At the Garden by The Friends

Thanks to the generosity of my Managing Director, my dearie and I had the opportunity to try out last week one of the premier dining places in Singapore: Au Jardin by Les Amis, nestled inside the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

From outside, the restaurant still maintained an old colonial look, carried over from the past by the architecture of the two-storey house it was located in. We were given a table on the second-floor balcony. Our section of balcony had only two tables, which were set in the corners and were meant to seat no more than two diners. The balcony faced out to a foliage of trees, but was encased in glass wall so you get aircon instead of the night air, and no insects. And we did get to watch the underbellies of houselizards making their way about on the glass wall without them coming too close to our food

The service were personal and the wait staff friendly. After ordering our Riesling, we finally settled for the 9-course degustation menu. We constantly had something to keep our mouth busy while waiting for the food and watching the stars (at least my dearie’s watching the stars; she had the better seat offering trees and stars, rather than mine offering trees and pillars and houselizard underbelly).

First the seaweed canape, which was light, crisp, and good – with slight taste of fish/prawn cracker but lighter thinner version more comparable to Indonesian emping. Then we have the customary bread; we chose olive and walnut breads; there was one more offered but we didn’t try it and I can’t remember what it was. The walnut was quite flavourful and pleased her, while I in the end settled for the softer olive bread in the next servings. We were also served the amuse-bouche: fish (cod?) wrapped in fried coating, and an accompanying vial of celery and apple juice / foam. This was not on the menu, so I don’t really remember what fish it was. I don’t find the fish particularly special. The apple and celery concoction (not really concoction since the two remains quite visibly separate in the tube) was nice.

The first course was Tuna belly carpaccio with Oscietre (wondering whether this is French for Ossetra) caviar. It was delicious; tender flavourful slices with the caviar giving the nice salty bite to it.

Next was the Maine Lobster with apple jelly, white balsamic caramel. The apple jelly didn’t do anything for me, but I liked the lobster itself with just enough chewiness in the texture. The caramel was okay, but dearie didn’t quite like it.

The third dish, served on a hot glass plate, was the Dover sole meuniere with summer truffles, pea puree, enoki. The fish was again wonderful, especially so when it was still warm. The enoki was nice but having had enoki rather often I didn’t find anything outstanding for this version. The pea puree was nice with light taste that matches the fish. The truffle, well, I couldn’t really appreciate it. Perhaps I had too high expectation because of all the hype about truffle. It got thumbs up from dearie though, together with the fish. But all in all, the sole carried the entire dish wonderfully.

The steamed aubergine with bottarga and bonito bouillon was unique, but not really my type of food. Very fusion with the Japaneseness of the bonito on the palate, but the bottarga did not leave an impression. I am guessing it was more just to serve as a transition dish from seafood to land creatures.

Up next was grilled quail breast with leg confit, poached pear, lemon mustard vinaigrette. I love confit, so this dish couldn’t go wrong for me. My dearie was not enamoured with the leg, but the grilled breast did find her favour. For me, both were delicious, savoury, and enjoyable pieces of poultry.

Braised Wagyu short-ribs, roasted flank steak, morel mushrooms were the last main course to be served. We initially mistook the Wagyu for the flank, because we never expected Wagyu to be served in sauce (the braising), which to my dearie diminished the natural flavour of the meat, for which it is famed. I did not have refined enough a taste ;-/ and still enjoyed the Wagyu, and the flank steak. Some morsels of the Wagyu fat sat atop the tender tender meat, and those were good; almost melting in my mouth. The flank steak was good too, good enough that initially we mistook it for the Wagyu (again because we didn’t really expect the sauced one to be a Wagyu). The poor morels, despite holding their own well, were pretty much overshadowed by the beefier competitors on the plate.

The rest of the courses were dessert types. First, blood orange sorbet with tangerine foam. It was refreshing, but I couldn’t remember anything else about it. Then Guanaja chocolate with chantily, Muscat jelly. These were served in martini glasses, and didn’t look like chocolate at all. We couldn’t taste the chocolate either – in fact we couldn’t identify what was what. it was like a white cream with brown specks – I’m guessing the cream is chantily and the chocolate were those specks. My dearie passed hers for me to finish – this is the low point of the nice meal so far.

To round off the evening, we were served tea and mignardises: bite-sized trifles. Sweet but not really sweet enough to be called sweets. They were generally OK but nothing to shout about.

All in all it was a pleasant experience, good ambience with generally tasty food. But it also showed up the risk of degustation menu: the more dishes there are, the more likely something not to your taste will show up. Not that it will deter me from ordering degustations in the future