My girlfriend K gets a lot of grief for being an ethical vegetarian (and occasional pescatarian, when bivalves and mollusks are involved). Besides the droll meat trolls who ask her questions like “don’t vegetables have feelings too?” and leeringly point out that animals die to make just about everything we use everyday, she also has to put up with largely unremarkable, and frankly disappointing meal options at many restaurants here –  one can only eat so many portobello burgers and green salads before one goes a bit nuts.

Fortunately, over the last couple years since we returned from New York, we’ve managed to find several restaurants that serve great vegetarian food – everything from vegan burgers to mushroom fries to sous vide beetroot – either as a complement to the omnivorous options, or as the only options in a decidedly meatless menu. And, while we’ve had wonderful experiences at all price points, I was most excited by the discovery of the holy grail of vegetarian gourmands: the vegetarian tasting menu.

The vegetarian tasting menu is by no means a rare sight here in Singapore. Most fine dining establishments are more than happy to prepare one if you call in advance, with the quality you’d expect from restaurants of their caliber. But few places have a dedicated vegetarian degustation proudly displayed as a regular menu item; fewer still have vegetarian tastings so damned good, even the staunchest non-vegetarian would seriously consider ordering them.

K and I have found two such restaurants, restaurants whose chefs treat meat as the craftiest oulipians would the letter “E” – as a trope to be laughed at, worked around, and disregarded. Thanks to them – and to K, who is at least partly responsible for me getting over my aversion to beetroot and (some!) broccoli – I’ve been introduced to completely new taste combinations, and exposed to alternative notions of the tasting menu. Serving meat and seafood as part of a tasting menu isn’t so much a rule as a rather loose rubric, to be flouted only by those who know their stuff.

Jaan – Chef Julien Royer’s Jardin Gourmand menu

There’s almost nothing I can say about JAAN, and chef Julien Royer, that hasn’t already been said. In the space of a year since my first ever visit to the restaurant, chef Julien was voted Asia’s 22nd best restaurant by San Pellegrino and Restaurant Magazine, and named “One To Watch” for his potential to climb even higher. The restaurant’s artisanal cuisine, a transcontinental ballad of Europe and Asia’s best produce, is stunning evidence of what a great chef can do with the freshest of ingredients. My parents measure all other restaurants against it and find them wanting, as does K, who, after eating at several places of the Michelin variety in Europe, promptly declared, “JAAN is better.”

Given chef Julien’s attention to terroir, it isn’t a stretch to say that he prepares probably the best vegetarian cuisine K and I have ever had the pleasure of eating. The restaurant’s amuse bouche, a wild mushroom ‘tea’ with cep sabayon, is one of my favorite dishes of any restaurant. And, while a vegetarian tasting menu has been a permanent fixture at JAAN since chef Julien took over its kitchen, his latest iteration, the Jardin Gourmand menu, ups the ante.

While many vegetarian menus are essentially mimeses – fleshy mushrooms as placebos, tofu as alternative protein – Jardin Gourmand makes you forget there ever was such a thing as meat. Taking pride of place are produce such as the romanesco broccoli, served in a textural triptych – blanched, finely chopped, and pureed – with praline and passionfruit; raisiny morels roosting on a beam of white asparagus, sheltered under a blade of garlic leaf; and a risotto of organic barley stained with vibrant Iranian saffron. It’s hard for me to describe the taste of the vegetables; all I can say is that they tasted so distinctly, so deliciously, like themselves. The best photographers and portrait artists manage to coax their subjects, both living and inanimate, into revealing the most indescribably intimate parts of themselves, and chef Julien manages to do this every time.

The best creatives also leave a part of themselves in their work. Thus, in the Jardin Gourmand menu, chef Julien has created a dish that I think could be the very soul of his artisanal philosophy: “Jaan’s Garden,” (main picture) an ever-changing composition of the season’s best vegetables – heirloom carrots, tomatoes, snow peas, fava beans, radishes, radicchio, beetroot, and onions – dotted with finger lime caviar, olive oil pearls, and wild herbs. The presentation is deceptively, abstractly simple, essentially blanched vegetables on a plate; and yet, the taste is completely out of this world. If ever there was an antithesis to monolithic and decadent meat dishes – wagyu, foie gras, toro and so on – this would be it: an edible Kandinsky, vibrant and various, with subtle strokes of bite, bitter, crunch, color, ooze, oomph, sweet, slime, and more. I don’t think any other dish I’ve had, vegetarian or otherwise, has been this sublime. It’s food as jazz, cuisine as improvisations and riffs on verdant themes.

Frequent diners will recognize updates of chef Julien’s older work, such as the trumbetta zucchini with burrata and olive sugar, and the 55-minute smoked egg, served now with a spring’s harvest of morels and peas, in the Jardin Gourmand. They will also know that at JAAN, vegetables have always been the star of the show. But this latest progressive offering from a chef who comes from a family of farmers in Cantal is, to me, a bold statement – that a vegetarian meal isn’t a pragmatic acquiescence to diners’ food restrictions, but a different experience altogether for those who would like to explore a subtly alien panorama.

Tippling Club – Chef Ryan Clift’s vegetarian (and vegan) menu

I wouldn’t be able to tell you how good the regular tasting menu at Tippling Club is, because I’ve never tried it. But damn if the vegetarian menu isn’t one of the most memorable meals I’ve had in a long time.

If chef Julien is a jazz artist, chef Ryan Clift must be some kind of fusion math-rocker. Huge opaque jars containing powdered versions of food that I’m sure was never meant to be powdered, crowd the shelves of Tippling Club’s open kitchen/bar, right above the immersion cookers and freeze-driers. I’m not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that the one labeled “blue cheese” was never opened, though I did get a prescription boxful of cheesecake pills at the end of dinner, right before a dessert that must be the only dish in the world to demand the phrase “crispy milk”.

It might be due to the absence of meat, or the restaurant’s Dali-esque sensibilities and styling, but there was something quite surreal about my meal at the Tippling Club. Any modernist chef can subject ingredients to sous vide and liquid nitrogen and foam, but it takes a weird, wonderful chef to be able to turn food into compelling – and delectable – art. In chef Ryan’s gallery, tart cucumber obelisks flank a mustard ice cream zeppelin carrying a filigree of dried shallots; lightly charred hunks of halved potato look like igneous rocks beneath herb sprigs and pearls of olive oil; and a bed of jet-black truffle puree adds visual and flavor shock value to a vegetable melange.

Indeed, nothing is really what it seems at chef Ryan’s little laboratory on Dempsey Hill – and so it goes for the vegetarian menu, which has the taste profile of a series of scientific lectures set to the music of The Mars Volta. Each dish I had was a dissection of vegetables I thought I knew. But you don’t know a tomato, chef Ryan seems to be saying, until you’ve slurped it up through a straw.

This endless variation on the same vegetable in the same dish is one of the things I love about chef Ryan’s menu. A parsley soup exploded with the bitter, brash flavors of the herb, while the pieces of parsley root that came with it was comparatively delicate, allowing the amazing radish-like texture to stand out. A plate of pillowy gnocchi, made entirely from carrot, were like orange clouds on the tongue; together with a broth of carrot and ginger, and paper-thin slices of heirloom carrot, it added entire new dimensions to my respect for the darned thing. The sum of the parts, it seems, is greater than the whole.

I must also give tremendous props to Tippling Club for not only preparing a vegetarian menu, but a vegan one as well for K, who requested it as a cheeky challenge to the brigade. Having sampled some of the dishes, I must say that there was almost no difference in quality and experience. The restaurant did have its revenge, though, when sous chef Paul came by for a short chat and, in his most deadpan voice, asked us, “if you like food so much, why the hell do you only eat vegetables?”

To fine diners who ask this question in earnest – open your mind and see if two of Singapore’s most talented chefs can’t tell you the answer.

JAAN
2 Stamford Road
Swissotel The Stamford, level 70
Singapore 178882
Tel: +65 9199 9008
www.jaan.com.sg
Mondays—Saturdays ­12pm—230pm, 7pm—10pm
Closed Sundays and Public Holidays

Tippling Club
8D Dempsey Road
Singapore 249672
Tel: +65 6475 2217
www.tipplingclub.com
Mondays—Fridays ­6pm—late
Saturday 12pm–3pm, 6pm–late
Closed Sundays

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Experiencing The Ledbury in London is like taking a hike in the wild. For one, traveling there takes you out of Zone 1 and into raw Westbourne Park (or Notting Hill, depending on which line you’re taking), where the streets are mercifully quiet and the grass in the gardens of the low-rise housing developments is untrimmed. For another, the typically cheery London weather (read: rainy with biting winds) made my girlfriend K and I look like a pair of inept hipster hunter-gatherers after the brisk walk from the tube station to Ledbury Road. Then there was the food itself; each of the eight courses on our lunch tasting menu took us on a sojourn, past bubbling rivers, through pungent loam, into the very heart of some unnamed countryside.

I’d like to say that The Ledbury serves distinctly British cuisine, except I don’t quite know what the phrase ‘British cuisine’ means, exactly. My guess is it’s hearty, deeply engaging, almost rustic, as is befitting a country – and city, in London’s case – with such  textured history. That’s what my meal that wet March Thursday felt like, though. If my dinner at Le Sergent Recruteur in Paris was amusingly cerebral, The Ledbury was an entirely different animal; earnestly and raucously so.

Quintessentially British? Perhaps, but Brett Graham isn’t a typical British chef, mostly because he’s Australian. Not that he doesn’t have any local cred. After a great start to his career in Newcastle (the other Newcastle) and Sydney, he moved to the less sunny pastures of England, where he’s been based for more than ten years now. It’s a well-oiled machine he’s running at The Ledbury – the restaurant earned the first of its two Michelin stars about a year after it opened in 2005, and was ranked 14th in last year’s San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

My tasting menu was low in pretension, but bursting with big-bellied flavor. Chef Graham’s technique is, as expected, faultless, but at all times he prefers to keep things understated to the point of anonymity. You don’t think about the beautiful knife-work when eating a delicate tartare of oyster, horseradish and dill, even though it was his idea to turn the slurptastic bivalve experience into something infinitely more refined; you don’t marvel at the masterful flame-grilling of mackerel, nor at the perfectly pickled vegetables on the plate, because you’re trying very hard not to eat the entire fillet in one glorious, oleaginous mouthful.

Other dishes, such as the curd of Buffalo milk from Hampshire (pictured above), let you appreciate the beauty of British produce. Wildly creamy, the curd sat below a thin layer of warm onion broth, which itself sat below a forager’s trio of mushroom, dill and onion, and was accompanied by thin fingers of toast with Saint-Nectaire cheese (see second image) from Auvergne and shaved black truffle. Quite simply the most outdoorsy dish of the meal, it was also my favorite. It reminded me of the garden of a family friend’s suburban London house I stayed at when I was ten, mossy and vibrant with all kinds of fungi and herbs.

Besides the occasional cheese and vegetable, chef Graham doesn’t venture too far from his current home country for inspiration. Sam, the excellent head waiter, was almost apologetic when he told us that the brilliant mustard-coloured leek that came with our grilled turbot (pictured below) was not from the United Kingdom, as is normally the case, but from France, due to issues with the crop quality at the time. He was less remorseful when he presented me a plate of medium-rare Berkshire muntjac daubed with a sauce of blood-red rhubarb. “You know Bambi? Well, that’s the exact breed of deer this is,” he told me, not without a slightly worrying hint of glee. I felt like an unpardonable carnivore as I wolfed down the thick, juicy ovals; a feeling compounded by the rather accusing eyes of K, who had ordered the vegetarian tasting menu. Nevertheless, it was a great unusual dish, a bestial shock to my beef-jaded palate.

The tail-end of my meal brought with it a series of treats. First, a complimentary glass of Recioto di Soave from Veneto, courtesy of our sommelier, who had persuaded me – rightly so – to take the plunge and order a glass of savoury Austrian Saint Laurent to keep me going through my lunch. Second, an additional dessert, a brown sugar custard so bloody good it made our previous one, and indeed, almost all other desserts, seem inadequate in comparison. And third, a quick chat with chef Graham himself in between preparations for dinner service. Chummy and completely egoless, he seemed genuinely interested in the restaurant scene in Asia, but work had foiled any attempts for an extended holiday. “I’m just too bloody busy, you know?”

Given The Ledbury’s success, it isn’t surprising. It takes a lot of time to source the best ingredients and mould them into a menu as chockfull of character as London showers and  Sir John Soane’s Museum. It takes a lot of time to be an invisible guide, taking diners on a massively curated tour of the local and continental taste landscape, bringing them to all your familiar haunts, then stepping back to let them enjoy the moment.

Quintessentially British? Maybe.

The Ledbury
127 Ledbury Road
Notting Hill, London, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7792 9090
www.theledbury.com

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“Foie gras is boring,” were the epigrammatic words of Antonin Bonnet before my dinner at Le Sergent Recruteur in Paris. Or at least, that’s what I think he said; it’s hard to recall bits of conversation after being plied with bubbly and Riesling. But it would be completely in keeping with the chef’s cavalier demeanor, and with the feel of this lively new place, which served up some of the most playful cuisine of my weeklong stay in the city.For sure, any restaurant whose façade features a fabulous baby pink suit of armor can’t be accused of being dull. Opened late 2012, “Le Sergent” is chef Antonin’s beaming new baby, his first venture after working under (and with) a host of talented professionals in France and England, including super-restaurateur Marlon Abela and three Michelin-starred Michel Bras. The rather tangential name is borrowed from the historic tavern whose premises chef Antonin took over, smack in the middle of the quaint Ile Saint-Louis on the Seine, and refurbished with the interior designer Jaime Hayon. The wooden boards on the ceiling have been painted white, and the bar no longer pours “all the wine you can drink,” which one particular Yelper will be disappointed to learn, but the restaurant wears its architectural and gastronomical heritage proudly, and with more than a bit of cheek.

The food, too – tasting menu only – is a smidge different from the rustic fare of the old joint. Our dinner that particular night was all about seafood, with just one meat course – a juicy loin of veal – and featured some of the most unique combinations in recent memory. A small bowl of celeriac, quinoa, and sweet pea puree came with a shot glass of orange carrot juice; downing the juice first, as we were told to do, coated my mouth with a sweetness that contrasted beautifully with the strong taste of the celeriac and with the pearly quinoa. A slow-cooked egg, served trendily in-shell, set itself apart from similar dishes I’ve had at other restaurants with an infusion of another sweet ingredient (I think it was vanilla) and an accessory of smoked eel on toast. A tart sorbet with beetroot ice and a poached pear with chocolate ice cream and artichoke puree dared us to categorize them.

Which brings me back to the foie gras. Chef Antonin was talking to my girlfriend K, who had just confessed her distaste for the stuff and requested that it not be included in our meal. She was then told that the restaurant prefers to, ahem, recruit lesser-used ingredients and use them to create simple, but surprising, dishes. Like many of the best young chefs whose restaurants I’ve had the privilege of dining at, chef Antonin is a bit of a post-post-modernist, using both classical French techniques and slightly more contemporary methods, and presenting produce mostly in their natural forms as opposed to turning them into an homage to Frank Gehry.

What you get is an approachably creative meal, and a tour of chef Antonin’s wacky brain. Sure, there are arrestingly simple offerings such as the veal, bathed in its own jus and looking like a boulder surrounded by an outcropping of small chunky potatoes and carrots. But then, there is also the bundle of mussels, clams, and cockles, pasted onto a kabocha puree and decorated with bitter vegetables; a herbivorous combination of sweet onion, black truffle, and watercress; and my personal favorite, a diversified portfolio of squid body, fin, and tentacles with Swiss chard and gobs of its own ink. I swear I saw the man himself winking at me from the kitchen counter.

What’s interesting about Le Sergent Recruteur is that it really can’t be classified. It isn’t exactly fine dining, even though the service is excellent and the cuisine is made with the utmost attention to detail. It isn’t exactly casual, either – try serving cured mackerel with fennel and horseradish in a brasserie. It isn’t exactly French, nor British; traditional, nor modern. In fact, it’s a little bit of everything – everything, that is, except the B-word. In a city of centuries-old brasseries and celebrated legendary chefs, chef Antonin’s mercurial, cerebral cuisine appears to be a great new addition to the scene. I’m looking forward to seeing what he’ll come up with the next time I visit Paris.

Le Sergent Recruteur
41 rue-Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle
75004 Paris, France
Tel: +33 (1) 43 54 75 42
www.lesergentrecruteur.fr

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I’ve just come back from a two-week holiday in London and Paris, during which I ate until I started hallucinating, and drank more wine than I had in the last twelve months combined.  It was, as you can imagine, a completely indulgent vacation of hedonistic proportions, and a blow to my wallet from which it may never recover (hence justifying my purchase of a pretty new wallet from a luxury men’s store near Portobello market). Over this and my next couple of posts, I’ll share some of the more memorable, and hopefully less well-known, restaurants I visited, starting with Bocca di Lupo, a casual pan-Italian joint in London’s theater district.

I discovered Bocca di Lupo five years ago when it first opened and when I was studying abroad in London. It hasn’t changed at all – not the ceaseless behemoth meat-slicer at the bar corner closest to the storefront window, nor the clientele of theatergoers, tourists, and Tony Soprano lookalikes packed into the cavernous interior with the spectacularly bad acoustics one expects in osterias and trattorias. Upon returning this year, I’ve declared it one of my favorite places in the city, thanks to its cavalier charm and gut-busting food; so much so that I had no qualms about going twice during my eight days in the capital.

It’s a curiously successful restaurant. While many of the best Italian restaurants (in my opinion) are those that celebrate a single region, Bocca di Lupo takes pride in preparing dishes from all over my favorite boot-shaped country, and preparing them damn well at that. The menu is “a phrasebook in miniature,” boasts the website, “containing a taste of the twenty main dialects of Italian cuisine,” whose names – Sicily, Sardinia, Tuscany – have pride of place next to the names of the dishes themselves. Spend a meal in the so-called ‘mouth of the wolf,’ and you’ll be speaking the language too, from agretti to zabaglione.

‘Hearty’ is the best word to describe the cuisine of chef Jacob Kenedy, a Briton with a degree from Cambridge and no formal kitchen training save a few stints at restaurants in London and San Francisco. It’s a complete mystery to me how he manages to speak the victual vernaculars of his adoptive continental home so well. A simple plate of merinda heirloom tomato, blessed with olive oil and sea salt, bursts with the honeyed sweetness of Sicily, as do the pomegranates in a crunchy radish and celeriac salad, this time mixed with truffle oil and salty hunks of pecorino cheese. Carpaccio and fried dishes alike come not with the predictable lemon, but with a wedge of arancina – blood orange – with which you shower your dish to amazing effect. And those are just the appetizers.

I’ve learnt to share at Bocca di Lupo, not because portions are daunting (there are ‘small’ and ‘large’ options for just about every item), but because there are so many things to try on the frequently changing menu. And because I’m an indecisive nut. Of the selection of sausages, made and grilled in-house, should I get the dependably robust spicy pork, or the gamey, chewy, wild boar? Why not split both with my companion(s), and then get a small plate of the Roman-style tripe? Why not come with a party of six, share all those things, and my own main of ox cheek, braised, quivering, and arriving all but melting to pieces at the table?

And then there are the pasta dishes, some perfunctory, others bloody close to perfection. The spaghetti with mussels is predictable, but faultless, while the orecchiette in a sauce of spicy cured nduja sausage is a beautiful mess made magnificent by the addition of sweet red onion. But my personal favorite is the Sardinian spaghetti, tossed with warm butter, breadcrumbs, and bottarga – simple, salty, and primordially satisfying. When I neglected to order it on my second and last visit of the trip, I ended up stealing massive forkfuls from two of my companions. In retaliation, they mopped up the tomato and black pepper sauce that decorated my ox cheek, an activity I’m positive is an Italian pastime.

In between my meal and multiple carafes of Italian wine, the latter from a regional selection as diverse and unexpected as the food menu, I usually can’t even fathom dessert; though the one time I did have the appetite, I made the suicidal decision to have the three inch-thick slice of panettone, stuffed with chocolate and hazelnut gelato, which, unholy as it was, sent all remaining blood in my head to my stomach and made me completely forget the rest of the desserts ordered by my companions. A possibly better idea would be to ask for the bill, take a breather in the fresh Piccadilly air, and then cross the street to buy gelato from the restaurant’s little sister, Gelupo, which also stocks a small selection of continental produce.

Bocca di Lupo may not be the most authentic restaurant; and, it may be a travesty to recommend an Italian place in a city of Michelin-starred British establishments and atmospheric, centuries-old pubs. But it serves massively comforting food at decent prices, and never fails to put a smile on my face, no matter how dreary the London weather. Besides, a meal there has always compelled me to take a long, fat-burning stroll through London’s historic streets, which, surely, must count for something.

Bocca di Lupo
12 Archer Street
London, Greater London, UK
Tel: +44 020 7734 2223
www.boccadilupo.com

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As a sushi fetishist, I’ve been rather jaded by the recent flux of new sushiya – it’s all too easy nowadays to offer the ‘freshest’ toro and ‘melt-in-your-mouth’ uni, in an ‘authentic’ edomae setting. But the imminent opening of one Sushi Mitsuya, and the arrival of one of the most inspiring shokunin I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, has my fullest attention. Over the course of two lunches during the restaurant’s soft opening in February, I experienced a maturity and obstinate passion absent from other more glamorous sushi bars here. Quite simply, I fell in love. I wasn’t expecting much when I paid my first visit to Sushi Mitsuya. Sitting pretty next to Brasserie Gavroche on the nouveau gourmand thoroughfare of Tras Street, Sushi Mitsuya has the cathedral trappings you’ve come to expect from a modern sushiya – a façade that takes pains to look unremarkable; a preponderance of hinoki; a hallowed silence that immediately makes you forget the raucous din of Tanjong Pagar.

Step through the noren in the restaurant’s small receiving room, though, and you’ll instantly know that Mitsuya means serious business. Other than a puzzle-box-like private room for 6, the only seats in the restaurant are at an imposing, 18-person counter (yes, it’s hinoki), with full frontal views of a chefs’ working area. Soft light (which, in Japanese, can be translated as ‘mitsu’) pours in through what I think is a translucent screen or window carved out of the high ceiling.

Bathing in the glow is Mitsuya’s ebullient Harada Ryosuke. A seasoned chef of 13 years whose recent work includes stints in Hong Kong and Tokyo, Harada-san is from the new old school of sushi, the latest generation of Japanese whose cantankerous career paths have been romanticised by the food porn extravaganza, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Like his peregrinating peers, many of whom have also set up in Singapore, the thirty-something year-old apprenticed under a master chef for years before striking out on his own.

The experience is obvious. As expected, Harada-san gets his fish from suppliers in Tsukijishijo – twice a week, with plans to import more frequently once business steps up. It’s also a given that the man’s technique is well seasoned – the surgical application of knife to flesh, the economy of hand movement honed to perfection with practice and patience. Like most of the new wave of Japanese restaurants here – at least those with lofty ambitions – the menu is strictly omakase, with three choices of varying price and scope. The only other decision you’ll have to make is whether to order a bottle of sake from Mitsuya’s carefully crafted collection.

But the similarities to other Japanese restaurants end there. Sushi Mitsuya’s take on edomae is rather atypical, a respectfully iconoclastic approach that one of the restaurant’s business partners impishly calls “Harada-style.”

A meal at Mitsuya waxes and wanes like a Pink Floyd gig, each successive course a new dimension of taste or a riff on the familiar. My starter dish of spinach, tofu, and ankimo looked safe enough, but small surprises abounded – the tofu was made from cheese; the ankimo not steamed, as is the custom, but simmered in a homemade consommé of shoyu and sweet mirin. It was a cheeky prologue from Harada-san – stay on your toes, and expect the unexpected.

One of the biggest surprises was Harada-san’s use of old techniques. Way before airfreight and freezing made super-fresh seafood the name of the game, edomae was about serving weeks-old fish, like vinegared mackerel or tuna marinated in shoyu. Both featured in my meals at Mitsuya – the saba alongside sawara and aji, all similarly seasoned to a briny robustness; and the maguro as part of a contrapuntal sashimi dish with beautiful, fresh kanpachi and more mackerel.

Two more pieces of sushi ­– flounder and grouper – were aged for three weeks, a hoary practice I haven’t seen outside Japan. I’d wanted to try aged fish since Aun’s post on Sushi Sho, and I now echo his enthusiasm. The fish oozed with a gentle, savoury flavor that matured with every successive bite, lingering like truffle cream on the tongue. It was like the shiromi I’d had before were one-dimensional rip-offs.

“Fresh fish is boring,” was Harada-san’s reply when I complimented him on his technique. It’s reassuring that a young chef who’s spent a chunk of his career outside of Japan has so much respect for the traditional, and the balls to set up shop in a city awash with brand-name, Michelin-starred modernists.

But some of Mitsuya’s other dishes were more experimental, and owed less to Harada the traditionalist than Harada the tinkerer. “As an apprentice chef, I had to prepare meals for my master after the restaurant closed,” Harada-san tells me.  “I didn’t want to serve him the same sushi day after day, so I tried many different combinations of fish and ingredients.” This explained, among others, the smidgen of luscious minced shrimp on top of a piece of sea bream sushi; a gentle ablution of sudachi on kamasu, served aburi-style; and, in one of the highlights of my meals, tender slices of yari ika, poached for seconds in hot water before being cooled in an ice bath and then dotted with yuzu pepper paste. Riddled with minute striations from Harada-san’s knife, the squid’s texture was almost as tender as the barracuda, almost as nectarine as the next course – tairagai sashimi served two ways – one sliced horizontally, one sliced vertically. “The taste, the feel is very different,” Harada-san insisted. And so it was.

Special mention must be given to Harada-san’s extensive selection of shellfish, by far my favorite sushi. After having some succulent kobashira sushi, gunkan-style, on my first visit, I asked if Harada-san had more shellfish, and if I could try some on my second visit. I was glad I asked– akagai, aoyagi, aoyagi himo, hokkigai, hamaguri, puissant and crunchy, were served in the most triumphant line-up of clams I’ve had outside of Sushi Yasuda in New York. Harada-san tells me that not many people order shellfish sushi outside of Japan, and consequently, not many restaurants stock shellfish in their kitchens. It’s hard to see why, given that clams and scallops are just as fresh as other more celebrated cuts, just as flavourful, and at Mitsuya, made with the same attention to detail and quality. Instead of brushing his hamaguri with the same sauce used for anago, or other fish, Harada-san prepares a clam-based reduction that he says is a much better match. “Why use an eel sauce for clam sushi? I don’t understand.”

What’s equally baffling is why it’s taken so long for a restaurant like Mitsuya to come to Singapore. Harada-san’s cuisine is neither fusty nor fusion, equal parts experience and education. What he seems to be doing, is exploring different combinations of elemental edomae ingredients, and creating dishes that straddle across the familiar and the novel. It’s activist restaurateuring, with a mission to win over the capricious local palate.

By the time this post is published, Sushi Mitsuya would have had its official opening; but, like any new restaurant, there’s some work to be done. Its founding trio will have to hire more chefs, post-haste. (Harada-san: “This counter is so long! I need at least one more sushi chef. If not I will die.”) The quality of the sushi rice, so critical in the rarefied atmosphere of serious sushiya, will have to be maintained – it was slightly mushy on my first visit, but perfectly granular on my second. Most of all, it will have to convince fickle diners that it’s worth shelling out close to $100 for lunch (on average) and more than $200 for dinner, on a place whose chef isn’t namedropped in the Michelin guide, whose sushi will take some getting used to.

I hope that it manages to do all this, because I completely agree with the restaurant’s direction and philosophy. Just because something – a technique, a dish – is centuries old, doesn’t mean it can’t be surprising. There is a kaleidoscope of flavour well beyond the fresh and the sublime, if you dare to explore. And yes, it’s okay to only serve one piece of ootoro per meal; or better yet, not at all.

“It’s hard, I know. A lot of people here haven’t tried the kind of sushi and fish I’m preparing…” Harada-san admitted during my first meal, after presenting me with a glass boat of raw shirouo dressed with ponzu. The fish, which looked like translucent silverbait, was bracingly bitter; but together with the ponzu, some grated sansho pepper, and a garnish of spring onions, it became a mélange of clean, crisp, and curious.

“…but, I won’t give up.”

Sushi Mitsuya
60 Tras Street, #01-01
Mondays ­– Saturdays: 1130pm – 3pm, 6pm – 11pm
Closed Sunday
www.sushimitsuya.com

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I first met chef Nicolas Joanny during a quietly remarkable dinner at his eponymous restaurant earlier this year. His wasn’t the ‘best’ meal I’ve had in Singapore, but it was certainly one of the most earnest – more than anything, I remember chef Nicolas hunched over a counter at his open kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the evening’s courses before personally bringing them to our table. Here was a chef who wasn’t afraid to be in the thick of the action, a chef whose cuisine I wanted to explore. I was in for a huge disappointment, though, when the man told me that he was about to go on hiatus. I promised him then that I’d be back as soon as he returned to the scene. Just a month after the opening of the new and improved Nicolas Le Restaurant on Teck Lim Road, I’ve managed to keep my word, having had a satisfying multi-course lunch there.

Just a short walk from its former location on Keong Saik Road, Nicolas Le Restaurant occupies the first floor of an old shophouse. I remember feeling completely relaxed during my dinner in the old restaurant, thanks to its homey, rustic interior, and chef Nicolas has happily chosen to retain this ambience for his new home. Le Creuset paraphernalia and quirky antiques adorn the walnut-colored shelves and exposed brick walls, occasionally scumbled with orange and red hues. A section of the ceiling has been taken out to accommodate a glass window, allowing the afternoon sun to wisp softly. Gone is the kitchen counter seating from the previous design, and with it, the chance to chat with the man himself as he works; but in its place, there is an expanded one-meter tall, ten-meter wide counter that partitions the kitchen and dining area and which grants chef Nicolas a commanding view of the tables as he grills and garnishes. Some things don’t change.

What does, however, is the seasonally sensitive menu at the restaurant. Chef Nicolas has chosen to be slightly authoritarian with his cuisine, offering diners a single S$42 (US$35) set for lunch, with a choice of three starters and as many main courses. (A “Lunch Degustation” option is available for S$68 (US$56), though this simply gives you smaller portions of all three starters, and your choice of the same three main courses – guess which one I ordered).

Given the size of chef Nicolas’ intimate restaurant, and his demand for only the best produce, I can understand this decision. Admittedly, it does result in some repetition. Cured ham, for example, seemed to be a recurring motif the afternoon I went; but when the ham in question is acorn-fed Iberico from famed Cinco Jotas, which chef Nicolas told me is the best of its kind and was being served for the first time in Singapore at his restaurant, there really can be no complaints.

The Iberico was first served as an amuse, accompanied by smoky Scamorza and rillette; and it made an encore appearance in my first starter, an otherwise shrimpy symposium of Obsiblue prawn, prawn tortellini, prawn chips and crispy baby prawns in a lobster broth. The Obsiblue prawn was itself a familiar friend – I had a raw version prepared by chef Julien Royer at JAAN, and was delighted with chef Nicolas’ steamed variation, which lost none of the flavour. The lobster broth was robust and addictive, and my first (and slightly embarrassing) reaction was to compare it to the best prawn noodle soups you can find in hawker centers here in Singapore.

Chef Nicolas spent a bulk of his five-month sabbatical in France and Japan, and it’s clear that he brings both European and Asian sensibilities to the kitchen. One of his menu mainstays is a confit New Zealand egg dashed with truffle essence, served once again with Iberico – this time a perfectly seared nugget of loin – and microgreens in a Pedro Ximenez reduction. A modern take on onsen tamago, it was a deconstructed riot of salty, sweet, and, well, truffle-y. It was also a good contrast to the final starter, a “Provencal” raviolo stuffed with pungent blue cheese (unfortunately I didn’t manage to get the exact name), perched atop a bed of piercingly sweet confit organic vine tomato in an ocean of cep mushroom bouillon. As with the Obsiblue prawn starter, the intense bouillon was the scene-stealer for this dish. More than anything, it belied chef Nicolas’ classical training in the kitchens of several Michelin-starred French restaurants.

Stock was to make one final appearance, in the form of an asari clam emulsion pooling around a duo of masago-encrusted Hokkaido scallops and a creamy pile of spelt risotto. While the lobster broth complemented the Obsiblue perfectly, and the cep bouillon was the yin to the yang of blue cheese and tomato, the emulsion felt like a superfluous afterthought to my main course; though all was forgiven the moment I took my first bite of the scallops. Lovingly grilled and then finished in the slow oven, they were crisp on the outside, and had a sous vide-like texture on the inside, reminding me of the enormous pieces of hotate sashimi I had in Sapporo. This was easily the highlight of my meal, and the dish I’m most likely to remember.

But, like my first and last meal at the old Nicolas Le Restaurant, what sticks in my head the most isn’t the food, which, if I’m going to be brutally honest, isn’t as memorable as some of the meals I’ve had at other modern European restaurants. What I like most about the place is its air of conviviality, a word that has been liberally (and in my opinion, mistakenly) used in several recent restaurant reviews. My lunch was prepared with an unfettered brio that I rarely see in even the most upscale places, and at a price point that is a bargain for the creativity on display. I never felt like chef Nicolas was trying to be too pretentious with his techniques, even though he had what my dining companion called a “foam fetish” when it came to liquids.

I can’t precisely explain it, but I like Nicolas. I like that most of the diners in the restaurant are old customers who make it a point to walk to the kitchen and tell the chef how happy they are that he’s back. I like that the man who answers the phone to take my reservation, even though he is the chef de cuisine, is also the man who receives me at the door, walks me to my table, and then rushes to the stove to prepare my lunch. And I like that the food, imperfect it may be to some, can make me feel perfectly happy and content in inexplicable ways.

It may not have the best set lunch in town, but Nicolas Le Restaurant is bursting with personality and promise. The menu changes just about every week or two, and I’m eager to see what else the prodigal chef has to offer.  I’m glad chef Nicolas is back.

Nicolas Le Restaurant
10 Teck Lim Road
Singapore 088386
Tel: + 65 6224 2404
Tuesdays–Fridays 12pm – 2pm, 630pm – 10pm
Saturdays 630pm – 10pm
Closed Sundays and Mondays
www.restaurantnicolas.com

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My family’s been going to Gattopardo for two years now, and I still can’t figure out why the place is never crowded. It surely can’t be the quality – chef Lino Sauro, in my opinion, serves some of the most balls-to-the-wall Italian food in the city, with achingly fresh seafood and a technique that I can only describe as Sicilian voodoo. Some diners might be scared away, I guess, by the restaurant’s hermit-esque location in the Hotel Fort Canning, or by the prices, which are a slight notch above those at other Italian heavyweights such as Pasta Brava. I’d like to persuade these people to make the journey up Fort Canning Park to try Gattopardo’s set lunch, the perfect gateway into the restaurant’s gut-busting cuisine.

Disclaimer: I’m a partisan patron, and have been a fan since my first meal there, during which our party of nine over-ordered and ended up with five pizzas, half a dozen plates of pasta, and at least a gazillion different kinds of antipasti. I’ve since learnt how to eat in moderation, and also how to navigate the large menu, sometimes ignoring it altogether and simply asking Lino to surprise me.

Il mare is the star of the kitchen and the sprawling colonial space. The day’s catch is displayed, sushi bar style, at an L-shaped counter overlooking the entrance to the kitchen, and the earnest service staff always talk up dishes such as the juicy charcoal-grilled calamari, and the capellini with bottarga and sea urchin. The uncompromising level of the seafood, from something as simple as a seasoned raw amberjack to an utterly Arcadian fish stew, continues to impress, and belies the ability of a Sicilian shokunin at the top of his game.

On my most recent visit, I stuck with the script and ordered only seafood-based dishes from the prix fixe menu. Some of my dining companions, though, couldn’t resist the Siren call of the à la carte dishes, and we ended up ordering a host of appetizers to share. The best of these was a platter of plump and briny Gillardeau no. 1’s, each the size of a small poached egg and almost as creamy. I’ve been told that Gillardeau is a cult bivalve brand in France; after popping a few of those juicy jewels, which are assigned numbers in inverse relation to their weights, it was easy to see why.

If the oysters were evidence of “the leopard’s” militant eye for raw produce, the rest of my meal was a masterclass in crustacean craftsmanship. A ‘lukewarm’ seafood salad starter – a meteor shower of scallops, clams, and mussels on a mountain of basil-kissed calamari – featured some of the most perfectly prepared shellfish I have ever had. Satisfyingly moist, tantalizingly fleshy, and easy on the jaw, the mussels and clams were a joy to eat; but to me, the calamari stole the show. The seasoned strips and tentacles were nothing like the overcooked, tyre-like rubbish in lesser restaurants, instead boasting a texture that approximated hamachi sashimi. Its tenderness allowed me to focus not on chewing but on savoring the gorgeous taste of the squid, blended with soothing basil and the zing of the orange zest sprinkled liberally on the plate. If there was an al dente for shellfish, Lino could write the book on it.

Equally impressive was my main course, an inspired spaghetti with chorizo, calamari, and black olives in a light tomato sauce. The calamari was, once again, superlative – I’m convinced Lino channeled his inner Jiro in the meticulous preparation of the squid – and the punchy flavors of the chorizo and olive gave the dish a salty dose of chutzpah. I loved that Lino used all parts of the squid – body, fin, and tentacles – for a trio of textures, and that they were all done to absolute perfection.

According to the menu, the tomato base was muddled with some “squid sauce,” which, given its irrationally addictive taste, must be restaurant parlance for cocaine. I ate unreservedly and thoughtlessly, as one should with rustic, ruddy pastas.

I also had the chance to try some of a friend’s set lunch main course, garoupa acqua pazza. The fillet, poached in a “crazy water” of tomatoes, herbs, onions and (presumably) red wine and served in a terracotta pot, was a bit too firm for my taste, though I was willing to forgive this single transgression after a spoolful of the deeply satisfying Tuscan-style broth. It reminded me of one of Gattopardo’s signature dishes, a seafood stew simmered in a similar terracotta pot.

For dessert, we could choose between a selection of gelato or a flourless chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and salted caramel. No prizes for guessing what everyone ordered. The cake was sinful, albeit predictable, and, at $29 for any two courses (starters, mains, and dessert) and $35 for three, I couldn’t complain.

The lunchtime crowd consisted of hotel guests and the odd businessman, which is to be expected for a restaurant nowhere near the central business district. But Gattopardo is a place that deserves a larger afternoon clientele. The set lunch is affordable, constantly changing, and extensive, with both vegetarian and carnivorous options. It’d be a crying shame, though, if you don’t get Lino to work his marine magic.

Gattopardo
11 Canning Walk
Hotel Fort Canning
Singapore 178881
Tel: +65 63385498
12pm­–230pm, 630pm­–1030pm
Closed Wednesdays
www.gattopardo.com.sg

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I’m embarrassed to admit that my travel experience in Southeast Asia is almost nonexistent. Having lived and holidayed in North and South America, various parts of Europe, and even Japan and Korea, it seems like I simply forgot to explore my own backyard – which, given the beautiful photos and pieces of travel writing I’ve seen from friends who have been to the region, is a huge shame. Which is why I decided to fly to historical Siem Reap in Cambodia over the recent long weekend. My girlfriend K had been anxious to visit the magnificent Khmer temples of the sprawling Angkor archaeological park, and I wanted to find out more about the country’s cuisine. Both of us came back happy campers.

Although not as popular a destination as, say, Bangkok or Bali, Siem Reap still draws millions of tourists a year, most of whom journey to awesome Angkor Wat and its neighboring temples. K and I were mindful of this when we were looking for a hotel – we both don’t like big, kitschy affairs that cater to throngs of tour groups, and which tend to be located along noisy thoroughfares in the city center.

We were thus extremely happy with our choice of accommodation for our five days in Cambodia – Navutu Dreams Resort and Spa, an exquisite new property that only opened in August 2012.

Navutu Dreams isn’t for everyone, largely because of its location. On the outskirts of Siem Reap proper, this one hectar property hides at the end of a sandy road in a bucolic village, surrounded by nothing but rice fields, old huts, and under-construction villas. It’s also ten minutes by tuk-tuk from the city center, a journey that is extremely bumpy given the unpaved side streets you’ll have to negotiate.

But damn if it isn’t a beautiful place to stay. With its whitewashed, oblong pavilions overlooking two swimming pools, a large thatched centerpiece that also serves as the resort’s restaurant, and an abundance of lush greenery, Navutu Dreams almost feels like a beachfront resort. In fact, the owners of the place also manage a property in Fiji, and they seem to have transferred some of that paradisiacal island aesthetic over to the most improbable of locations.

What we liked most about Navutu was its intimacy and exclusivity. The resort has just eighteen rooms for a maximum of 36 guests, each with a private veranda, a stone-paved shower, and a charming mix of Southeast Asian furniture. I especially loved that the salt-water relaxation pool that was literally two steps from our room.

Thanks to its location, Navutu is also mercifully serene – K mentioned that you could almost hear the silence at night, when the only light came from the candles along the footpaths and the stars in the sky.

Being new to the scene, Navutu naturally has a few kinks, most notably in the quality of its spa treatments and massages. Nevertheless, K and I were more than happy with our overall experience at the resort, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for atypical, yet luxurious, accommodation in Siem Reap. Coming back to Navutu after an entire day of temple-gazing, having a delicious meal prepared by the resort’s talented chef Sopheak, and then going for an evening swim under the moonlight, was a rejuvenating experience, precisely what I needed after a busy six months at the office.

I was equally refreshed by the food I sampled in Siem Reap. Sharing borders with Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia’s vast fields grow many of the same crops, including rice, peanut, mango, banana, and more. It isn’t a surprise that Khmer cuisine thus has many similarities to its Thai and Vietnamese counterparts, including an obsession with coconut milk, an alchemic use of spices such as lemongrass and galangal and ginger, and a preference for lightly dressed or stir-fried vegetables. Pithily put, it’s the humbler, less spicy cousin of its two famous neighbours.

The provenance of the food in Siem Reap was a great draw for me. I loved that you could literally see what we were eating. There were countless rice fields wherever we went, dotted with herds of grazing cows; and quite naturally, those two kinds of produce feature very prominently in restaurants. One of the savory breakfast dishes served at the resort, a house-made rice noodle soup with beef, inevitably invited comparisons with a certain famous Vietnamese dish, but also reminded me once again of the beauty of simple food, prepared with fresh ingredients.

During my stay, I was made aware of the local origins of my food: beef and poultry from Sihanoukville to the southwest, sweet oranges from Battambang city, and fish caught from Cambodia’s aquatic heart, the Tonle Sap lake. These local foods will probably never become household names in the international food scene, but that’s beside the point. There’s a rustic, almost nostalgic quality about them, an unabashed simplicity blithely lacking the bureaucracy of terms such as “organic” or “heirloom” or “grass-fed.”

One thing that did stand out in the Khmer cuisine I had was its proliferation of bitter flavors. The use of banana flowers and other leafy vegetables whose English names the restaurant staff were unable to tell me added a balance to the sometimes sickening sweetness of some of the dishes, including amok, a famous local steamed fish curry made with a red unguent of spices and coconut milk. The use of the same kinds of greens again in a simple sweet and sour salad of peanuts, smoked fish, and julienned just-ripe mango, really expanded the taste profile of the dish, and set it apart from its Thai counterpart.

Of course, this is a very generalised account, based on a short weekend stay, of a cuisine as old as the Angkor empire. Nevertheless, I do think that the local food in Cambodia is well worth a try, though I am yet to find a Khmer restaurant here in Singapore. If you make the trip up to Siem Reap, my advice would be to go native and ignore most of the tourist traps along the main thoroughfares, though sometimes you’ll have to eat at them out of necessity. As with exploring the temples around the city, though, stray as much as you can off the beaten path, avoid the sweaty throngs, and you’re in for a grand adventure.

Navutu Dreams Resort and Spa
Angkor High School Road
Siem Reap 0082
Kingdom of Cambodia
Tel: +855 (0) 12950751 or +855 (0) 17581887
www.navutudreams.com

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My girlfriend K has been a wonderful companion on my journey through the restaurant scene here in Singapore as well as in New York, where we lived for close to three years. Pescatarian by choice, she also lived in Paris for a year, and, as a result, never fails to remind me that when it comes to food, the French, quite simply, do it better. It isn’t just about the razor-sharp techniques of the chefs there, she explains, but also about their commitment to fresh and quality produce, which makes something as simple as a summer salad – or even a baguette from a nondescript boulangerie – taste brilliant.

I was suitably excited, then, when I was invited to a tasting at JAAN, whose chef de cuisine Julien Royer has a reputation for serving super-seasonal, produce-driven offerings sourced from his home in France and beyond. After sampling the best of the restaurant’s dishes, and after chatting with chef Julien himself, I must admit that I am completely in agreement with K.

Nestled on the 70^th floor of Swissotel The Stamford in City Hall, JAAN boasts one of the most spectacular views in town, a panorama that spans the entire Marina Bay area and part of Singapore’s skyscraper-laden Central Business District. Until 2010, it was also home to one Andre Chiang, whose has since opened his own restaurant in pursuit of his remarkable Octaphilosophy.

Chef Julien, who came on board less than a year ago, has his own unique approach in the kitchen – Artisanal Cuisine, a philosophy that demands only the freshest, most sustainable produce, and which is lovingly attuned to provenance and seasonality. It’s a simple, yet sensitive, paradigm that flows from chef Julien’s bucolic upbringing in a family of farmers.  “I grew up in a very quiet countryside in Cantal, Auvergne, where everyone grows their own vegetables and rears their own animals, so I believe in authenticity,” he tells me as we drink in the sights of the Marina Bay Sands after a typically busy lunch service at the restaurant. “We source the most seasonal of produce, so the quality’s better, and the produce is at its best. We can then take this authenticity, this terroir, and give it to the customers at our restaurant.”

Chef Julien, who works as much as he can with small-scale, organic-minded producers, believes that “the hardest part of his job is finding the produce itself, and then getting this produce at a consistent level over several weeks or months.” On the strength of his creatively curated six-course tasting at JAAN, I’m happy to report that he’s doing remarkably well on this front.

The bounteous assortment of amuse bouche that opened our meal, for example, featured, among other things, chef Julien’s interpretation of hummus, made from earthy lentils from Saint Flour, Auvergne and chestnut pate; crisp cromesquis stuffed with Cantal cheese and softened with a drop of tarragon puree; and a brewed mushroom “tea,” poured frothily over a sabayon of cep, lovage, and walnuts. Each of those small bites, served on blocks of hewn slate and trays of raw dark wood, exploded with the hearty, hearth-warming flavors of the field and farm, an unapologetic homage to chef Julien’s heritage. The warm mushroom “tea,” in particular, was soothing, almost maternal, in its deep, herbal taste profile; the perfect panacea in the middle of a hectic workweek.

But chef Julien does not limit himself to the harvests of France for his cuisine. His “salad” dish, a concert of vegetables, features the very best of Italy – spaghettini-thin strips of Sicilian trumbetta zucchini, and hearty mounds of burrata “artigiana” that don’t so much melt in your mouth as envelope your tongue in an avalanche of salty, runny cheese. Supported by many-hued wedges of heirloom tomato – some sweeter, some more tangy, all perfectly heterogeneous – the dish is decorated with black olive sugar and what I can only describe as membranous, ikura-like pearls of olive oil. It was one of my favorite courses of the afternoon. I don’t think I’ve had a burrata this good, a zucchini this juicy, anywhere else in Singapore.

Beyond Europe, the restaurant’s signature dish, organic egg from New Zealand smoked with scientific precision at 64 degrees Celsius for 55 minutes, could be said to be an evolution of chef Julien’s cuisine as he looks closer to his new home in Asia for inspiration. The yin-yang balance of the egg’s silky albumen and oozy yolk was enhanced by pouring it over a bowl of kurobuta belly, pickled cep, and crisp toasty buckwheat; and the bed of smoked rosemary under the transparent bowl added a whole new dimension to the dish with the herb’s distinctive perfume.

In between pouring the contents of the three eggs, served at the table in-shell and in an old-school egg carton, for me and my two dining companions, assistant manager Max Bluemel tells us that chef Julien recently returned from a trip to Australia, and was so enamored with the produce there that he’s thinking of incorporating them into his dishes. Chef Julien himself admits that he’s also interested in the spices and fruit of Southeast Asia as he seeks to improve and invent new dishes at JAAN. “I have no geographical limits.”

Chef Julien’s skill and invention was most apparent in one of his newest creations: a tartar of New Caledonian obsiblue prawn and chorizo iberico enshrined in a cannelloni of carpaccio-thin sliced avocado, finished with oscietra caviar, almonds, and a smoky mushroom ketchup.

I loved the colour palette of the dish, its muted shades of black and green taking me to the very cusp of Fall. It was one part of a Vivaldi-esque triptych, juxtaposing nicely with the warm yellow tones of the egg and the triumphant summer spectrum of the zucchini, tomatoes; chef Julien’s intimate attempt to bring the seasons to us here in temperate Singapore.

I also absolutely enjoyed the obsiblue prawn, which had a succulent sweetness similar to amaebi, one of my favorite toppings for sushi.  There were so many good things going on in this dish – the animal/vegetable, land/sea union of the prawn with smoky chorizo, avocado, and caviar; the delightful crunch of the almonds that punctuated buttery mouthfuls of the cannelloni; and the understated cheek of the mushroom ketchup, equal parts tangy and subdued. This, to me, was chef Julien’s philosophy on a plate – the very best of ingredients, married with an artisan’s sensibility and skill.

Chef Julien was visibly proud of this dish when I complimented him on it. “We worked very hard on this dish – not just me, but the entire team at JAAN – so it’s good that it turned out well. We tried twenty-five different kinds of avocados before we found the right one, the one that looked good and tasted good with the obsiblue prawn. It’s a simple dish in terms of flavour, but we tried to find an interesting way to execute it.”

The other courses I had at JAAN – a fluffy confit of arctic char with crayfish and girolles; a boldly gamey hay-roasted breast of pigeon from the famous Bresse province in France; and a childishly fun chocolate degustation called “Choconuts 3.0” – each have their own story too, a story that spans oceans and pastures and climates. But it was the unparalleled quality of simple ingredients – the mushrooms, the burrata, and the beautiful obsiblue prawn – along with an artisan’s delicate touch and technique, which won me over at JAAN. “The cuisine we do here at JAAN is not complicated,” according to chef Julien; but it definitely is contemplatively, caringly constructed.

Ultimately, though, Artisanal Cuisine has an artistic vision – to evoke and emote, to stimulate a sense of pleasure and appreciation for seasonality and produce similar to the affection my girlfriend K has for fresh French food. It’s a simple goal, but one that, to me, has produced something modestly magical. “Our task is cooking for, and serving food to people,” says chef Julien, noting also that his some of his customers have told him that they are now trying his seasonal approach to food at home.  “We try to serve honest food, good produce, and if we can convey an emotion to people, we’ve succeeded in our task. There aren’t a lot of jobs that can do this.”

“If you can deliver an emotion, it’s the most beautiful job in the world, no?”

JAAN
2 Stamford Road
Swissotel The Stamford, level 70
Singapore 178882
Tel: +65 9199 9008
www.jaan.com.sg
Mondays—Saturdays ­12pm—230pm, 7pm—10pm
Closed Sundays and Public Holidays

Many thanks to chef Julien, Natasha from Ate Integrated Communications and Merissa from Swissotel The Stamford for my hosted tasting at JAAN.
The photo of the obsiblue prawn and avocado cannelloni has been used with kind permission from JAAN.

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“There is no such thing as the best (chef)”, writes Ferran Adrià, who knows a thing or two about good chefs, “but it is possible to point out something more important – the chef who is the most influential, the one who establishes the way forward.” During my gluttonous tour of restaurants in Singapore and New York (where I lived for close to four years) I’ve encountered very few chefs who can challenge for such a lofty title; but, when I do find such culinary mavens, I’ve noticed that each one of them seems to have a unique philosophy, a kitchen ethos that both defines them and challenges the boundaries of dining. Recently, I had the unmitigated pleasure of speaking to one such chef ­– Singapore-based Andre Chiang of Restaurant Andre, who, to me, is one of the most inventive, innovative restaurant personalities in the world. 

Having spent close to twenty years working in some of the most celebrated kitchens in France – Pierre Gagnaire, La Maison Troisgros, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, to name a handful — Andre’s first foray into the Singapore restaurant scene was his two-year stint at Jaan, during which he helped the restaurant win the World Gourmet Summit’s Restaurant of the Year award and pushed it into 4th place in The Miele Guide‘s 2010/2011 rankings of Asia’s finest restaurants. But it is chef Andre’s eponymous restaurant that has propelled him, and his cuisine, into uncharted, stellar territory. Since it opened in 2010, Restaurant Andre has received just about every accolade imaginable, including being named by the New York Times as one of ten restaurants in the world worth a plane ride.

At the heart of chef Andre’s cuisine is his Octaphilosophy, a set of eight characteristics that define the man and his approach to cooking. In place of an a la carte menu, the restaurant has only one option, a degustation that pays homage to each of these eight characteristics. A dish that exudes the attribute of “Salt,” for example, is anointed with the brine of the sea, while an item imbued with the “Pure” attribute uses no such seasoning, instead allowing the natural flavors of the ingredients to take centre-stage.

I’ve eaten at both Jaan and Restaurant Andre, and, while I have no complaints about my experience at the former, it is the dinners at the latter that have made me such a huge fan. Think perfectly seared jewels of yellowtail; ostentatious marriages of foie gras and black truffle; and apocryphal root vegetables from the south of France, served on plates hand-fired by the chef himself. Having a meal at the restaurant, built into a modest three-storey shophouse on Bukit Pasoh, is like entering the domain of a meticulous dilettante at the very height of his powers.

“With the Octaphilosophy, I’ve found the best way to express myself,” explains chef Andre. “As chefs, we learn so many different techniques, and travel in search of new ingredients; but in the end, you need to find something that suits you, something that you’re good at and that can deliver your message, tell your story.”

The personal element, it seems, is the key to developing a truly distinctive style. René Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen, considered by many to be the best restaurant in the world, has combined Nordic cuisine with an approach to life and a singular perspective towards food that has become identifiable as the Noma style. Fergus Henderson of St John restaurant in London made nose to tail eating, the philosophy that no single part of the animal should go to waste, fashionable again. Joël Robuchon’s minimalist Japanese approach to French cuisine set his restaurants apart from the heavier fare of his peers.

To me, chef Andre’s story, which I’ve been able to taste on numerous occasions, contains two very intimate narratives.

The first is a commitment to letting the ingredients dictate the technique and cuisine, instead of the other way round. Chef Andre is a firm believer of produce-driven cuisine. “We let our suppliers pick whatever is the freshest, the best on any particular day on season, and then we work with that to create dishes based on the eight characteristics of the Octaphilosophy.”

It’s a jazz-like improvisation that I’ve also seen in another outstanding chef, Jiro Ono of Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo. In David Gelb’s soft, sensual documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, chef Jiro constructs his sushi-only dinner menu based on the recommendations of his suppliers at the Tsukiji fish market. In both cases, the chefs eschew the routine of a conventional menu, and instead use the freshness of their curated produce to startling effect. Not surprisingly, chef Andre sources many of his ingredients from Japan, which would explain the sashimi-like quality of his seafood.

The second narrative is a tale of creative restlessness, a burning desire by chef Andre to, in Ferran Adrià’s words, “establish the way forward” by pushing the boundaries of taste and cuisine.

This obsession with the unexpected and the quixotic is what makes dining at Restaurant Andre such an iconoclastic, yet deliriously tasty, experience. For my various dinners there, I was treated to such surprises as scallops and nasturtiums in cauliflower consommé; oysters served with sea grapes; and a risotto that wasn’t quite what it seemed. Every dish was an imminent enigma, every bite a new vista on a lush landscape.

To engineer these sui generis creations, chef Andre looks to the disciplines favored by Delacroix and Da Vinci for inspiration. “I read about fashion, architecture, art, anything. I hardly read cookbooks – they limit your thought, your creativity, and put you in a box.” Walls cannot be shattered by the tools of a single trade.

But in food, as with all creative media, what’s important is not just the story itself, but also how you tell it; and this is an area that chef Andre believes is critical to his cuisine. “You need emotion to balance the nature and structure of a dish,” he tells me as we sip sparkling water in the ground floor of his exquisitely crafted restaurant. “The story behind the dish; the interaction between guests and the service staff; even the memory that you have of your meal. Emotion makes all the difference. That’s really important to me.”

I can’t help but agree with him. The allure of Restaurant Andre lies not only in the food itself, but in the experience of walking up the wooden stairs to your table, listening to your server as she explains the Octaphilosophy and the evening’s various dishes, and much more. In a presentation chef Andre gave at TEDxTaipei, he expressed a desire to create a restaurant experience similar to that of watching a good movie. In this way, he isn’t so much a chef as he is an itinerant storyteller, unraveling his ideas with edible ink on the plate.

And, like any storyteller, like fellow chefs Redzepi, Robuchon, Adrià, to name a few, chef Andre wants to spread his tale. “I hope the Octaphilosophy and my restaurant will inspire chefs to see that you don’t need to work within a frame. You don’t need to have a menu. You don’t need to use text on a page to impress your guests,” he enthuses. “The idea is to simplify the experience for our guests, so they really enjoy the journey. You come to the restaurant without the pressure of having to order from a menu, and you may discover something new, something that you would never order.”

There really may be no such thing as the best chef; but, judging from his vision, his philosophy, and his story, in my opinion, chef Andre Chiang is on the way to becoming one of the most influential.

RESTAURANT ANDRE
41 Bukit Pasoh Road
Singapore 089855
Tel: +65 6534 8880
www.restaurantandre.com
Tuesdays—Fridays ­12pm—2pm, 7pm—11pm
Saturday­s—Sundays 7pm—11pm
Closed Mondays and Public Holidays

All images are courtesy of Restaurant Andre.

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