BOTANICO AND BEES KNEES
The Blossoming Of Dining Destination The Garage
Established in 2017, the Garage is a dual concept dining destination housed in a beautifully conserved 1920s Art Deco black and white bungalow, set within the verdant Singapore Botanic Gardens, Singapore’s only UNESCO Heritage site. Housed within, Bee’s Knees continues to be loved as an easy, relaxing hangout spot while Botanico one level up is the destination of choice for gourmets looking for culinary adventure. Both spaces have continued to mature and now present a new and richer set of offerings.
BOTANICO
Rooted in the inspirations bestowed by its venue and setting, Botanico continues to offer menus that allow every diner to experience a culinary adventure, a story told through taste and scent.
Rooted in the inspirations bestowed by its venue and setting, Bistro-bar Botanico is helmed by Chef Sujatha Asokan, 2019 World Gourmet Summit’s female Rising Chef of the Year. Featuring bistro-style food rooted in European technique, with South East Asian inflections, Chef Sue’s plates now reflect greater nuance and finesse; each dish more complex than it may seem at first glance.
Each layer in these new dishes is painstakingly built, one overlapping the other; her training and technique, teasing out new facets of familiar flavours; a celebration of regional produce and of the South East Asian love of piquant tastes and highly textural food.
The new Wing Bean Salad is a powerful example that melds European techniques and South East Asian flavours. Thin slices of raw wing beans is paired with housemade chickpea tofu, hard-boiled free range egg and bird’s eye chilli; tossed with a smooth lime aioli and a bright punchy dressing of lime juice, lemongrass, fish sauce, belachan and Thai palm sugar; then finished with deep-fried anchovies.
A playful anecdote and explosion of flavours that is a a simple tribute to Chef Sue’s Indian heritage, the Corn Panipuri are puff pillows of Indian-inspired puri pastry filled with spiced baby corn and a rich espuma of curried Japanese corn. An amalgation of Taiwanese sweet curry-dusted corn and the flavours a panipuri could offer, the delicate crunchy shell holds a smooth buttery corn foam gently spiced with French vadouvan.
This unique blend of layering flavours upon memories upon techniques comes through strongly in her “Herbal Chicken” dish, in which the broth of a typical herbal chicken is reduced into an intense richly herbal sauce potently flavouring tender chicken and the ginger-and-garlic-scented couscous.
Dessert is both delicious and thoughtprovoking. The Ondeh Ondeh is a play of flavours and textures so familiar yet not, where coconut foam and kaya ice cream make a fluffy bed for the bouncy pandan glutinous rice cakes.
An ode to both the classic dessert and rice, the BGR subverts expectations with glutinous rice or BGR foam cradling cubes of black glutinous rice cake and scoops of fragrant toasted rice ice cream.
The drinks add new details to the culinary tale, the popular gin-based Turmeric Twist combines turmeric with fresh lime, laksa leaf and mint, the resulting powerful