BAKER- CHEF TAKES OVER
CBD favourite Maggie Joan’s gets a new head chef.
Maggie Joan’s new head chef has a predilection for incorporating pastry in his dishes.
Tucked away discreetly at the back of Gemmill Lane, “hidden” restaurant Maggie Joan’s is perhaps not so hidden any more. Four years of operations is a few lifetimes in Singapore’s notoriously fickle dining scene, and the restaurant is still going strong with new chef Zachary Elliott Crenn at the helm.
Crenn fits into the restaurant’s pattern of hiring boyish, eager chefs with impeccable pedigrees. The 30-year-old Australian has a baker for a dad, and last cooked as the head chef of the one Michelin-starred Portland Restaurant in London.
Fans of Maggie Joan’s unfussy, flavour-forward modern European cuisine – a precedent set by previous chef Seamus Smith – will be glad to know that the restaurant is continuing in that tradition. It’s not all the same though. Baking’s definitely in Crenn’s blood and he brings a predilection for pastry to many of his dishes.
Snacks include feuille de brix “cigars” coated in candied pistachios and filled with a moreish pate made from the liver of local chooks; and financiers that get a savoury twist with butternut squash, macadamia puree and a flurry of mimolette cheese.
For the vegetarians – and really, non-vegetarians – there’s something from Crenn’s days at Portland: moreish smoked carrot tartare with house-pickled mustard seeds and miso, all enriched with a confit egg yolk.
His magnum opus is a whole Loyang chicken prepared in grand, classical French style. The legs are braised with aromatics, shredded and encased in a flaky, buttery pithivier.
Meanwhile, the chicken breast is done in a style reminiscent of French heavyweight Alain Senderens’
canard apicius – a Roman-inspired dish of duck caramelised with honey and spices. Crenn’s version sees the chicken’s breast brined, aged in hay and then roasted and glazed with honey; its superlatively crisp skin studded with aromatic flecks of floral red peppercorn, juniper and thyme. It’s a modern take on classical French extravagance, and if this any indication of the direction Maggie Joan’s is taking, we’re more than excited.