Ever since the Great British Pound took its glorious tumble following the economic rodeo of ’08, travelling the world with HM in your pocket doesn’t go as far as it used to no more, all my assets doing an extended shrinking violet number. Ta-da.

Picture the shock and horror whilst researching prices at top end restaurants in Singapore; Waku Ghin – Tetsuya’s Singaporean operation – a whopper of a SGD$400 (£200) per pop; FiftyThree, the well-regarded Euro-comfortica for a mere SGD$250 (£125), yikes..! Shinji – the Raffles Hotel pre-eminent shrine of haute sushi starts at SGD$220 (£110) and flattens out at SGD$450 (£225). Gosh, fine dining sure is pricy in Singapore.

All rather paradoxical considering this is a country better known for its amazing standard of hawker centres, food courts, char kuey tiaw, chilli crab, pratha, kaya jam, hainanese chicken rice, nasi padang just to name a few commonly accessible, easily affordable, delicious one platers.

Perhaps it is to do with the fascination, mystique and romance of the sycophantic fantasy propagated by high-rolling guides – the Michelin, the Miele and the World Top 50, all of which appear to back the idea that the quality of indulgence be measured not only by how well the food is cooked; but also by the expense spared in investing the restaurant’s cabinet of Laguiole knives and the completeness of their Le Creuset collection.

Obviously I respect these ranking guides, and if we believe these industry benchmarks, then Iggy’s is not only Singapore’s finest, but also the undisputed King of Asia (as described in Miele’s top Asian restaurants list) , bettering the best of HK, Taipei – a proposition that intrigues and puzzles. No disrespect to Iggy’s of course, but I doubt the best of S’pore can outdo the best of HK. Also named the world’s 28th best restaurant (bettering Keller’s The French Laundry and Robuchon’s Parisian workshop).

The owner is one very accomplished super sommelier – whose CV is as glittering as his awards cabinet – Ignatius Chan, who has stinted in many a luxury hotel previous to his eponymous debut in 2004, firstly at The Regent, and in late 2010, relocating to The Hilton.

A mammoth reputation to the tune of SGD$250 (£125), complete with the unfamiliar ‘++’ postscript for the ‘Gastronomic Menu’. I took my parents because all three of us were anxious as to what the allegedly best restaurant in Asia could produce. It didn’t take us long to start feeling that the weight of such high expectation was going to fail us inevitably: No a la carte for dinner service.

For a venue as new as this, I was shocked at how Nineties the décor was. Windowless, drab, dim, soul sapping, featureless and formless, dull greys and browns, just so damn business-like that I doubt even Gordon Gekko would consider this as his office.

Frosted glass auto-sliding doors, which – every time a waiter had to access the kitchen – gave diners a glimpse into the inner workings of the kitchen. Which was bright, colourful, cheerful and filled with files and cookbooks. Like cooking in heaven, and dining in hell no? Come now restaurateurs, in this day and age, elegance can be funky too, no? This type of establishment is just so boring to eat in.

First, SQUID. Sea urchin, dashi, ohba flowers.

Squidgy and fresh, bitter yet citrusy with a burst of the fragrance of freshly picked flowers. A subtle, if rather uneventful, uncooked start to the meal.

Second, KOHADA. Tomato, Clementine, mango, quinoa, beet.

Visually, the dish was beautifully, the tiny tomatoes were the size of a match head, strangely pulling my attention. Kohada – we were told – belonged to the herring family, here it seemed as though it was either poached or pickled, but I couldn’t really tell, because there was so little of it. The fillets measured no more an an inch across. Bursting summery fruity flavours, the clementine in particular was blindingly apparent on the palate. While I thought the subtle interplay of gentle flavours and textures was mildy entertaining, I also thought of how little cooking was involved, and thought how this dish was utterly pretentious and ridiculously tiny. Let’s see now £125 / 8 = £15. That’s expensive.

Third, SOUTHERN BLUE FIN TUNA. Carrot, watermelon, radish, bottarga.

Southern blue fin tuna…damn, it’s good. It’s more than just good, it was amazing. The texture was buttery smooth, I could hardly believe I was having the loin and not the belly. It tasted so alive. Leading me to wonder about the grade of tuna which Atari-ya imports into the UK.

I don’t think I’ve had Southern Blue Fin ever before, because I don’t think I’ve ever come across such a high quality tuna sashimi in London that has left with the same arresting impression.

We must address the issue of conservation, as unfortunately, this fish is critically endangered, because of people like you and I who crave it as we do.

Anyway, the rest of the fruit and vegetable medley was another summer on a plate. It served as a nice foundation to spruce up the sticks of prized tuna. I thought it was a nice exercise in texture, a syrupy, horseradish-like sauce, a chopped and grated salad, like the best tuna sashimi salad I’d ever tried, but therein was the problem, this was no more than a glorified sashimi salad.

I thought the recipe lacked guile and imagination, it was so easy to eat – all two spoonfuls of it – that it simply felt complacent. There was little doubt that this kitchen was very capable at slicing, dicing and plating, but my nose detected nothing and consequently I felt there was too little flavour involved with this kind of dish.

It was neither Japanese, nor European, and it certainly was not Chinese. Throughout the meal, I struggled with Iggy’s inspiration for his recipes, I felt they were erring dangerously close to being Pan-Asian, and truth be told, it did not feel Japanese, it felt – and I don’t mean this in the bad way – like a glorified vegetarian taster menu.

Fourth, QUAIL. Foie gras, faro, peas, mushroom.

So far, it has been a turtle-speed start to the meal. Three courses in, about three quarters of an hour sat there in a half empty dining room that was catering to no more than ten patrons. I’d hardly felt like I ate anything, and I wondered why food took so long to prepare. Aside from expertly sourced seafood, I’d not tasted any evidence that suggested this kitchen deserved to be Asia’s best.

Here we see some semblance of eurocentric Michelin inspiration. Firstly, excellently seared quail, nice cast-iron flavours, sealed juices and such, and kudos on pairing with umami rich ingredients including the mushroom and peas. Sadly though, I thought the dish failed as a whole. The selection of mushrooms were ordinary, barely cooked, so there was little in the flavour department. Again, ridiculously tiny portions, and I was shocked at the size of the foie gras, roughly the size and shape of a dice. I have never eaten such a poor foie gras dish, with so little of it, in a restaurant of such pretense before.

At this point, I wondered if the kitchen had merely added the duck liver to the recipe to make it sound posh, rather than make it an integral part of the recipe, which in this case, it wasn’t. Particularly poor was the pea puree, too thin and tannic , like the skin of the peas on my palate, and it lacked any potency in flavour. It was more like pea soup than a sauce designed to hold the dish together. No fire in this lake. I’ll say that this dish was very easy to eat, but I think it was easy to eat, because it lack so much. An empty recipe.

Fifth, ABALONE. Koshihikari rice, Perigord black truffle.

This was probably the best dish on the night. While it didn’t look like much, all three ingredients were majorly high end. Firstly, the koshihikari was amazingly. Superbly smooth, creamy and yet maintaining the individuality of each and every grain. I couldn’t ascertain as to whether this was US grown or Japanese, but it’s better than the Japanese Koshihikari I’ve cooked at home. Truffle shaved like sea weed, along with a luxurious braised abalone sauce gave way to a immensely powerful flavour profile that attacked the palatte. Pure umami.

Being Chinese – and given that we were in Singapore – I was disappointed we were not served whole abalone. Countable diced abalone is bad form, considering the setting. Come now, how difficult is it to source Taiwanese baby abalones? And even that’s low end. My dad recounted his experience of abalone at Ah Yat seafood , and did not have much nice words to say about this dish. If you’re going to put a banquet ingredient on the menu, at least do it with style. If this was say, a £10 dish at a more egalitarian setting (think Brawn), then I would say fucking wow. But at this level, I’m afraid it’s a monumental fail.

Sixth, WAGYU. Olive tapenade, Yukon gold potato.

Our waiter insisted the wagyu striploin was from Japan (whether it was Kobe or not, I could not confirm) and not Oz, with marbling score of 9 to 9.5. We were given Laguiole knives with metal hilts, which I was certain we didn’t need if indeed it was Japanese Wagyu.

Seared to just about medium. First impressions were that the meat was very oily. Was it that all the gorgeous fat had melted away? What remained, was disappointingly chewy, and strangely, it was devoid of flavour and distinctly lacked beefiness. The potato puree on the side was disgusting. It was too creamy, too buttery, too salty and too oily. Why the need for such an overpowering potato mash? Shouldn’t the natural quality of the beef be allowed to shine rather than be drowned out?

It looked as if the meat and potatoes sat on a strange clear, blubber-like sauce, like congealed oil, leaving me feeling queasy at the end of the meal. As it was the last of the cooked dishes, what appeared to be the most premium ingredient on the menu, also appeared to be the weakest. That potato tasted as bad as it looked. I couldn’t believe it was Wagyu, let alone being Japanese. Simply put, one of the worst beef dishes I have ever eaten.

Seventh, IGGY’S POP. Passion fruit, mandarin vodka, vincotto, gorgonzola.

This was nothing more than a two-staged palate cleanser, firstly with a white chocolate truffle with a liquid vodka centre, and then a kind of macaroon with an iced passionfruit filling. Yawn.

Eighth, WINTER. Chestnut, coconut, coffee, lemon.

To finish, chestnut ice cream that was alright, and shaved coconut, perhaps like the soil and sand stuff they do in molecular gastronolabs, with but a slight coffee infusion to wake us from the snore-fest of a meal.

We paid something ridiculous like $880 (£440) for three and we didn’t even order any wine.

Sobering. One of the poorest pricy meals I’ve ever eaten. I received a major bollocking from my parents for recommending Asia’s best restaurant to them, that’s how poor the meal was.

It was so pretentious, it intimidates with the mob of waiters and constant cutlery swapping and grown-up ambiance that as a diner, you are bullied into thinking that this setting means that any food that comes out from the shrine that is called the kitchen has to be food fit for kings. A woeful reminder of a time of out of control excess, when misplaced values didn’t matter. How this was a meal at the world’s 28th best restaurant is beyond me. Self-indulgence had got the better of the chefs, seemingly living in their own bubble, complacent with reputation, more in love with how their food looked than how it was cooked. I think somewhere along the way, someone had forgotten about creating recipes that married wild and fantastic flavours to create new, previously unheralded flavours. Where were the signature dishes? What were the combo revelations that has had industry insiders cooing in unison? What was I suppose to take away from this ‘gastronomic’ meal? It was neither the tediously illuminating dissecting light that molecular gastronomy shines upon the subject, forcing an education upon the palate; nor was it boundary pushing, rule bending, inventive marriage of world cuisines, which should have been, of the unpigeon-holeable fusion cuisine that Iggy’s strived to create. It was neither here nor there. I think what was most disappointing was that it seemed as though the kitchen had talent, but that this talent appeared to be mis-directed.

Singapore is a country full of highly competitive hawker centres that have to woo customers the old fashioned way: great food and value for money. Specialty one-plate dishes all have their own family recipes and unique twists, like the various versions of chicken rice for example, so I’d imagine that Iggy’s would at least show some of this national pride in cooking. So I was scratching my head as to what was so great about Iggy’s. What was I paying for? A lesson in food styling perhaps?

Maybe at one point in its lifetime, Iggy’s was deserved of its reputation, but if this meal was anything to go by, it was certainly the epilogue to the magnum opus. No apparent pursuit of breaking new ground, just a set of safe, labored and downright boring dishes, which were very much less that the superb provenance of ingredients it was built around. I fell asleep eating the food. The food was so clinical, that it lacked any genuine heart and soul. Gimmick ridden, flashy and too little fire. My apologies if you’re a fan but I just didn’t like it.

The next day, my parents and I cancelled our booking at FiftyThree, we didn’t want to take the risk of being wallet-raped again, and besides, French food probably tastes better in France anyway. We decided to eat the rest of our meals from food courts while shopping in Orchard Road. Much more of a gastronomic discovery, with better ambiance, fuller stomachs and at a fraction of the asking price at Iggy’s.

The Gist of It

Iggy’s
Fusion, SGD$250 + 10% service + 7% GST
The Hilton Hotel
581 Orchard Road
Singapore 238883
Flight: SIA SQ322

Eggy: GT ; Sparkling or Still ; No Expert

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St John is currently the 14th best restaurant in the world (2009). Yes, ‘Worlds’. And I can confirm, they don’t use San Pellegrino. Apparently, the British can indeed cook. As usual, I am late to the party as it seems like the entire food writers guild has eaten here, wrote about it and then some. A darling of the food world, I wanted to know what exactly makes St John so special.

Legend has it…

Opened by Fergus Henderson in 1994; St John restaurant at St John Road has since been awarded a Michelin star and is well-known for utilising offal and neglected cuts, in what he calls the ‘nose to tail’ concept. Mr Henderson no longer cooks at the St John due to health reasons, but his restaurant continues to win the adulation of fans from around the world, including a certain Anthony Bourdain.

Accompanying me for lunch was Stefan Lubomirski de Vaux.

Through the doors

The restaurant is painted white, almost gritty over what appears to be brick walls. It feels like stepping into a refurbished warehouse and I was certain I saw sunshine penetrating a skylight roof. Perhaps it was all the stories which I had read about St John, but the space felt so ethereal, like it was of another time, or even another world. I spotted Stefan at the far end of the bar as he raised his glass toward me. I’m a little late – handshake – up the stairs and into the dining room.

Shrouded in shade, the dining room continued the ethereal theme with pristinely white table cloths and rigid white uniforms for the staff; We sat in robustly solid wooden chairs – a deep brown. Lit with hanging lamps, diffused light, it was a silhouette to the naturally lit bar and entrance, just outside the dining room. The ceilings were high, and the space was large, perhaps sitting one hundred guests or so. The atmosphere was incredibly lively as the market buzz filled my ears and created a kind of sonic landscape, we are now – supposedly – seated in the 14th best restaurant in the world….and to my surprise, not fully booked on a Friday afternoon.

I’ve heard enough, food… FOOD.

For a michelin starred restaurant which has garnered more glowing reviews than Barack Obama, the menu was surprisingly straightforward and even more surprisingly affordable. Starters priced between £4-£8, the most expensive main course was £20 and pudding could be had for six squid, and everything was written in Anglais.

A truly, great British restaurant, could it be?

Mutton Broth £6.50

Our waitress had on ruby red lipstick, with bright blonde hair, she looked every bit a proper rock star and wouldn’t be out of place next to Agnes. So I quizzed her about what to have, and she pretty much just said that everything was delicious.

Oh yummy. My mutton soup starters was intense and full flavoured, like an entire beast distilled and filtered through coffee cones and made into a juice, it was simply divine. Not too strong mutton flavours, just a slight slick of oil and a few dices of carrots, ever so simple, yet ever so good. I would have preferred if they had spruced it up with just a bit more meat (there were hardly any), but that’s just because I love delicate meat in soup.

Roast Bone Marrow & Parsley Salad £6.90

The one thing she did tell us when we sat down, was that they only had two marrows left – Stefan immediately snapped one up! Oh he was lucky to have done so because the marrow was creamy, dreamy and so gamey. Spreading the buttery texture over the bread was incredibly satisfying. Stefan offered me one, but I was left wanting so much more, I regretted not ordering one for myself.

Keep bringing the food, please.

Stage one was a major success, very able starters and I appreciated just the simplicity in the execution, well done.

Braised Veal, Carrots, Aioli £17.60

I longed for meaty chunks in the broth, and I was glad to have landed a bowl of simply braised veal in what looks to be a light broth as well. First of all, it doesn’t look like much, in fact, it looks very much like home cooked food, which is of course, a good thing. And I was so glad that this was exactly that, no poncy molecular gastronocrap on show here, it was delicious, hearty and beautifully tender chunks of meat. Mildly seasoned, the natural flavours were allowed to shine through but the real highlight was the puffy and airy aioli mix on the side. It was superlatively eggy, buttery and well seasoned. It went down smoothly with the juicy meat. I felt like I was eating in someone’s home, as if Fergus had invited me to his home and he had lovingly whipped up some lunch for us. The dish was entirely valid, it wasn’t trying to be anything other than what the menu said it was. Well done again.

We had to wait abit for our mains. Initially Stefan ordered the Rabbit, but they brought over turbot instead, hmm, we sent it back to the kitchen, they came out with Pigeon. They ran out of rabbit apparently.

Pigeon & Courgettes £15.00

Served very red in the middle and so bloody, it juiced all over the plate. Now, I’ve never really had poultry (is pigeon considered poultry?) this red before, but it was gamey, smelly and just amazing. The texture had an interesting chunkiness to it – abit like a Tempur pillow with the kind of slow moulding to your teeth as you sink in. The flavour was liver-like, mushy and soily… not adjectives which sound appealing, but if you’re into neglected meats – this was different, in a good way.

I cannot do without pudding

Apricot crumble with ginger ice cream £6.70

We didn’t order any Madeleines, but I suspect I will be back again to try them. Instead we went with the daily special of apricot crumble. Rich sweetness balancing the sour, the apricot flavours shone through and the almond infused crumble was delightful. Though I was completely taken with the ginger ice cream, it was well rounded and just absolutely stunning.

We also ordered Raspberries, Malted Meringue & Cream (£6.70). Airy, puffy and chewy malts which stuck to the gums. This one was honey sweet, balanced with the fruitiness of the raspberries – did Fergus invent some machine to source clouds from the heavens and convert them into plate-able format? If cloud nine was edible, it would be a St John’s malted meringue.

Where in the world Top 50 indeed.

I had an enjoyable meal at St John. I was so glad that it wasn’t one that featured the world’s next bacon lettuce ice cream canapé or the world’s next nitrogen infused seashell that sang Britney Spears songs; Instead, St John churned out mind numbingly simple food.

Yeah, there were a couple of things on the menu which I’d never heard of like, chitterlings for example, but otherwise, it was completely down to earth. The utter simplicity was its main selling point, and yes I can see why St John is so very special. The food has an innocent charm about it and the restaurant beats with soul and character, somehow I wished this place didn’t come with all the attention that surrounds it, because it feels so much like a hidden gem of a local restaurant. Indeed, that would have only added to the mystique…

Is it deserved of its place among the glitzy glamour of the world top 50? Well, who knows, its there, and so it shall be remain for the time being I suppose. For London at least, its an institution whose kitchen is still churning out magic; let’s hope it stays this way, simple, rustic and completely nose to tail.

The Gist of It

St John Official Site
26 St John Street EC1M 4AY 020 7251 0848
£40pp

Verdict: A loving restaurant, completely devoid of pretension and serving honestly superlative British cuisine, at affordable prices. A true London institution.

What are your thoughts about St John? Did you have a great experience, or abit of a dud?

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