Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Brunch
Gourmet capital of the East
After working hard at it for decades, Singapore is now the greatest foodie destination in Asia
For as long as I can remember, Singapore has always wanted to be Asia’s food capital. I was not always convinced but in 2010, I finally conceded the point. But, even then I had doubts. Shouldn’t Tokyo with its many Michelin star restaurants have that distinction? How about Bangkok, where it is difficult to eat badly? And what about Hong Kong, which has great international restaurants and the world's best Chinese food?
But time has been on Singapore’s side. Bangkok is still struggling to recover from the pandemic. Hong Kong has had massive troubles of its own. And language makes Tokyo a bit of a closed shop to non-japanese speakers.
Singapore, on the other hand, has boomed. Some of this has to do with the global financial community’s decision to make the city its Asian base. There are as many Masters of the Universe (in Tom Wolfe’s phrase) in Singapore as there are in London. They know good food and they are prepared to pay for it. And in the era of Crazy Rich Asians, even local Singaporeans are much richer and more sophisticated than they were a decade ago.
The pandemic kept me away from Singapore for two years but when I went back for a quick trip last month, all I did was eat.
On my very first night I got taken to Revolver by its owner and guiding light, Sameer Sain. (Full disclosure: Sameer Sain and I jointly founded Culinary Culture; a not-for-profit organization that honours Indian chefs and rates restaurants.) Revolver is now one of Singapore’s hottest restaurants. It serves a new kind of Indian cuisine, using only different kinds of fire-cooking techniques.
The chef is Saurabh Udinia, who I have admired for years. Saurabh knocked us dead with his hits: the famous Scotch Egg, a stunning Lobster Manchurian, Short Rib in a Nihari Reduction and the restaurant’s signature Kulchettes, small, stuffed kulchas with such toppings as Malabar Crab.
Lunch the next day was at another of Sameer’s places, Hamamoto (named after its chef) which consists of a single counter behind, which the chefs work. You eat Omakase, which means that you get what the chef decides to give you.
Japanese cuisine is complex. By now, most of us know that the sushi rolls we get are not really Japanese and that the food we eat at the fancy modern-japanese places is not very Japanese either but is based on a cuisine more or less created by the Chef Nobu Matsuhisa in America. The problem is that authentic Japanese haute cuisine relies on such delicate flavours and so much subtlety that people who love Nobu or Zuma don’t always like it.
Hamamoto does real Japanese food but he tweaks it slightly here and there, without altering its basic character to make it accessible to people like myself who don’t have the experience required to appreciate traditional Japanese cuisine. The meal was, as I expected, pretty spectacular and it was a joy watching Chef Hamamoto working with his hands and making the food on the other side of the counter.
Dinner was an unexpected treat. Rishi Naleendra is the only Sri Lankan chef to have ever won a Michelin star. I had been to Cheek By Jowl, one of his other restaurants which served Rishi’s take on French bistro cuisine. So, I was startled to discover that his current
SINGAPORE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE ASIA’S FOOD CAPITAL. AND TIME HAS BEEN ON ITS SIDE. BANGKOK IS STILL STRUGGLING TO RECOVER FROM THE PANDEMIC. HONG KONG HAS HAD TROUBLES OF ITS OWN
restaurant serves really elaborate food in very relaxed settings. The food takes in all of Rishi’s influences, from his childhood in Sri Lanka to his adolescence in Australia to his years in Singapore and uses both classic and modern techniques to bring it all together. I was blown away. Rishi deserves a second star which I reckon must be on its way.
The trend towards fire cooking of which Revolver is an example, is usually traced back to a restaurant called Etxebarri in Spain run by the Basque chef Victor Arguinzoniz. Firedoor in Sydney, which I wrote about here in 2016, is in direct descent from Etxebarri. Burnt Ends, the enormously influential Singapore restaurant, takes the same principles but does something of its own with them.
I had never managed to get a table at Burnt Ends but they have recently moved to a larger location so, I was able to get in.
To say the food was outstanding would be an understatement. The chef Dave Pynt extracts so much flavour from every ingredient by clever use of fire that I was astounded by his ingenuity.
Among my favourite dishes were a dish of leeks and a type of steak which is called Onglet by the French. This is a very flavourful cut but it is not usually very tender. I don’t know what Dave Pynt does but his version was meltingly tender: the best onglet in the world. It was in these simple ingredients (leeks, marrow, cheaper cuts of steak, etc.) that the chef’s transformative genius was evident.
As you may know, Gaggan Anand has a super successful pop-up restaurant in Singapore at the Mandala Club. It is so popular that I reckon that Gaggan will probably open a full-time restaurant in Singapore.
All the Gaggan classics were there the night I went, most with new twists: the Yoghurt Explosion, Charcoal, Ghewar etc. And the familiar Gaggan trademarks turned up on the menu: he may have been the first chef to pair uni (sea urchin) with anything sweet; it went with strawberries here. But, there were lots of new dishes too including a fabulous onion rice with a perfect crab curry.
Gaggan was in Bangkok when I went, making this only the second time in recent years when I have eaten his food without the benefit of the spectacular performance he used to put on each night (first at The Lab and then at G’s Spot). It wasn’t the same: Gaggan’s personality has always been at the centre of the experience. But the food, overseen as always by Rydo Anton, was terrific and if Gaggan does stay on in Singapore, I am sure a Lab-type experience will also be added.
My last dinner in Singapore was at one of the world’s great restaurants. Having eaten a meal he cooked in the Maldives a month ago, I had no doubt that Julien Royer was a chef at the top of his game. Even so, I was taken back by how well-run Odette, his three-star restaurant was. Service was not just faultless; it was also warm and friendly. Different servers and managers came to each table (as did Julien himself) throughout the meal and you had the sense that the whole restaurant was welcoming you. There was no sense in which high rollers and VIPS were given special treatment: everyone was treated with the same warmth.
You are never supposed to forget the experience of a meal in a three Michelin star restaurant. Alas, all too often you do. But nobody will forget an evening at Odette.
As for the food, it was everything you would expect from a great chef: Julien’s signature slow-cooked egg, an intense pigeon dish, a brilliant re-imagining of that old standby, the Floating Island, and much more.
Odette really is one of the world’s best restaurants. Like all great restaurants, it transports you to a dreamlike state where everything is perfect, every morsel is delicious and you feel you are soaking in a warm and luxurious scented bubble bath.
The next day, before I took my flight, I had a quick lunch with my old friend Vladimir Kojic, (the Sommelier at Gaggan) at Saurabh Udinia’s counter at Revolver. The food was even better than it had been the first night I went. Saurabh is clearly on to something here.
As is Singapore. Finally: unchallenged gourmet capital of the East!.
The views expressed by the columnist are personal
For more columns by Vir Sanghvi, scan the QR code. Follow Vir on Twitter @virsanghvi