed than in a tze char style restaurant, where anything goes. I was just at one such place the other night, and lived to tell the tale.
I had a craving for frogs’ legs porridge that night, so when the question of restaurant choice came up I immediately ventured the suggestion. To explain, this is a dish of edible frogs, stewed and made with congee. Frogs’ legs are also served in other preparations – stir-fried with ginger and onion, braised in kung pow sauce, and so forth. Now if you’ve eaten this dish in Singapore you will know that there is only one place to get them, and all others pale in comparison. Next to the former Allson Hotel on Victoria St there is a small eating place, and one of the stalls there sells frogs’ legs porridge in the evenings and all the way through to around 3am. If I am not wrong this is a branch or somehow related to the one at Geylang Lorong 9, but in my opinion is just that bit better than the Geylang version.
In any case we did not want the hassle of paying ERP to get to Victoria St (and to hunt for limited parking in the area) and so decided to head to Geylang instead. Now, there are generally a few options that people go to for frogs’ legs in Geylang – in addition to the aforementioned Lorong 9 stall that specialises in frogs’ legs there is also Sin Ma, a larger establishment at Lorong 3 that also serves seafood and other dishes. I had been to Sin Ma once previously and remember thinking that it wasn’t too bad (just nowhere near the Victoria St stall), and so we settled for this place.
The previous time I was there, though, was not a Saturday night at dinner-time, and so in no way prepared me for the chaos that presented itself. One of the more problematic issues at Sin Ma is that they do not have a proper entrance. The dining space only has two of four walls, with the other two opened up to the public, and tables spilling over to the sidewalk. Now, this is a great design solution that ventilates the space naturally, but it also means that the restaurant cannot regulate the inflow of customers. People show up from all directions, walk in and plonk themselves down at any empty table, or mill around until they can find one. Not only does this create a lot of confusion, but it also means that there is a lot of unnecessary human traffic. The captains and waitstaff thus have to have a heightened awareness of their surroundings – of who just left and who just walked in – to ensure that they get to everyone. Of course, they don’t succeed all of the time. It is a recipe for chaos.
Even so, this can be somewhat mitigated by strong processes (and of course, efficient workers). But processes are not the strong point at Sin Ma, or at least they are not observably so. Waiters don’t have a dedicated section, for one. In any case the end result is a lot of people running around and moving a lot more than they have to. It doesn’t help that they probably bit off more than they can chew. In an effort to maximise the revenue-generating space at the restaurant, the tables and chairs are squeezed impossibly close to one another – to the point of discomfort. All those hungry people in a room together – and not enough people to give them what they want, and you get a situation like I described above.
Of course, this is an inconvenience to be gladly suffered if the food is good. Unfortunately, while quite decent and fairly priced, it is not good enough. We ordered the kung pow frogs’ legs with a side of congee, hotplate tofu and stir-fried kai lan. The frogs’ legs came first, and we attacked them with gusto. The frogs they used were nowhere near as succulent as the Victoria St edition, and the kung pow sauce not as spicy or flavourful. But they were decent enough, and at $22 for five – they were quite a good deal. Yet we were almost halfway through them and our other dishes had not arrived.
We realised later that due to a mix-up, our food had been sent to the wrong table – where it had been sitting for 15 minutes as the other table waited for a runner to take the food back. Once the captain realised the mistake, he brought the food over from the other table to ours. There are just so many things wrong with this, I don’t even know where to begin. First – and most inconsequential of all – we had ordered a hotplate dish, which is typically served piping hot and sizzling, right off the pass. Needless to say, it was cold and no longer sizzling when served to us. But more importantly – there has to be something either legally or ethically wrong with serving food that has technically already been served to another table. At the very least it is probably a sanitary issue. Who knows what the other table has done to the food? We, of course, sent the food back and requested replacements. Now, I am usually loathe to send food back in any kind of restaurant, but I felt justified in this instance.
I have said it before and I will say it again – the processes are what separate the men from the boys in the restaurant business. The mark of a well-run restaurant, food aside, is a structure in place that regulates workflow, maximises productivity, and – importantly – is simple enough for even idiots to follow. Without structure, work degenerates into chaos. People move around more than they have to, creating motion waste. Mistakes are made, and more people get called in to fix a problem that was avoidable in the first place – creating rework waste.
From the looks of it, though, Sin Ma appears to be doing well despite my criticisms – which shows how much I know. The place was hopping on a Saturday night – it was already crowded when we got there, and people were still coming in when we left. The food is actually not bad, but it is by no means superb. The prices are reasonable – although I’m not sure whether that can be said for their big-ticket seafood items like crab and lobster, since we did not have those. So I am not surprised that Singaporeans – accustomed to terrible service at F&B outlets – continue to come back. I, on the other hand, probably will not.
161 Geylang Lorong 3
Tel: +65 6743 2201
There’s a crying baby at Table 20. The rowdy college students at 31 want their waters topped up. The fussy couple in the corner is sending back a dish. That’s going to piss off the line cooks, who are harried and overworked, drenched in sweat and red-faced from the inexorable heat of the kitchen. The waiters are running to and fro, displaying almost balletic grace to avoid one another while balancing any number of large plates on their forearms. The busboys are out on their cigarette break, so nobody is clearing 15 and 36 even though the customers left ten minutes ago. Meanwhile there’s a group of 8 standing impatiently at the door, tapping their feet to the same beat. The yelling – so much yelling. Now, what would you do?
A restaurant, on any given night, is often an exhibition in controlled chaos. So many people – some of whom want to eat, some of whom want to drink, some of whom just want to make it through the night alive. Nowhere is this pandemonium better observed than in a tze char style restaurant, where anything goes. I was just at one such place the other night, and lived to tell the tale.
I had a craving for frogs’ legs porridge that night, so when the question of restaurant choice came up I immediately ventured the suggestion. To explain, this is a dish of edible frogs, stewed and made with congee. Frogs’ legs are also served in other preparations – stir-fried with ginger and onion, braised in kung pow sauce, and so forth. Now if you’ve eaten this dish in Singapore you will know that there is only one place to get them, and all others pale in comparison. Next to the former Allson Hotel on Victoria St there is a small eating place, and one of the stalls there sells frogs’ legs porridge in the evenings and all the way through to around 3am. If I am not wrong this is a branch or somehow related to the one at Geylang Lorong 9, but in my opinion is just that bit better than the Geylang version.
In any case we did not want the hassle of paying ERP to get to Victoria St (and to hunt for limited parking in the area) and so decided to head to Geylang instead. Now, there are generally a few options that people go to for frogs’ legs in Geylang – in addition to the aforementioned Lorong 9 stall that specialises in frogs’ legs there is also Sin Ma, a larger establishment at Lorong 3 that also serves seafood and other dishes. I had been to Sin Ma once previously and remember thinking that it wasn’t too bad (just nowhere near the Victoria St stall), and so we settled for this place.
The previous time I was there, though, was not a Saturday night at dinner-time, and so in no way prepared me for the chaos that presented itself. One of the more problematic issues at Sin Ma is that they do not have a proper entrance. The dining space only has two of four walls, with the other two opened up to the public, and tables spilling over to the sidewalk. Now, this is a great design solution that ventilates the space naturally, but it also means that the restaurant cannot regulate the inflow of customers. People show up from all directions, walk in and plonk themselves down at any empty table, or mill around until they can find one. Not only does this create a lot of confusion, but it also means that there is a lot of unnecessary human traffic. The captains and waitstaff thus have to have a heightened awareness of their surroundings – of who just left and who just walked in – to ensure that they get to everyone. Of course, they don’t succeed all of the time. It is a recipe for chaos.
Even so, this can be somewhat mitigated by strong processes (and of course, efficient workers). But processes are not the strong point at Sin Ma, or at least they are not observably so. Waiters don’t have a dedicated section, for one. In any case the end result is a lot of people running around and moving a lot more than they have to. It doesn’t help that they probably bit off more than they can chew. In an effort to maximise the revenue-generating space at the restaurant, the tables and chairs are squeezed impossibly close to one another – to the point of discomfort. All those hungry people in a room together – and not enough people to give them what they want, and you get a situation like I described above.
Of course, this is an inconvenience to be gladly suffered if the food is good. Unfortunately, while quite decent and fairly priced, it is not good enough. We ordered the kung pow frogs’ legs with a side of congee, hotplate tofu and stir-fried kai lan. The frogs’ legs came first, and we attacked them with gusto. The frogs they used were nowhere near as succulent as the Victoria St edition, and the kung pow sauce not as spicy or flavourful. But they were decent enough, and at $22 for five – they were quite a good deal. Yet we were almost halfway through them and our other dishes had not arrived.
We realised later that due to a mix-up, our food had been sent to the wrong table – where it had been sitting for 15 minutes as the other table waited for a runner to take the food back. Once the captain realised the mistake, he brought the food over from the other table to ours. There are just so many things wrong with this, I don’t even know where to begin. First – and most inconsequential of all – we had ordered a hotplate dish, which is typically served piping hot and sizzling, right off the pass. Needless to say, it was cold and no longer sizzling when served to us. But more importantly – there has to be something either legally or ethically wrong with serving food that has technically already been served to another table. At the very least it is probably a sanitary issue. Who knows what the other table has done to the food? We, of course, sent the food back and requested replacements. Now, I am usually loathe to send food back in any kind of restaurant, but I felt justified in this instance.
I have said it before and I will say it again – the processes are what separate the men from the boys in the restaurant business. The mark of a well-run restaurant, food aside, is a structure in place that regulates workflow, maximises productivity, and – importantly – is simple enough for even idiots to follow. Without structure, work degenerates into chaos. People move around more than they have to, creating motion waste. Mistakes are made, and more people get called in to fix a problem that was avoidable in the first place – creating rework waste.
From the looks of it, though, Sin Ma appears to be doing well despite my criticisms – which shows how much I know. The place was hopping on a Saturday night – it was already crowded when we got there, and people were still coming in when we left. The food is actually not bad, but it is by no means superb. The prices are reasonable – although I’m not sure whether that can be said for their big-ticket seafood items like crab and lobster, since we did not have those. So I am not surprised that Singaporeans – accustomed to terrible service at F&B outlets – continue to come back. I, on the other hand, probably will not.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Plastics
Chatterbox
5/F Mandarin Orchard
333 Orchard Road
Tel: +65 6831 6288
In my previous job in the States I had to be on the road quite a bit, and probably stayed at one too many Courtyard Marriotts for this lifetime. To explain – Courtyard by Marriott is a brand of hotels in the Marriott Group, with locations across the United States, which is designed for business travelers. By that I mean that it is purely functional, with little to no frills. The rooms are blockish, staid affairs that look as if they were furnished in the 70s, and you’d be lucky to get a pool in the hotel, much less other standard hotel amenities. They are popular with business travelers because they have a wide coverage across the country, and because they get the two most important things to the business traveler right: free high-speed Internet, and a hard but surprisingly comfortable bed.
Anyway, since they are no-frills, and also because some Courtyard locations are in the middle of nowhere – not all Courtyards have in-house restaurants. (Some just have a vending machine or two stocked with pretzels and candy.) The ones that do, often have sad excuses for a full-service restaurant, offering little more beyond a breakfast buffet and a limited, unchanging menu of simple dishes for the rest of the day. The food screams bulk, low-cost, pre-frozen, insta-mix – most of it tastes terrible and is probably worse for your health. (The saddest part is trying to improve the flavour of these terrible meals with the little pre-packaged salt and pepper packets that they provide, which themselves do not have much flavour.)
I mention the Courtyard not because I want to review their food, but because I want to give you an impression of the feeling you get while eating at one of these places – which is standard for breakfast and unfortunately unavoidable for some other meals. The furniture quite often belongs in that pre-fabricated, plastic IKEA category – sturdy, easy to clean, modular and stackable to reduce storage space needed. The crockery and cutlery are the kind that you would get in college cafeterias, and you’d be lucky to get nondescript elevator music piped through at one of these places. In short, the entire dining experience is one that is somewhat like the approach to providing accommodation to these business travelers – purely functional. It creates an impersonal, “plastic” feel, ensuring as unmemorable a dining experience as you are likely to have.
(I want to temper my indictment of Courtyards by acknowledging that sometimes to even have that option is a blessing. If you’ve just arrived at your hotel after a long, harrowing day of work and travel, to be able to have some hot food – regardless of its quality or the setting in which you eat it – is something all travelers are grateful for.)
The in-house dining at hotels in Singapore is vastly different. First, since Singapore is so small and built-up, and because of the abundance of five-star and boutique hotels, there is no market for the business traveler type of mid-range hotels. Second, I think it is a point of cultural pride for hotels to have stellar in-house dining options (this is why most top-end Chinese restaurants are in hotels). So needless to say, the unique Courtyard experience – if I could call it that – is almost non-existent in Singapore.
But that “plastic” feel does exist. Eugene was hosting an overseas guest in Singapore, and wanted to showcase local foods to her, in the comfort of an upscale setting. He chose Chatterbox at the Mandarin Orchard, and invited me along. Now, I suspect that a large majority of people in Singapore have heard of Chatterbox, but the percentage that have actually eaten there is, in reality, very small. Chatterbox is famous (or infamous) for one thing – their chicken rice, which is in turn famous (or infamous) not for its quality, but that it costs upwards of $20. (You can get the same dish in hawker centres anywhere from $2 to $4.) When Eugene invited me along, I was disinclined to go, but in the end curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to see what all the fuss was about.
The Mandarin Orchard recently underwent a name change (from being the Meritus Mandarin) and significant facelift, but in reality has been around in various guises for a really long time. Chatterbox, too, has similarly been around for a really long time – it used to be on the top floor of the hotel but is now on the fifth. Now if there is one thing I respect restaurants for, it is longevity. Whether you like the place or not, for Chatterbox to weather – just in the last decade or so – the Asian financial crisis, the SARS epidemic and the global financial meltdown (and to come out of it STILL able to charge $20+ for their chicken rice) deserves some praise.
Chatterbox serves a variety of local favourites, at wildly inflated prices. We tried several of them – obviously the chicken rice, but also an upscale laksa (with lobster and large prawns), as well as the nasi lemak. All of those dishes cost more than $20. Now I know to an objective observer, that doesn’t sound like a big deal at all. There are places in Singapore where $20 will only get you your pre-dinner drink, especially the higher-end French places. But the audacity of Chatterbox’s business model is that they are effectively selling what you can get in hawker centres - for almost ten times the prices. I suppose that other hotel restaurants operate at this price point too. But the others take the effort to dress up their offerings, either by adding Continental elements and calling it fusion food, or by calling it a different name to “brand” it differently (eg. charcoal-grilled chicken skewers instead of satay – if you call it the former, you can sell it for $2 a stick; if you call it the latter, the going rate at hawker centres is 30c or 40c a stick.)
In their defence – the portions are huge, and can easily feed two. But huge portions alone do not justify such a price tag. I was hoping for some unique selling point, however inconsequential, to shed some light on why Chatterbox is able to charge such a premium. I found none, and instead came away with active disappointment at their food. The chicken rice is dry and bland. While the ingredients do seem fresh, the laksa is a little salty. The nasi lemak is a major disappointment – the rice is not “lemak” enough, the sambal uninspiring, the chicken rendang sorely lacking in spice.
But what disappointed me the most about the place was the shades of that Courtyard “plastic” feeling that I got from sitting at Chatterbox for close to an hour. I didn’t feel any emotional engagement at all: not from the food, not from the setting, and not from the service – which I have to say was efficient if a little impersonal. Now I hesitate to lump Chatterbox together with the various nameless Courtyard in-house restaurants, for that would be drawing the argument to a seemingly plausible but ultimately false extreme, a leap of logic. Yet sitting in the Chatterbox brought back memories of the Courtyard and my travelling days, eating cookie-cutter meals in cookie-cutter spaces, eating to live instead of living to eat – and I couldn’t help but wonder why.
What gives a restaurant that ability to engage its patrons emotionally? What makes it more than the sum of its parts, gives it personality and character, makes it an institution? I tried to think back to the places I had been to that were great at this – Bayona in New Orleans, CAV in Providence, Coppi’s Organic in DC. You don’t have to have exquisite food to create a great dining experience; apart from the pizzas I thought the rest of the food at Coppi’s was never very good. Yet I still went back there time and time again. Coppi’s had character, and it stemmed from a few things – the racing memorabilia on the walls, the quirky, attractive hipster-lite waitstaff they always seemed to hire, the purity and solidity of their food concept (Ligurian cuisine made with organic produce).
By the end of my meal at Chatterbox I had come to terms with the disappointment of mediocre food. You can’t have truly transcendent meals every day of the week, every week of the month; and part of the bargain in being adventurous and trying out new (or in this case old) places is that some will invariably be disappointing. But what rankled me long after we had left the place was how utterly devoid of personality it had been. I struggled to remember a concept, a unifying theme – something, anything – that typified the place. Sadly, I could not come up with anything.
5/F Mandarin Orchard
333 Orchard Road
Tel: +65 6831 6288
In my previous job in the States I had to be on the road quite a bit, and probably stayed at one too many Courtyard Marriotts for this lifetime. To explain – Courtyard by Marriott is a brand of hotels in the Marriott Group, with locations across the United States, which is designed for business travelers. By that I mean that it is purely functional, with little to no frills. The rooms are blockish, staid affairs that look as if they were furnished in the 70s, and you’d be lucky to get a pool in the hotel, much less other standard hotel amenities. They are popular with business travelers because they have a wide coverage across the country, and because they get the two most important things to the business traveler right: free high-speed Internet, and a hard but surprisingly comfortable bed.
Anyway, since they are no-frills, and also because some Courtyard locations are in the middle of nowhere – not all Courtyards have in-house restaurants. (Some just have a vending machine or two stocked with pretzels and candy.) The ones that do, often have sad excuses for a full-service restaurant, offering little more beyond a breakfast buffet and a limited, unchanging menu of simple dishes for the rest of the day. The food screams bulk, low-cost, pre-frozen, insta-mix – most of it tastes terrible and is probably worse for your health. (The saddest part is trying to improve the flavour of these terrible meals with the little pre-packaged salt and pepper packets that they provide, which themselves do not have much flavour.)
I mention the Courtyard not because I want to review their food, but because I want to give you an impression of the feeling you get while eating at one of these places – which is standard for breakfast and unfortunately unavoidable for some other meals. The furniture quite often belongs in that pre-fabricated, plastic IKEA category – sturdy, easy to clean, modular and stackable to reduce storage space needed. The crockery and cutlery are the kind that you would get in college cafeterias, and you’d be lucky to get nondescript elevator music piped through at one of these places. In short, the entire dining experience is one that is somewhat like the approach to providing accommodation to these business travelers – purely functional. It creates an impersonal, “plastic” feel, ensuring as unmemorable a dining experience as you are likely to have.
(I want to temper my indictment of Courtyards by acknowledging that sometimes to even have that option is a blessing. If you’ve just arrived at your hotel after a long, harrowing day of work and travel, to be able to have some hot food – regardless of its quality or the setting in which you eat it – is something all travelers are grateful for.)
The in-house dining at hotels in Singapore is vastly different. First, since Singapore is so small and built-up, and because of the abundance of five-star and boutique hotels, there is no market for the business traveler type of mid-range hotels. Second, I think it is a point of cultural pride for hotels to have stellar in-house dining options (this is why most top-end Chinese restaurants are in hotels). So needless to say, the unique Courtyard experience – if I could call it that – is almost non-existent in Singapore.
But that “plastic” feel does exist. Eugene was hosting an overseas guest in Singapore, and wanted to showcase local foods to her, in the comfort of an upscale setting. He chose Chatterbox at the Mandarin Orchard, and invited me along. Now, I suspect that a large majority of people in Singapore have heard of Chatterbox, but the percentage that have actually eaten there is, in reality, very small. Chatterbox is famous (or infamous) for one thing – their chicken rice, which is in turn famous (or infamous) not for its quality, but that it costs upwards of $20. (You can get the same dish in hawker centres anywhere from $2 to $4.) When Eugene invited me along, I was disinclined to go, but in the end curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to see what all the fuss was about.
The Mandarin Orchard recently underwent a name change (from being the Meritus Mandarin) and significant facelift, but in reality has been around in various guises for a really long time. Chatterbox, too, has similarly been around for a really long time – it used to be on the top floor of the hotel but is now on the fifth. Now if there is one thing I respect restaurants for, it is longevity. Whether you like the place or not, for Chatterbox to weather – just in the last decade or so – the Asian financial crisis, the SARS epidemic and the global financial meltdown (and to come out of it STILL able to charge $20+ for their chicken rice) deserves some praise.
Chatterbox serves a variety of local favourites, at wildly inflated prices. We tried several of them – obviously the chicken rice, but also an upscale laksa (with lobster and large prawns), as well as the nasi lemak. All of those dishes cost more than $20. Now I know to an objective observer, that doesn’t sound like a big deal at all. There are places in Singapore where $20 will only get you your pre-dinner drink, especially the higher-end French places. But the audacity of Chatterbox’s business model is that they are effectively selling what you can get in hawker centres - for almost ten times the prices. I suppose that other hotel restaurants operate at this price point too. But the others take the effort to dress up their offerings, either by adding Continental elements and calling it fusion food, or by calling it a different name to “brand” it differently (eg. charcoal-grilled chicken skewers instead of satay – if you call it the former, you can sell it for $2 a stick; if you call it the latter, the going rate at hawker centres is 30c or 40c a stick.)
In their defence – the portions are huge, and can easily feed two. But huge portions alone do not justify such a price tag. I was hoping for some unique selling point, however inconsequential, to shed some light on why Chatterbox is able to charge such a premium. I found none, and instead came away with active disappointment at their food. The chicken rice is dry and bland. While the ingredients do seem fresh, the laksa is a little salty. The nasi lemak is a major disappointment – the rice is not “lemak” enough, the sambal uninspiring, the chicken rendang sorely lacking in spice.
But what disappointed me the most about the place was the shades of that Courtyard “plastic” feeling that I got from sitting at Chatterbox for close to an hour. I didn’t feel any emotional engagement at all: not from the food, not from the setting, and not from the service – which I have to say was efficient if a little impersonal. Now I hesitate to lump Chatterbox together with the various nameless Courtyard in-house restaurants, for that would be drawing the argument to a seemingly plausible but ultimately false extreme, a leap of logic. Yet sitting in the Chatterbox brought back memories of the Courtyard and my travelling days, eating cookie-cutter meals in cookie-cutter spaces, eating to live instead of living to eat – and I couldn’t help but wonder why.
What gives a restaurant that ability to engage its patrons emotionally? What makes it more than the sum of its parts, gives it personality and character, makes it an institution? I tried to think back to the places I had been to that were great at this – Bayona in New Orleans, CAV in Providence, Coppi’s Organic in DC. You don’t have to have exquisite food to create a great dining experience; apart from the pizzas I thought the rest of the food at Coppi’s was never very good. Yet I still went back there time and time again. Coppi’s had character, and it stemmed from a few things – the racing memorabilia on the walls, the quirky, attractive hipster-lite waitstaff they always seemed to hire, the purity and solidity of their food concept (Ligurian cuisine made with organic produce).
By the end of my meal at Chatterbox I had come to terms with the disappointment of mediocre food. You can’t have truly transcendent meals every day of the week, every week of the month; and part of the bargain in being adventurous and trying out new (or in this case old) places is that some will invariably be disappointing. But what rankled me long after we had left the place was how utterly devoid of personality it had been. I struggled to remember a concept, a unifying theme – something, anything – that typified the place. Sadly, I could not come up with anything.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The good life
By now, it should be pretty standard practice for credit card companies to offer the power of "analytics" along with their online portals. You've seen them - the tools that show you how much of your expenditure per month go to travel, food and other categories of expenses. I cringe each time I use them, since such a large portion of my spending goes towards food and beverage - way too much, in fact. And what kind of category is food and beverage, anyway? It's too broad. Now, if my credit card company could break that down further, that would be really useful. Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese. Wine, hard liquor, beer. Well, maybe it wouldn't be useful, but at the very least if I broke it down into smaller pieces I wouldn't be confronted by such a large histogram each time.
In any case, I spent more money on wine this month, thanks to the World Gourmet Summit hitting town. The good folks over at Sassicaia kindly agreed to do a vertical tasting and there was no way I was going to miss out on that. Here are my tasting notes, in the order of tasting.
2006 Barrua - A sister wine to Sassicaia and one of two "primer" wines. Tannins unfortunately overpowered the fruit (perhaps it was still young), so all I got was prunes.
2008 Guidalberto - The other "primer" wine. Though younger than the Barrua this was less tannic and more similar to Sassicaia in that it had the kind of forest glade nose that you expect from Sassicaia.
2006 Sassicaia - An absolute blockbuster. Someone at the tasting ventured that this had "muscular tannins", which I thought was an apt description. One of those wines with a perfect blend of tannins, acid and fruit. This will keep for ages.
2005 Sassicaia - By contrast, a lot more muted. Hit all the notes that you would expect a Sassicaia to hit, but unlike some of the better vintages, does not linger on your tongue or in your memory.
2004 Sassicaia - My favourite of all the wines I tasted that night. I had had this before with RK in DC, but only now do I appreciate it as my favourite of the recent Sassicaia vintages. Elegant, elegant wine. Again, the forest glade feel, hints of espresso. Great structure. By far the vintage with the creamiest mouthfeel, which I loved. It's like eating a piece of bread with too much butter spread on it. Good, French butter. Absolutely divine.
2003 Sassicaia - I should mention that the organiser of the tasting had advised us to taste the vintages in pairs: 06/05, 04/03, and 02/01, and I later saw why. Each of the pairs contained a so-called stellar vintage ('06, '04 and '01), and you could better appreciate their excellence by comparing them to what I hesitate to call a lesser wine. The '03 Sassicaia is a great wine in its own right, but it was far from the star of the night.
2002 Sassicaia - A bad year for Tuscan wines, but as the organiser explained to us: what holds for Tuscany doesn't necessarily hold for Bolgheri. This was not as full as the other vintages, but definitely a very tasty wine indeed.
2001 Sassicaia - Drinking very well now. The tannins have started to fall away, leaving the fruit flavour more exposed, and you can really taste the sophistication. There is just so much going on here - currants, cherries, nuts, chocolate. Delicious.
If all accounts are to be believed, the 2007 Sassicaia promises to be another stellar offering. At the tasting I could see people slyly tapping at their Blackberries, and at first I just thought this was rude. Later when I overheard a conversation I realised that many of these people were frantically on their phones and Blackberries with their wine brokers or distributors, urging them to "Don't think! Just buy!" (verbatim quote). I suppose, then, they could be forgiven.
In any case, I spent more money on wine this month, thanks to the World Gourmet Summit hitting town. The good folks over at Sassicaia kindly agreed to do a vertical tasting and there was no way I was going to miss out on that. Here are my tasting notes, in the order of tasting.
2006 Barrua - A sister wine to Sassicaia and one of two "primer" wines. Tannins unfortunately overpowered the fruit (perhaps it was still young), so all I got was prunes.
2008 Guidalberto - The other "primer" wine. Though younger than the Barrua this was less tannic and more similar to Sassicaia in that it had the kind of forest glade nose that you expect from Sassicaia.
2006 Sassicaia - An absolute blockbuster. Someone at the tasting ventured that this had "muscular tannins", which I thought was an apt description. One of those wines with a perfect blend of tannins, acid and fruit. This will keep for ages.
2005 Sassicaia - By contrast, a lot more muted. Hit all the notes that you would expect a Sassicaia to hit, but unlike some of the better vintages, does not linger on your tongue or in your memory.
2004 Sassicaia - My favourite of all the wines I tasted that night. I had had this before with RK in DC, but only now do I appreciate it as my favourite of the recent Sassicaia vintages. Elegant, elegant wine. Again, the forest glade feel, hints of espresso. Great structure. By far the vintage with the creamiest mouthfeel, which I loved. It's like eating a piece of bread with too much butter spread on it. Good, French butter. Absolutely divine.
2003 Sassicaia - I should mention that the organiser of the tasting had advised us to taste the vintages in pairs: 06/05, 04/03, and 02/01, and I later saw why. Each of the pairs contained a so-called stellar vintage ('06, '04 and '01), and you could better appreciate their excellence by comparing them to what I hesitate to call a lesser wine. The '03 Sassicaia is a great wine in its own right, but it was far from the star of the night.
2002 Sassicaia - A bad year for Tuscan wines, but as the organiser explained to us: what holds for Tuscany doesn't necessarily hold for Bolgheri. This was not as full as the other vintages, but definitely a very tasty wine indeed.
2001 Sassicaia - Drinking very well now. The tannins have started to fall away, leaving the fruit flavour more exposed, and you can really taste the sophistication. There is just so much going on here - currants, cherries, nuts, chocolate. Delicious.
If all accounts are to be believed, the 2007 Sassicaia promises to be another stellar offering. At the tasting I could see people slyly tapping at their Blackberries, and at first I just thought this was rude. Later when I overheard a conversation I realised that many of these people were frantically on their phones and Blackberries with their wine brokers or distributors, urging them to "Don't think! Just buy!" (verbatim quote). I suppose, then, they could be forgiven.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tourist Trap - DO NOT PATRONISE
Sin Hoi Sai
55 Tiong Bahru Road, #01-59
Tel: +65 6223 0810
It is quite depressing to realize that you cannot, for some reason or another, return to a restaurant that you used to enjoy going to in the past. It is one thing if it closes, or if you are moving away from the city forever; I am sure that has happened to many people, in many places. It is another if the quality drops beyond a point where you will no longer patronize the place – as in the case of Cashion’s Eat Place in my final year in DC. That is a sad thing in its own right. But it is a terrible scenario when you choose to no longer patronize a particular restaurant because they have changed their business practices for the worse. I recently went back to a perennial favourite – Sin Hoi Sai in Tiong Bahru – and was so disgusted with my experience there that I cannot bring myself to return.
Sin Hoi Sai has been a mainstay of the tze char scene for decades, and has built up a reputation for solidity and reliability. It is especially popular amongst night owls because both branches open till late (or should I say till early in the morning). That differentiating point aside, the food is generally good to great, with few misses. The wok hei of their dishes is there and their portions are always pretty generous. Despite it undergoing a modernization facelift in recent years, the original outlet at Tiong Bahru also retained what was – for me – the most distinctive part of their restaurant: the alleyway al fresco seating.
Countless early-morning trips to Sin Hoi Sai for a plate of 月光河 after a night at the clubs have cemented some very sentimental memories for me; and coupled with the fact that this is also a regular choice for gatherings whenever my old rugby team-mates want to get together for a meal, means that this place holds a special place in my heart. Since moving back to Singapore I have only been back to Sin Hoi Sai twice, and while I have never been wowed at this place, it has always delivered tasty tze char.
(月光河 – The Moon’s Reflection in the Water: The Chinese have a penchant for flowery and beautiful-sounding names for their dishes, and this is no different. Playing on the double meaning of 河 to refer to both a body of water, and as a shoftform for 河粉 (hor fun, or wide rice noodles) – this is a simple dish of noodles stir-fried with seafood in a dark soy sauce, served with an egg cracked into the middle of the dish.)
The popularity of this place has also surged on the back of many favourable reviews, both in the local and overseas press, and a few years back the New York Times even saw fit to recommend it. However, the good thing is that the restaurant is seldom crowded, and you can always find a table (unless you have a huge group of more than 10, but in which case it’d be hard for you to find a table, or tables, anywhere). I can see why the NYT would recommend it too, for it is a good place to ease foreigners into street food, and is a passable representation of what Singaporeans eat without being too much of a culture shock. You don't have to eat in the alleyway if you don't want to, and the indoors part of the restaurant is well ventilated and quite comfortable. When Jose and Angel were in town for a visit, I brought them here - which I believe says a lot about it. The fact that I was willing to take Jose, the man who taught me how to cook, to this place for one out of a limited number of meals he had in Singapore - meant that I really thought it was worth going to.
The other day I had a craving for salted-egg crab, which Sin Hoi Sai does a very good version of; and coerced my eating companions to make the trip down to Tiong Bahru. (The other advantage for me is that it is near my office, and I don’t have to pay ERP to get there during peak hours.) There is quite a bit of street parking available around the area, and if you are really unlucky you can always park at the multi-storey carpark at Tiong Bahru market.
We didn’t take very long to decide what we wanted (since we already had an idea of what that was) so when we flagged down the nearest waitress we were surprised to find out that she could only take drink orders. Some of the top-end Chinese restaurants are like this – and have a strict hierarchy in place amongst the waitstaff. Usually there are the captains, then the normal waitstaff, then the runners and bussers – and they each have very defined tasks, and what they can or cannot do. At some of these posh places, only the captains can take food orders, and I’ve been in some restaurants where the runners are not even allowed to place the dish on your table, but have to stand by the table and wait for the captains to do it. There is a rationale behind this silliness – usually only the captains take the food orders because they are the ones who have been briefed by the chef on the specials for the day, what to push and what not to; and they are usually the ones with the experience and the knowledge to help guide the diner in his or her choices. The posher places also have the captains present the food because they are supposed to introduce the dish and say some nice things about it. Unfortunately this practice is slowly dying and I haven’t heard anyone do a proper job of introducing the dish (beyond saying its name) in years.
In any case Sin Hoi Sai is not that kind of posh place, so it is a little weird to have that waiter segmentation. But that is not our concern. What was our concern, though, was the most ridiculous example of product-pushing I have ever encountered. The waitress asked us for our drink orders – to which I replied Chinese tea – and one of my dining companions wanted to know more about the cold, homemade drinks they had to offer, whether they be lemon tea, lime juice, barley water or something along those lines. The waitress recommended aloe-vera. At the time, we didn’t think it odd, and I even thought it was some aloe vera herbal tea, so I switched my order to that as well. What was eventually brought out was an aloe vera dessert – which I’m sure was delicious, but given our circumstances we had to send back. We gave this a lot of thought, but were nowhere close to figuring out an answer. Why would anyone upsell you on dessert when all you wanted was a drink before dinner? This was absolutely unbelievable.
That in itself is probably not enough for me to denounce Sin Hoi Sai. What would do it, would be the exorbitant prices. We were charged $60/kilo for the salted egg crab, which I suppose could be considered restaurant prices, especially given that crabs are not in season. Yet Sin Hoi Sai is not a restaurant, and that said I would also be hard-pressed to charge that kind of prices even in a restaurant. The company I work for runs a few restaurants, and I’ve been to the market enough to know the rough prices for mud crabs. The importer gets them for $6-$12 a kilo, and as a consumer you can typically get them live in the market for around $18-$20 a kilo. The market price for the cooked crabs ranges from $25-$45 a kilo for tze char places, or $45 - $65 for restaurants. Now I know transportation costs a fair bit, especially for “cold chain” logistics (for live seafood this typically just means Styrofoam boxes and lots of ice), but $60 a kilo for crabs when you are sitting in an alleyway eating them is a little difficult to justify. My impression of what crabs cost could be outdated (for I don't eat them often), but for that kind of price I’d expect a scantily-clad model to break open the shells and feed me the pieces of meat.
Now I say that in jest, because deep down I know that these prices are par for the course when it comes to tourists. A large number of the popular seafood places are tourist traps, and charge silly, silly prices. (A portion of these margins no doubt goes to the concierges at the hotels, for steering tourists toward these places.) What’s interesting is that at some places you even get a locals-only discount – usually 20% and if you know the management, can go up to 50%. That they are able to do that gives you an idea of the kind of margins they are making. Sin Hoi Sai has never been cheap. But for it to make the jump from slightly-overpriced local favourite to outright tourist trap is a sad development indeed.
This wouldn’t be so difficult to swallow if the food was not good, in which case I would happily go on my way and never eat at this place again. The fact is that I do think the food is pretty good. But it’s not good enough to justify high prices and shameless (if illogical) upselling.
55 Tiong Bahru Road, #01-59
Tel: +65 6223 0810
It is quite depressing to realize that you cannot, for some reason or another, return to a restaurant that you used to enjoy going to in the past. It is one thing if it closes, or if you are moving away from the city forever; I am sure that has happened to many people, in many places. It is another if the quality drops beyond a point where you will no longer patronize the place – as in the case of Cashion’s Eat Place in my final year in DC. That is a sad thing in its own right. But it is a terrible scenario when you choose to no longer patronize a particular restaurant because they have changed their business practices for the worse. I recently went back to a perennial favourite – Sin Hoi Sai in Tiong Bahru – and was so disgusted with my experience there that I cannot bring myself to return.
Sin Hoi Sai has been a mainstay of the tze char scene for decades, and has built up a reputation for solidity and reliability. It is especially popular amongst night owls because both branches open till late (or should I say till early in the morning). That differentiating point aside, the food is generally good to great, with few misses. The wok hei of their dishes is there and their portions are always pretty generous. Despite it undergoing a modernization facelift in recent years, the original outlet at Tiong Bahru also retained what was – for me – the most distinctive part of their restaurant: the alleyway al fresco seating.
Countless early-morning trips to Sin Hoi Sai for a plate of 月光河 after a night at the clubs have cemented some very sentimental memories for me; and coupled with the fact that this is also a regular choice for gatherings whenever my old rugby team-mates want to get together for a meal, means that this place holds a special place in my heart. Since moving back to Singapore I have only been back to Sin Hoi Sai twice, and while I have never been wowed at this place, it has always delivered tasty tze char.
(月光河 – The Moon’s Reflection in the Water: The Chinese have a penchant for flowery and beautiful-sounding names for their dishes, and this is no different. Playing on the double meaning of 河 to refer to both a body of water, and as a shoftform for 河粉 (hor fun, or wide rice noodles) – this is a simple dish of noodles stir-fried with seafood in a dark soy sauce, served with an egg cracked into the middle of the dish.)
The popularity of this place has also surged on the back of many favourable reviews, both in the local and overseas press, and a few years back the New York Times even saw fit to recommend it. However, the good thing is that the restaurant is seldom crowded, and you can always find a table (unless you have a huge group of more than 10, but in which case it’d be hard for you to find a table, or tables, anywhere). I can see why the NYT would recommend it too, for it is a good place to ease foreigners into street food, and is a passable representation of what Singaporeans eat without being too much of a culture shock. You don't have to eat in the alleyway if you don't want to, and the indoors part of the restaurant is well ventilated and quite comfortable. When Jose and Angel were in town for a visit, I brought them here - which I believe says a lot about it. The fact that I was willing to take Jose, the man who taught me how to cook, to this place for one out of a limited number of meals he had in Singapore - meant that I really thought it was worth going to.
The other day I had a craving for salted-egg crab, which Sin Hoi Sai does a very good version of; and coerced my eating companions to make the trip down to Tiong Bahru. (The other advantage for me is that it is near my office, and I don’t have to pay ERP to get there during peak hours.) There is quite a bit of street parking available around the area, and if you are really unlucky you can always park at the multi-storey carpark at Tiong Bahru market.
We didn’t take very long to decide what we wanted (since we already had an idea of what that was) so when we flagged down the nearest waitress we were surprised to find out that she could only take drink orders. Some of the top-end Chinese restaurants are like this – and have a strict hierarchy in place amongst the waitstaff. Usually there are the captains, then the normal waitstaff, then the runners and bussers – and they each have very defined tasks, and what they can or cannot do. At some of these posh places, only the captains can take food orders, and I’ve been in some restaurants where the runners are not even allowed to place the dish on your table, but have to stand by the table and wait for the captains to do it. There is a rationale behind this silliness – usually only the captains take the food orders because they are the ones who have been briefed by the chef on the specials for the day, what to push and what not to; and they are usually the ones with the experience and the knowledge to help guide the diner in his or her choices. The posher places also have the captains present the food because they are supposed to introduce the dish and say some nice things about it. Unfortunately this practice is slowly dying and I haven’t heard anyone do a proper job of introducing the dish (beyond saying its name) in years.
In any case Sin Hoi Sai is not that kind of posh place, so it is a little weird to have that waiter segmentation. But that is not our concern. What was our concern, though, was the most ridiculous example of product-pushing I have ever encountered. The waitress asked us for our drink orders – to which I replied Chinese tea – and one of my dining companions wanted to know more about the cold, homemade drinks they had to offer, whether they be lemon tea, lime juice, barley water or something along those lines. The waitress recommended aloe-vera. At the time, we didn’t think it odd, and I even thought it was some aloe vera herbal tea, so I switched my order to that as well. What was eventually brought out was an aloe vera dessert – which I’m sure was delicious, but given our circumstances we had to send back. We gave this a lot of thought, but were nowhere close to figuring out an answer. Why would anyone upsell you on dessert when all you wanted was a drink before dinner? This was absolutely unbelievable.
That in itself is probably not enough for me to denounce Sin Hoi Sai. What would do it, would be the exorbitant prices. We were charged $60/kilo for the salted egg crab, which I suppose could be considered restaurant prices, especially given that crabs are not in season. Yet Sin Hoi Sai is not a restaurant, and that said I would also be hard-pressed to charge that kind of prices even in a restaurant. The company I work for runs a few restaurants, and I’ve been to the market enough to know the rough prices for mud crabs. The importer gets them for $6-$12 a kilo, and as a consumer you can typically get them live in the market for around $18-$20 a kilo. The market price for the cooked crabs ranges from $25-$45 a kilo for tze char places, or $45 - $65 for restaurants. Now I know transportation costs a fair bit, especially for “cold chain” logistics (for live seafood this typically just means Styrofoam boxes and lots of ice), but $60 a kilo for crabs when you are sitting in an alleyway eating them is a little difficult to justify. My impression of what crabs cost could be outdated (for I don't eat them often), but for that kind of price I’d expect a scantily-clad model to break open the shells and feed me the pieces of meat.
Now I say that in jest, because deep down I know that these prices are par for the course when it comes to tourists. A large number of the popular seafood places are tourist traps, and charge silly, silly prices. (A portion of these margins no doubt goes to the concierges at the hotels, for steering tourists toward these places.) What’s interesting is that at some places you even get a locals-only discount – usually 20% and if you know the management, can go up to 50%. That they are able to do that gives you an idea of the kind of margins they are making. Sin Hoi Sai has never been cheap. But for it to make the jump from slightly-overpriced local favourite to outright tourist trap is a sad development indeed.
This wouldn’t be so difficult to swallow if the food was not good, in which case I would happily go on my way and never eat at this place again. The fact is that I do think the food is pretty good. But it’s not good enough to justify high prices and shameless (if illogical) upselling.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
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.
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.
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