PLATES OF ZEN
Fine dining at Zén is all about exquisite dishes, top-notch service and having fun while you eat.
Nine months after Restaurant André served its final course last Valentine’s Day, another fine‑dining restaurant of Michelin pedigree moved into 41 Bukit Pasoh Road. Zén is Swedish chef Björn Frantzén’s first foray into Singapore, in partnership with restaurateur Loh Lik Peng from Unlisted Collection. His eponymous restaurant in Stockholm is Sweden’s only three-michelinstar winner and is part of the Frantzén Group of food and beverage establishments, which also includes Nordiska Kantinen, Botanique and Corner Club in Stockholm, as well as The Flying Elk and Frantzén’s Kitchen in Hong Kong.
A slice of Scandinavian homeyness is transplanted here with pinewood interiors bathed in a warm glow from Mid-century Modern lighting, and wooden Dala horses, ceramics and candleholders dotting the windowsills and shelves. Like guests invited to a close friend’s home, we traverse the house, starting with canapés and champagne in the ground floor’s open kitchen and moving up the stairs, past cubby holes of vegetables pickling in jars, to the dining room, where we tuck into an eight‑course tasting menu, before finally making our way to the third‑floor lounge for apéritifs and petit fours.
With possibly the highest-priced tasting menu in town – starting from $450 per person – expectations are naturally high. The good news is, Scottish Executive Head Chef Tristin Farmer and his team (which includes interns from local culinary schools as part of the restaurant’s commitment to developing local talent) hit it out of the park with a menu that creatively brings out the best in seasonal produce from around the world in Nordic, Japanese and French culinary styles.
Our appetites are whetted with exquisite canapés such as beer-poached crustacean with smetana and wild trout roe, asparagus tartlets with a lovely crunch from Sicilian pistachio and gooseberry, and umami tacos of celeriac, nutmeg and black truffles.
At the dining room, our dishes are plated tableside, on beautiful crockery made by Swedish artisans. A myriad of contrasting flavours
come together in aromatic combinations, such as a smoky Western Australian butter-poached marron grilled over binchotan (Japanese charcoal) and glazed with fermented yuzu kosho paste, and a kinmedai (red fish) with uni and matsutake sitting on a bed of Koshihikari rice that has been cooked in walnut milk. The signatures are heaven in a mouthful: a crudo of Zén’s house-brand caviar (the Oscietra grains are extra large) with red deer tartare and argan oil with amazing nutty notes; and the famous French toast, a stalwart at Frantzén since 2008, with parmesan custard, drizzles of 25-year-old Italian balsamic vinegar, and generous flutters of French truffles shaved tableside. Bringing a bold and adventurous dimension to the whole gastronomic journey is a mixed‑drinks pairing of house‑made clarified fruit and vegetable juices poured from decanters into wine glasses, alongside artisanal sake and biodynamic wines.
By now, our stomachs have hit the zenith, but we soldier on to the third floor, where we flop onto a comfortable settee with fluffy cushions. Our dainty “petite fruits” – grilled pineapples brushed with 20-year-old aged mirin, camomile-glazed Japanese Yumenoka strawberries with chewy pine cones that had been cooked down in syrup, and cherries filled with sakura pâte de fruit, topped with a layer of oolong tea jelly and hibiscus flakes – disappear quickly to sips of organic peppermint tea and a power-packed Swedish punsch served ice-cold. The latter is made from Venezuelan Diplomático dark rum, Indonesian arrack white rum, and a syrup of oolong tea, citrus, dehydrated mango and oxidised apple juice.
There is no stiff white‑gloved service at Zén, which currently serves only dinner for 19 covers, and up to 27 covers later this month when the solarium is ready. Instead of hushed whispers, the dining room is abuzz with chatter from diners and playful banter among the restaurant staff. The music – rock and roll numbers from the likes of Queen and The Rolling Stones, and the occasional Swedish contemporary pop – is curated by chef Frantzén and available on Spotify, says our waiter.
It is almost quarter to one when we finally leave, five hours after we stepped in. We are not the last, and we are loath to go. Work beckons the next day, and sloth cannot be added to gluttony.