I love me a good fungi. Ever since I first wrapped my lips around the stuff when I was a boy (in a Burger King in the old Thomson Plaza, part of a Mushroom Swiss Double meal with fries, onion rings, and a large Coke – but let’s not talk about that), I’ve been hooked on mushrooms of all kinds. So you can imagine my glee at discovering some of the freshest and juiciest mushrooms can be found in Singapore’s wild west, at Kin Yan Agrotech.
Credit must go to chef Bjorn Shen of Artichoke Cafe & Bar for introducing me to the joys of Kin Yan produce. At a tasting event last year, Bjorn served me a tongue-twisting plate of Kin Yan’s sautéed oyster and straw mushrooms with fresh herbs, dusted with sexy Manchego. It was the best mushroom dish I’ve had in my life. I knew I’d either have to kidnap Bjorn and make him my kitchen-slave, or go straight to the lichen’s den for my fix.

Kin Yan is squirrelled away in the heart of Lim Chu Kang’s Neo Tiew estate, far from the buildings and bustle people normally associate with Singapore. You know you’re in the right place if you pass the Sungei Buloh nature reserve and a collection of cemeteries. Up in this neck of the woods, you’re closer to Malaysia than you are to the city center. No surprises that the only places of interest here are farms and military camps.

But the food is well worth the trip. While Kin Yan seems to be more aggressive in the marketing of its greener produce, it’s the earthy stuff that really gets me going. Hiding away like neglected children in a moist, dank hallway past the wheatgrass, aloe vera, and pea sprouts, the mushrooms are the real superstars for me.

There’s just something about fresh, locally sourced mushrooms – the portobellos and chanterelles and porcinis you get in supermarkets and specialty stores are great, but it’s obvious from their muted flavor that they’ve travelled hundreds and thousands of miles to get to your plate. Kin Yan’s babies put them all to shame – exquisitely undamaged gills, a wonderful turgidity, imperfect snarls of pink and yellow and chestnut.

I prepared my haul two ways – simply sautéed a la Bjorn, and fried in an aglo olio with hand-cranked tagliatelle. Both worked, the mushrooms soaking up moisture and flavour like…well, mushrooms. I’m salivating at the thought of making a mushroom soup with the gigantic abalone mushrooms. I can’t ever go back to the imported stuff. (My girlfriend K brought some home to her family; they loved it so much they’re considering making weekly bulk orders.)

Kin Yan takes online orders for its products, which will set you back an average of $3 for 150g; but do yourself a favour and get your ass to the farm. In a country where it takes less than an hour to travel between the furthest points, there’s no excuse not to. Even better, make a languid day of it – talk to the friendly people working the crops, have a bowl of their wheatgrass jelly, and venture out to the rest of the farms in the area. Who says it’s hard to be a locavore?

Kin Yan Agrotech
220 Neo Tiew Crescent
Singapore 718830
Tel: 6794 8368
Mondays – Sundays: 9am – 5pm
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Naomichi Yasuda is the best sushi chef in the universe, and if you disagree with me, I feel sorry for you and your sad, bleak, existence. He is, quite simply put, the master, the sensei, the honey badger of sushi. Sushi Yasuda, the restaurant he co-founded in Manhattan and which he ran until 2010, is my favourite restaurant, period. To paraphrase one Anthony M. Bourdain, if a person doesn’t like Sushi Yasuda, we can’t be friends. When I moved back to Singapore in 2011, there was a nigiri-shaped hole in my heart; but now that Yasuda-san has opened his own restaurant in Tokyo, which I visited on my latest holiday, my life is once again complete.

Sushi Yasuda in NYC is the reason I got into sushi. Heck, it’s probably the reason I got into serious eating. A meal at the counter is an education; the menu, a catalogue of an Alexandrian library of seafood, raw and seared, fresh and cured. Eating sushi of such a staggering range and quality during my time in New York taught me so much about how to appreciate a chef’s philosophy and passion for his work, and got me interested in food writing. Although I never was served by the man himself in New York – the first time I went, I was hosted by chef Sekiguchi Tatsuya; since then, I have not had a single reason to change this arrangement* –  I’m unbelievably happy that I’m now able to come full circle and write about Sushi Bar Yasuda – Yasuda-san’s humble, hardcore joint in the undisputed capital of sushi.

Make no mistake, setting up a new sushi restaurant in Tokyo is a fearsome task, even for a man who is synonymous with excellent Edo-mae in America. Yasuda-san did not receive – nor did he aim for – a single Michelin star in New York, and yet here he is, a seasoned, sinewy mammoth of a man running a spartan 500 square foot 12-seater with his wife in the basement of a building overlooking the Aoyama cemetery, in a city engorged on living legends like Jiro Ono, Takashi Saito, and Keiji Nakazawa. In Sushi Bar Yasuda’s first year, there have been times when literally no one showed up for lunch or dinner. The place has three reviews on Tabelog. Three!

But Yasuda-san doesn’t give a shit. All he wants to do is prepare good sushi the way he’s always wanted to prepare it – without any frills, but with a wallop of cavalier chutzpah. At Sushi Bar Yasuda, you get what he calls “traditional New York sushi,” which means anything goes as long as it tastes great and is perched atop the best rice. There are no appetisers, no cooked dishes, and no desserts – just sushi. “There is some miso soup,” Yasuda-san tells me at the end of the meal. “If you like.”

There is no menu save for a choice between the 3,600, 4,200 or 5,800 yen sushi ‘assortments’ – at less than a third of the prices at the more famous sushi places, this is an insane bargain. But the real fun is when you tell Yasuda-san to hit you until you beg him to stop. My brother and I had upwards of 20 pieces – let’s just say I had more pieces than the number of years I’ve been alive – each one a tear-inducing, hyper-Proustian roller-coaster of memories and sensations. I have seriously never had a better restaurant meal in my life.

Let’s talk about the rice, which many sushi chefs will tell you is the single most important ingredient. Yasuda-san gets his grains from the fields near his hometown in Chiba prefecture (he won’t divulge any more detail than that). It might be the intimacy and familiarity he has with homegrown produce; it might be the ineffable amount of skill he has in its preparation; it might even be my tongue’s own biased muscle memory, thinking back to that first time at the counter in Midtown Manhattan – but the rice is truly subliminal. It tastes like a vinegared cloud, vaporising ever so slowly and tangibly in the mouth until it transmutes into a feeling of overwhelming balance. Washing it down with some cold sake, made from the exact same grains, is probably the closest thing to perfection I will experience. I remember eating the first piece, an overcast sliver of hirame, and thinking, “I am not worthy of this rice.” I still don’t think I’ve completely deciphered it.

And then, of course, there is the fish. I had way too many pieces to individually recount here, but if there was one theme coursing through my dinner at Sushi Bar Yasuda, it was diversity. Yasuda-san goes well beyond the run-of-the-mill smorgasbord here. There is the sheer range I’ve come to expect from sushi restaurants, white-fish-red-fish-silver-fish-shellfish – but there is also a madman’s myriad, an encyclopaedia of varietals that belies an obsessive mind.

Based on my fuzzy memory, we had four kinds of clam (cherrystone, geoduck, ark clam, and surf clam), three kinds of uni (from California, Hokkaido, and Russia) and two kinds of toro (from Ireland and, I think, Spain); sweet amaebi shrimp prepared raw and lightly grilled; and my favourite thing in the whole wide world, an entire squid anatomy – body, fin, and tentacles – as a sushi trilogy. Tell Yasuda-san what you like – flounder, tuna, eel, cephalopod – and he will show you at least three ways of enjoying it.

Horror of horrors, salmon was on the menu that night. But somehow, it didn’t feel wrong – the rice was the best quality; the salmon, not your garden variety kind, but trout and arctic char. I experienced experiments in texture, in flavour, in color, and in provenance. it was almost like a trip to a famous museum, where you can’t hope to fully understand all of the works of art you see, and instead focus on the ones that truly stand out.

The presence of salmon probably accounts somewhat for the distinct lack of love from both the Michelin guide and serious sushiphiles in Tokyo. But again, Yasuda-san doesn’t give a shit. “Back in New York, my customers call me the sushi mensch!” The iconoclasm just drips from his voice; then again, you can tell that he’s put a lifetime’s worth of thought and effort into his sushi, and that he thinks good fish is good fish is good fish, tradition be damned. He introduces several pieces by saying, “I don’t think other chefs are doing this properly. Let me show you my interpretation.” Toro “isn’t a specific part of the fish; it’s a concept” – thus, he considers the tender meat near the head worthy of the name. Flash freezing is totally kosher – “it brings out the flavour!”

More than anything, there is an approachable feel to Sushi Bar Yasuda, a sense that you aren’t so much in a restaurant as you are in an academy of higher learning, with one of the coolest professors around. In spite of his obvious intensity, Yasuda-san takes the time to explain what he’s doing, what he thinks good sushi should be, and even throws in a Bourdain anecdote or two for good measure (“Tony’s a good friend…”). This collegial camaraderie is virtually impossible to find in even the friendliest of sushi restaurants in any city. It was this unpretentious, unassuming atmosphere that made me, a total noob, feel at ease during my virgin haute sushi experience all those years ago; now, it’s made me realise that I still have a lot to learn.

I know it’s hard to ask someone to forego a meal at Sushi Kanesaka, Sushi Saito, or the like in favor of a tiny restaurant with an English-speaking chef who lived in Astoria, Queens, but if you want to truly experience sushi, please give Sushi Bar Yasuda a try. Yasuda-san is the most affable, most dedicated sushi chef I know, and I owe him – and his restaurants – everything.

*A very special shout-out to Tatsu-san, who is now joint master sushi chef at Sushi Yasuda in New York, and who, during my innumerable meals at the restaurant over the past 6 years, gave me the best kind of education – one that can be eaten. どもありがとうございます！

Sushi Bar Yasuda
4-2-6 Minami-Aoyama, B1
Minato-ku, Tokyo
Tuesday – Saturday: 6pm – 1030pm
Closed Sunday and Monday
Tel: +81 03 6447 0232
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Many apologies for the terrible quality of the images, I forgot to bring a decent camera to dinner.

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In The Five Obstructions, one of the strangest documentaries I’ve ever seen, the notorious filmmaker Lars von Trier challenges the equally controversial Jorgen Leth to remake his most famous short film, The Perfect Human, five times, each with a set of constraints of von Trier’s choosing. The stipulations – the film must be reshot in Cuba; it must be made into a cartoon; Leth himself must play the leading role – are patently ridiculous, as are the remakes, which manage to be even more avant garde than the original.

I felt the same naughtiness at Chefs with Altitude (CWA), a collaborative culinary event organized by Swissôtel The Stamford. Like von Trier, CWA courts celebrated artists from other parts of the world, imposes certain rules on them, and challenges them to come up with a version of their work that still espouses their philosophies. It’s chefs who come under the obstructionist’s gaze this time, of course. But in a way, the restrictions are even more flummoxing than the ones von Trier rammed down Leth’s throat. Imagine a chef presented with the following instructions: come to Singapore; don’t bring your brigade; don’t bring any ingredients; oh, and recreate the experience of dining at your restaurant (wherever that may be). A traumatic scenario to deal with for any chef; an absolute death-wish for an avowed locavore like French chef Xavier Beaudiment.

On the outset, bringing a young talent such as chef Xavier to Singapore for Chefs with Altitude is a no-brainer. Apprenticing with some of Europe’s best in the early years of his career, chef Xavier nurtured a passion for produce-driven cuisine and returned home to set up Le Pré in the central French commune of Durtol (about three and a half hours’ drive from Paris, if you’re wondering). Critical success and a Michelin star soon followed. Surely he would have no problems coming here to give Asia a taste of his philosophy?

Well, according to the man himself, there were complications. “In my region, we wake up early in the morning and we go into the mountains to pick plants and vegetables for the restaurant. Eighty percent of my ingredients are local. So when Julien [Royer, chef de cuisine at JAAN, who together with his team provided culinary support to chef Xavier during CWA] asked me to come here I was afraid; I wanted to bring some dried herbs from home, but he told me it would be challenging because of local food regulations. I told him, it’s difficult!” One could almost imagine chef Julien as the von Trier figure in this story, gleefully rubbing his hands in the shadows as his colleague comes to grips with the enormity of the task ahead.

Judging from the degustation I had during CWA, though, chef Xavier managed to overcome his adversity with great aplomb. To call my meal – prepared with ingredients chef Xavier sourced for while in Singapore – good would be missing the point entirely. It’s far more appropriate to say it was different, so unlike anything I’ve ever had before that it took my palate by surprise.

What stood out in all the dishes I had was the nakedness of the ingredients, the raw, immaculate taste of both flesh and foliage. Sometimes, this rawness was literal – a plate of grilled Scottish scallop (“I’m so sorry it’s not from Brittany!” lamented Le Pré’s sommelier, the one import chef Xavier was allowed to make) came showered in flakes of dry, uncooked cep mushroom, whose mottled taste and brittle texture lent variety to the fullness of the rest of the dish. Other times, it was playfully concealed, as with two of my favorite dishes, a bitesize “vegetal” sponge made of bitter, biting watercress, topped with watercress puree and a small shoot; and a bountiful corn espuma bedecked with nodules of ripe corn and a small leaf from the same plant. With all these dishes, it was as if someone had removed a barrier between me and the ingredients, revealing a sensual, previously subtle, taste that had been there all along. It drove me crazy, and I spent a good part of dinner staring quizzically at my plate, wondering why I’d missed all these flavours before.

Part of the mystery, I’m sure, has to do with chef Xavier’s respect for the idiosyncrasies of his ingredients. “These two tables in front of us,” he tells me over coffee, “they are the same; the architectural can be the same. But, if you consider the natural…when you look at nature, two trees, even if they are the same kind of tree, don’t look the same. We have to respect this with the ingredients, on the plate.” This is why he can work his magic with unfamiliar ingredients – spending two days (successfully) figuring out the best ways to cook a particular cauliflower, a particular species of beetroot, is the mark of an aesthete.

If one part of chef Xavier’s approach in the kitchen is in bringing out the best in familiar food, another is in rediscovering “flavours we’ve forgotten,” as he poetically puts it.
Exhibit A: An “XL” sashimi-style langoustine, placed belly-up on the plate and decorated elegiacally with a pastel palette of flowers, leaves, bergamot, and artichoke; to me, the visual surprise and highlight of the meal, with the taste of the langoustine so defiantly marine, it gave my tongue a mild shock.

Exhibit B: the pigeon entree, an unapologetic smorgasbord of succulent pink breast, confit leg (claws and all), liver soaked in a buttery emulsion with figs…and the heart, presented (I think) completely raw on a slice of crispy bread with shavings of foie gras. Like the dearly departed langoustine, this was cadaver as cuisine. Chef Xavier is once again performing the act of unveiling, this time confronting us with the fact that the edible work of art on our plates used to be alive. This is what un-vegetarian food should be, and I loved every single bloody bite.

Alas, this is where chef Xavier runs into one more obstruction – the tolerance his guests have for the unusual. As early as the first night of Chefs with Altitude, guests had told him they simply didn’t have the (ahem) stomach for the vital organs, and he had been compelled to take them off the menu. (One wonders what he thinks of Singaporean food, which can be just as visceral, if not more so).

Chef Xavier laughs as he tells me this particular anecdote. “Yes, Julien told me [serving] the pigeon’s heart was going to be hard. But it’s our job to change perceptions. We’re not just chefs, we have to help guests find other ways [of approaching food]. We have to take risks – sometimes, it’s fantastic, sometimes you think about it and it’s comme ci, comme ça.”

It’s something he has to do back home at Le Pré, too – he initially wanted to serve a hundred percent local ingredients, but had to compromise when guests couldn’t get used to the absence of several fine dining staples. “I have a Michelin star now, yes, but in a way, I feel that maybe not many people understand what I want to do, what I am trying to convey through my creations. Sometimes, we have to consider diners’ preferences; we can’t always do what we want to do.”

But for every heart chef Xavier serves, beet-red and throbbing with sinewy richness, there are five stunning, and no less daring, dishes that he can use to slowly win us over to his cause – a slow-cooked trout that has the color of cotton candy and evaporates just like it in your mouth; a milk-fed veal tartar so airy it registers in your head as a salad; a caramel, peanut, and William pear tart with all the flavour and none of the syrupy, smarmy aftertaste. A flair for the natural buys you a lot of goodwill with your guests.

Perhaps he can take comfort from Jorgen Leth’s journey in The Five Obstructions, and from his own experience here in Singapore. If he can stay true to his French countryside roots in a restaurant 70 stories up in one of the busiest cities in Asia, if he can create a menu that, by his own measure, successfully embodies the spirit of his cuisine using the ingredients from a part of the world he’s completely unfamiliar with, surely he can do anything.

When I asked chef Xavier why, after all his reservations, he decided to agree to participate in CWA, he answered immediately. “Because it’s a good challenge for me. You need something like this to know who you are.” I couldn’t agree more. Many congratulations to chef Xavier on overcoming his limits in Singapore, and I wish him all the best with the beautiful obstructions that lie ahead in Durtol.

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Many thanks to Swissôtel The Stamford and JAAN for this hosted tasting at Chefs With Altitude.

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“Didn’t we go to school together?” is not a question I’m usually asked by chefs. And yet, it seems par for the course in Lolla, a one year-old modern establishment that has become one of the hottest tables in the town, but which refuses to forget its convivial, clandestine origins. I’ve had two vegetarian meals at this sparkling supper-club-turned-restaurant (with my herbivore girlfriend K); the experience was eclectic, serendipitous, and sensational.
Lolla’s rave reviews – and there are many to be found in the local blogosphere – unanimously extol the stunning simplicity of the food and the unerring freshness of the produce. They also unequivocally urge diners to order the sea urchin and squid ink pudding, intimating that no visit is complete without scarfing down what has become the restaurant’s standout dish.

I’d like to offer a different perspective, and to preach a dining philosophy that I think stays faithful to Lolla’s roots – epicurean adultery. Stray liberally from the printed menu at your section of table at the bar, decorated though it may be with quirky rhymes and naughty corsets. Wander from your seat to the weathered blackboard advertising a mercurial array of specials. And allow my outrageously talented schoolmate Ming and his crew to bewitch you with an assortment of the season’s best.

Instead of ordering the assuredly excellent pudding, or the tempting tortilla with smoked eel and its kin, K and I plumped for the more innocuous sounding dishes on the blackboard, which change regularly and were completely different on our second visit for dinner. Some, like the watermelon salad with feta, olives, and balsamic, gave tired classics a new lease on life – the watermelon compressed in an immersion circulator to intensify the taste of summer, the olives served both sliced and crumbled for that added textural punch. Others, like the leek and fried chanterelle dishes, were culinary centrefolds. “Chicken fat for vegetarians” is how K described the mushrooms, succulent, sebaceous, and sweaty with fungal flavor; while the leek, grilled over an open flame and drizzled with a syrupy balsamic reduction, had such a crazy char to it that it tasted like barbecued skin encircling juicy green sheaths.

The gem for us, though, was a Greek-inspired platter of grilled eggplant, sliced to carpaccio consistency, rolled into hollow cigars, and stuffed with ricotta cheese and cranberries. Holy mother of God was this amazing, like the lovechild of an eggplant parmigiana and a ‘berry cannoli.

To be sure, the regular fare at Lolla – all served in small sharing portions, as are the specials – isn’t too shabby either, and even without ordering some of the more popular items, we had no complaints. All of these dishes showcased the creativity and range of Ming’s team, from a deconstructed bruschetta (toasted Maison Kayser baguette with a dip of pureed San Marzano tomatoes) to a breakfast platter of champions (scrambled eggs with burrata and more San Marzano, a vegetarian version of an a la carte item and quite possibly the ooziest and richest dish I have ever put in my mouth). A gratinated fondant of leeks, onions, and eggs tasted like the French countryside, and prompted a second order of toasted baguettes to complete the rustic experience.

At the end of both meals, belts were loosened, blood pressure to the brain was at an all-time low, and the smoked chocolate ice cream was almost not ordered. (Almost.) And, while I’ve never been to one of Lolla’s Secret Suppers, the pop-up meals where it all started, I think I know what it feels like to be a participant. The setting is dark and intimate, strangers turn and ask you about the cuisine, a glass of Northern Italian red mysteriously appears in your hands. A voice that sounds strangely familiar intones the specials of the evenings, and off you go.

Lolla
22 Ann Siang Road
Tel: 6423 1228
Mon – Sat: 12pm – 2pm, 6pm – 1145pm
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Please indulge me for the next few paragraphs as I show off my latest toy. The Porthole, the sexiest infusion vessel known to man, is one of those products that you absolutely have to get for no other reason than its general gorgeousness. I’m an absolute sucker for great design, and this piece of kitchen porn I got off Kickstarter was well worth the one year wait.

The Porthole was initially designed for the Aviary, Grant Achatz’s award-winning cocktail bar in Chicago, as a “time-lapse” infuser- a cocktail vessel that allows you to both see and taste a drink’s evolution. Inspired by a scene from the Polish film The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, it’s supposed to evoke the portholes of a steampunk submarine, and act as a window into the fantastic and the liquid. Designer Martin Kastner was persuaded by admirers to manufacture the Porthole for commercial sale, and I was lucky enough to be introduced by a friend to his Kickstarter campaign.

Words really don’t do this thing justice – it’s a magnificent triumph of design.

Using the Porthole is ridiculously easy. After lying it flat on a surface, the round glass panels on each side can be removed with the help of a hex key (which comes with the thing), allowing you to fill the vessel with the ingredients you’d like to use for infusing. Propping it up, you can then pour the liquid you’d like to infuse through the narrow spout with the help of a funnel. A set of detachable stainless steel filters of different densities lets you control the amount of residue you like in your drink. Beyond that, your artistic and alcoholic ambitions are limited only by the circular shape of the Porthole and your imagination.

When I first used the Porthole to make an impromptu office pick-me-up with grapefruit, lemon, herbs, and a shot of gin, I’ll admit that the taste of the cocktail wasn’t the largest priority – though, as expected, it got more herbal with each pour as the mint, thyme and cloves really seeped into the soda and gin. Most importantly (to a shallow materialist like me), I just absolutely loved how all the ingredients looked.

There’s nothing overly complicated or functionally groundbreaking about the Porthole, but really, that’s besides the point, isn’t it? It’s a gem of a conversation piece and a dramatic addition to any party. I can’t wait to try making other liquids with it – salad dressings, teas, marinades, and more.

The Porthole retails for US$99 at the Crucial Detail online store.

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My family’s just returned from a whirlwind trip to Fukuoka over the long weekend, and boy, did we love it. It was a shamelessly gluttonous getaway spent, among other highlights, slurping our way through seven different bowls of Hakata-style ramen over two hours; stumbling upon a fruit farm in the countryside; and devouring what I am prepared to swear on my immortal soul is the best damned wagyu tenderloin steak on the planet…in a town with a population of less than 130,000. But we also ended up meeting some of the most colourful, amiable characters this side of Asia – from a steak chef who almost cooked for Obama, to a family of grape-growers who happily allowed us to pick our own grapes from the vine, to Satoshi Tokunaga, sushi chef-owner of Uotoku in Fukuoka city and my new favorite restaurant.
We made a reservation at Uotoku on the recommendation of Sushi Mitsuya’s Ryosuke Harada, who knew the chef, Tokunaga-san, from when they were both in Hong Kong (“I like his philosophy and style,” Harada-san told me; endorsements don’t really come any bigger than that). After two great meals there – yes, we liked it so much we went a second time – I’ve become a fan, too. The experience is so different from any sushi restaurant in Tokyo or Singapore, but no less exquisite.

Just two months old as of August 2013, Uotoku is an exciting new venture for Tokunaga-san, a gregarious veteran with over 15 years’ sushi experience, 11 of which were spent in Hong Kong. The restaurant itself is a quiet affair grottoed in a small gourmet enclave along one of the city’s many narrow backstreets, close to the glitzy department stores of the Tenjin district. Inside, it feels invitingly intimate, with its five or so tables and cosy counter seating for four. We were lucky enough to sit at the latter for both our meals, and had the pleasure of chatting with Tokunaga-san as he prepared our food in a claustrophobic open kitchen about one meter long and ten meters wide. He’s a remarkably friendly chef and host, and I felt like I was at a house party – the sake flowed freely, piano jazz piped in from the overhead speakers, and the dishes kept on coming.

We decided to go with Tokunaga-san’s recommendations on both occasions, and were rewarded with two stunning meals featuring the freshest produce paired with gentle, gorgeous technique.

By virtue of its location on the southwesternmost island of Kyushu, eons away from Tokyo, Fukuoka receives a rather different bounty from the infinite variety on display at Tsukiji market. We were presented with some very satisfying local produce  – a plump Kyoto oyster bigger than my palm and succulent to the very last bite; oily akamutsu snapper broiled to sweet, sublime perfection on a small salamander behind the counter; and most unusually, fresh saba sashimi, which had all the robustness of the vinegared version found it many sushi restaurants, but with a completely different texture.

With other dishes, Tokunaga-san appeared to be evoking the spirit of Fergus Henderson, reuniting flesh and guts on the same plate. Both stonefish (okoze) sashimi and braised abalone were served with the respective liver, adding a viscerally yummy dimension to familiar foods. Predictably enough, the steamed legs of a snow crab (zuwaigani) legs were stacked on its own carapace alongside a dollop of slimy roe; but no one at the counter was complaining.

I haven’t even gotten to the sushi. Oh my god, the sushi.

It’s easy to see why Harada-san thought so highly of Uotoku. Tokunaga-san has a wonderfully delicate approach to sushi, teasing out an astounding array of flavour from his fish. He loves playing variations on the same theme – we were given two pieces of sanma, one raw and garnished with ginger, the other seared aburi-style to unlock the oily essence of the fish; and two cuts of chutoro from a bluefin and bigeye tuna, the latter a tad less luxurious but with more bite. There was an obvious absence of otoro, which I think (and hope) is a conscious choice on Tokunaga-san’s part – why give customers something predictable, when there’s lots more fun to be had with other kinds of fish?

Why indeed. My biggest regret is not asking for more pieces of the kohada and iwashi, which could have been the best pieces of sushi I’ve ever had, period. The kohada, usually a humble, vinegared, flaky fish, was elevated to monstrous magnificence; it had the texture of silk and a flavour amplified ten times over. The sardine, too, blew me away with a mouthfeel so far removed from any other piece I’ve had, and a briny, buttery boldness that towered over the other fish on show. I’m going to measure all future pieces I have against Tokunaga-san’s versions.

Equally remarkable was the sushi rice used in Uotoku, which Tokunaga-san gets from a farmer in Yamaguchi prefecture, on the island of Honshu to the north (ish – my geography is terrible). Pillowy and sweet on the inside, smooth and polished on the outside, it complements the fish beautifully. As he lugs a sack of the stuff out of the larder to show us, he tells us that he likes this particular farmer’s crop because “you can tell that he loves what he’s doing. He puts a lot of love into his work.”

The same can be said of the chef himself. Uotoku is the work of a man who’s preternaturally passionate about what he’s doing. He rides a motorbike to the wharf every morning to pick the day’s catch, and vrooms his way straight to the kitchen to start preparations. He tells stories about everything, from famous Tokugawa-era fans of the sake you’re drinking to his baby boy, born just before the opening of his restaurant. And, he makes it a point to serve at least one dish to the diners not seated at the counter, like a master of haute cuisine proudly delivering his works of art.

By the end of the holiday, my parents, my brother, and I all agreed that five days just wasn’t enough, and we’d have to come back in the near future – to sample more Saga beef, to convince my mom to try motsunabe, and most importantly, to eat the sushi and seafood at Uotoku again and again and again. If you’re traveling to Fukuoka, please give the restaurant a try – it’s great, unpretentious, and dare I say, mindblowing.

Uotoku
17-14-1 Imaizumi 1-chome, Chuo-ku
Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture 810-0021
Japan
Tel: +81 092-724-3635

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Last year, to celebrate my first full year in the working world, I got myself a Hario Cold Water Dripper. It reminded me that it’s okay to take it slow once in a while and make time for inconsequential delight, such as cold drip coffee. This year, to mark my second year of employment, I typed emails past midnight, was behind schedule on all my posts for this website, and had to give up Pilates for three whole weeks. It was around then – approximately the first week of July – that I decided I needed an Aeropress, because while the Hario is a most excellent office companion, sometimes, ain’t nobody got time for that. 

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Aeropress is the company that made it. While coffee-making apparatus like my cold water dripper hail from super-dedicated companies such as Hario and Chemex – companies with a dizzying array of products and a perfectionist’s dedication to brewing – the Aeropress is made by…a sports toy manufacturer. In fact, it’s the only product in the company – Aerobie – that has anything to do with coffee. And yet, since it was launched in 2005, the unassuming little thing has become a staple in many a barista’s arsenal; it’s received rave reviews from professionals and amateurs alike; heck, there’s even a world Aeropress championship.

At a little less than US$30 if you order it online, the Aeropress is also a lot cheaper than most of the hardcore makers out there. Which makes sense, when you consider that it’s basically a humongous two-part syringe with a filter instead of a needle. To make coffee with the Aeropress, you place your grinds into the filter tube, steep it with hot water, and then press the plunger through the tube. Air pressure shepherds the coffee through the filter and into the cup below, resulting in coffee that is noticeably less acidic than regular drip coffee – and in a shorter time too. The entire process takes about a minute, perfect if you’re squeezing in a quick caffeine fix between meetings.

The real fun in the Aeropress is its immense versatility. Although Aerobie’s official instructions recommend a specific amount of coffee and water, there is tons of room for experimentation. Like with many coffee makers, modifying the ratio of grounds to water, the temperature of the water, the coarseness of the grind, and other variables, yields markedly different cups – anything from an espresso to a long black. Users have also discovered the “inverted” method, where the coffee is steeped in an upside-down Aeropress to prevent pre-pressure seepage. Flipping the entire set-up over when the coffee is ready to be pressed, I found, also attracts a lot of attention in the office pantry.

Over the past week or so, I’ve made as many cups of coffee with the Aeropress as I possibly could, using both regular and inverted methods (in the interest of experimenting, of course…). Personal customisation aside, I’ve found that I get a very clean cup of coffee, with a crystalline viscosity that feels almost too diluted on first taste before giving way to a very potent, very yummy (technical term) hit of coffee.

For my coffee beans, I used the Oriole single-origin from Aceh, and it did not disappoint. There was a subtle, strangely pleasant sour note in all my cups, coupled with a wonderful, mild sweetness that characterises many Indonesian blends. Thanks to the low acidity, it was honeyed and flavourful, even more so than a cup brewed with the same grounds from a Hario V60 (though that may be a personal choice). I loved it so much I drank three cups in a row.

One year ago, I noted that the Hario Cold Water Dripper isn’t for everyone. This may not be true of the Aeropress. At a relatively affordable price (though it almost doubles if you buy it in-store in Singapore, for some reason), and with such a simple mechanism yielding wildly delicious coffee, it would be a shame not to try it if you’re a caffeinehead. In many ways, it’s the polar opposite of the Hario – hot versus cold, fast versus slow, big beautiful glass versus rather economical plastic and rubber. But, like its Japanese contemporary, the Aeropress is a straightforward, simple coffee-maker that does wonders for the mood and the mind. I highly recommend it.

The Aeropress can be purchased online through Amazon.

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Right across the street from chef Colin’s first baby, Brasserie Gavroche, Cafe Gavroche (or Cafe & Bar Gavroche, as it’s officially christened) tries its best to look like a quaint patch of Paris smack in the middle of Tras Street. True, the tables aren’t packed quite as claustrophobically as they like to do in the Marais, and the mirrors aren’t crusted with over half a century of grime and rust, but there’s a generous mound of bronzed pastries lying seductively at the bar counter, which makes up for everything.

Come for brunch on Sunday, and you’ll find an airy, sunlit interior, packed with languid young things, photogenic families, and the odd loner with his newspaper and coffee drink of choice. I was warned over the phone that it tends to get crowded after 12 noon, but somehow a full house didn’t feel as stifling as it would in other restaurants. Perfect, in other words, for a croque madame.

I’m not sure what defines a great croque madame, but I do know why I like the damned thing so much. It’s an unapologetic mess of a sandwich that takes you on a salacious journey through egg, béchamel, cheese, and ham, all thrown in between and atop layers of crusty, lusty goodness. It’s the daytime equivalent of a decadent supper after a long night out. For me, it hits all the right primal spots. Which is why you’ll have to ask K about the rest of the excellent all-day-breakfast-y menu at Cafe Gavroche – she had the tartine with scrambled egg and sweet onion marmalade, while her sister made the rather enlightened decision to get an egg cocotte with mushrooms and bacon. I sampled some of both, but to be honest, I was too busy demolishing my croque madame. What did it for me was the insane texture of the brioche; an unyieldingly crispy crust belied an unbelievably fluffy dough (the better to soak up the béchamel and egg with). The contrast alone drove me nuts, the just-right saltiness of the ham added a wonderfully sharp bite, and chef Colin’s choice of smooth emmental cheese was a mellow touch. Genius on a plate. I had a croque madame in Paris this year. It was terrible. The cheese had barely melted, the bread was unremarkable – a crime punishable by death in France – and the egg yolk had solidified into a dry, yeasty disappointment en route to my table. The memory of that lunch was so pungent, so malevolent, that I could not properly exorcise it until my brunch last week.

That’s the power of a good sandwich – for a moment, your worries are gone, your fever breaks, and why yes, K’s mom, I’d be happy to help you finish yours.

Cafe and Bar Gavroche
69 Tras Street
Singapore 079005
Tel: +65 6225 4869
Tuesday – Friday: 12 noon to 2pm, 5pm to late
Saturday: 1030am to 230pm, 5pm to late
Sunday: 1030am to 230pm
Closed Mondays
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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
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Mondays—Saturdays ­12pm—230pm, 7pm—10pm
Closed Sundays and Public Holidays

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

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