Business Times - 04 Apr 2009
Ultimate chic
Who says the good life has become a thing of the past? The visually stunning Cassia at Sentosa is a veritable outpost of opulence, while Saint Pierre has reopened after its renovation with a new chef at the helm and an abundance of fresh ideas
Cassia
Capella Singapore
1, The Knolls, Sentosa Island
Tel 6377-8888
A FUNNY thing happened to me on the way to lunch at Cassia, the Chinese restaurant at the newly opened Capella resort in Sentosa - I thought I'd died and gone to recession-free heaven.
Rolls Royces in the driveway, safari-suited doormen eager to carry out any request from opening the door to escorting you on a wild peacock hunt, a vast landscape that captures old world colonial luxury and futuristic splendour in the same frame - herein stands a surreal self-contained universe where no expense is spared and no discount is given.
It's the latest playground of the rich, and already, a steady stream of curious gourmands have made their way to the temple of stylish restaurant design known as Cassia.
Every brick of Capella seems to have been anointed by a world-class designer and Cassia is no different. Indeed, its patron saint of decor is Andre Fu of AFSO in Hong Kong, a wunderkind known for his bold, sensual designs and penchant for rich fabrics and warm, natural woods.
Such extravagant glamour is abundant in this drop-dead stunning restaurant, starting from the purple limestone-lined entrance to its elegant use of grey, lilac, bronze and chocolate brown tones. Black lamp shades in an intricate laser-cut floral design stand out as conversation pieces, as do the dining room's decorative wall panels covered with hand-painted magnolia flowers. Meanwhile, intricately panelled wooden screens form decorative shields against curious eyes peering into semi-private dining rooms.
Cassia is named after the Asian spice more casually known as cinnamon, and is inspired by the ancient spice routes that ran from Southern China to the seas around Singapore. It may seem odd to name a haute Cantonese restaurant after a spice that is rarely used in such cooking, but the menu has a decidedly Asian influence, thanks to a liberal sprinkling of Thai and Vietnamese flavours. Executive Chinese chef Ooi Soon Lok also adds a contemporary twist by incorporating Western-style ingredients like foie gras, wagyu beef and even caviar.
Unfortunately, the clunky mix of Cantonese and tropical Asian influences do not make comfortable bedfellows and this is where the menu stumbles. You have the Narumi crockery, Christofle chopsticks and near Michelin-star pricing (dim sum is affordably priced but expect to pay upwards of $100 a head for a la carte), but the food - haute design on a plate - is surprisingly lacklustre despite its upscale intentions.
The food is best when you stick to classical Cantonese - a pan-fried carrot cake done Hong Kong style is a melt-in-the mouth delight of crispy edged squares of tender carrot cake covered with a generous shower of crunchy garlic, green onions and dried chilli. A doughy but tasty steamed char siew pao makes use of kurobuta pork for its filling, while a double-boiled soup of the day and a thickened four treasures broth make for comfort food. It may not be original to stick to a familiar style of cooking but perfecting the classics with top quality ingredients is a formula that never fails.
However, Cassia prefers to step into unknown territory with dishes like Nonya cincaluk oyster shooters, tom yum gung and lemon grass fried meesuah, while stabs at fusion like the baked Chilean sea bass with bonito and mozzarella cheese, and the wok-seared scallops with minced prawns and a tamarind sauce startle rather than excite the taste buds. (A dessert of poached Chinese pear in a tangerine-scented syrup, on the other hand, is a refreshing treat).
Chef Ooi is no slacker and you can see that the foundation for a very good meal is there at Cassia, but some concept fine-tuning is in order. Give him time to hit his stride and the superlatives will follow. The service is top-grade, although a staff made up of mostly mainland Chinese means potential language problems if your Mandarin is not up to par. On top of this, the servers' uniforms are more Beijing teahouse than Shanghai sleek and don't quite do Cassia's luxe surroundings justice.
For now, Andre Fu's sumptuous interiors are reason enough to visit Cassia, and the food will not give you cause for disappointment - it will just not blow you away in the same vein. But one will still return, if only to embrace this defiant outpost of luxury which revels in its opulence and dares anyone to think that the good life is going out of style.
Saint Pierre The Restaurant
3 Magazine Road
#01-01 Central Mall
Tel 6438-0887
TWO months of renovation, fresh ideas and a new chef at its helm. Those are some pretty big changes in a scary economic climate, but if there's anybody who's not afraid to try, it's Emmanuel Stroobant.
The owner-chef of Saint Pierre, one of Singapore's most established French restaurants. is handing over the kitchen reins to his protege Paul Froggatt, who is fresh off the stoves of San Marco. (The Italian restaurant's premises have been reclaimed by the Fullerton Hotel.) While Stroobant is currently still cooking at Saint Pierre, he intends to let Froggatt have full control over the food in a few months' time and focus his energies on other opportunities.
Fans of the bottled-blond chef's style of cooking won't be disappointed when that happens, though. British-born Froggatt is quite familiar with Saint Pierre, having started off there before Stroobant put him in charge of San Marco, and he draws experience from several Michelin-star restaurants in Europe.
A taste of the restaurant's new menu, which was developed by Froggatt, shows that the restaurant more or less retains its signature experimental style, although the new chef tends to hover on the safe side of avant-garde. And the dishes remain quite French although occasionally you'll find a tube of candele pasta on the side of a dish of pork, or a few grains of risotto in a croquette. 'We used to keep the pastas and risottos off the menu because we wanted to draw a distinction between Saint Pierre and San Marco,' says Stroobant. 'But now that San Marco is closed we can use a little of it here and there.'
Before you begin on your meal - be it a starter of quivering red mullet fillet, flash-grilled and served with paper-thin slices of octopus sashimi ($40) or a main course of melt-in-the-mouth crispy kurobuta pork belly with a fat Hokkaido scallop in onion thyme puree - the new Saint Pierre has a surprise for you courtesy of its spanking new showpiece: a molecular bar.
This, perhaps, is the biggest step the restaurant has taken - after all, it's a brave chef who links himself with the M-word these days, molecular being a term that's earned itself a reputation for representing a cuisine that cannot connect with its audience. But Stroobant doesn't give two spherified hoots about that.
'I've been interested in molecular cooking ever since I visited the Fat Duck years ago,' the chef-owner says, fizzing with excitement over the bar, which replaces the restaurant's wine cellar. 'I wanted to do it, but then I came to Asia and got caught up in experimenting with all these new Asian ingredients and that sort of faded into the background for a bit.'
With the restaurant renovation - which award-winning design firm FBEYE International was responsible for - Stroobant saw the perfect opportunity to revive that dream. Such a bar allows him to get more creative than with food, he says, as people are more accepting of unusual things in their drinks than in their food. So it is that on the bar list you'll find weird and wonderful concoctions such as cocktails that promise to alter your mood.
If you don't stop by the bar for drinks before dinner, you can also sample Stroobant's molecular musings via a series of palate teasers that arrives before the start of your meal; before you are presented the menu, even. They could include a tiny cup of pea soup, all rich and creamy and cold from a blast of nitrogen. Or perhaps a seafood consomme that turns out to be not a broth at all but a briny, savoury sort of agar agar. These little tidbits provide a bit of an adventure for the palate before you settle into the meal proper - which the less adventurous will be happy to note, has not been meddled with. 'I just wanted to give our guests something to try at the start, something fun before the meal,' says Stroobant.
Menu aside, the restaurant now looks cosier and has a bit of a New York City feel with the addition of a bronze curved panel that stretches across one side of the main dining room. There are about the same number of tables, but several new sliding walls means one section can be converted into a private dining room and another, into a semi-private area.
There's really only one thing that the restaurant has done in acknowledgement of tough times: it has lowered the prices of its degustation menu by $10 to $118 and has introduced a new five-course prix-fixe menu at $88. And, for an option that offers even more value for money, there are the lunch sets that start from $28 for two courses.
By Audrey Phoon
aphoon@sph.com.sg
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