With my little nugget traveling along, I didn’t really have much choices to begin with. Among the handful of Michelin starred restaurants in Singapore that accept children in their dining rooms, Saint Pierre checks most boxes. Style of cooking, price line and location. And since I knew we would be going to Garden By the Bay afterwards, this suited our plans perfectly.
Born in Liege, Belgium, owner-chef Emmanuel Stroobant earned his stripes working for some of top restaurants in Australia and Kuala Lumpur before founding the Singapore-based Saint Pierre Group in 2000. Over the years, the flagship Saint Pierre Restaurant has gained a strong reputation as a French fine-dining restaurant that combines French traditions with quality ingredients.
We spent some time admiring the view from One Fullerton before turning our attention to the food menu.
Saint Pierre is open for lunch and dinner from Tuesday to Saturday. At lunch, the restaurant offers three multi-course set menu (3-course SGD $68, 4-course SGD $88 and 5-course SGD $108) and there's also the a la carte menu. Everyone has way too much to eat on this trip already so we all went with the 3-course set this afternoon.
First, some canapes before we really get started. There's the small tartlet with wild mushrooms and Hollandaise sauce topped by herb powder, which was accompanied by another one with beetroot tartare and goat cheese. A refreshing start that had all of us looking forward to what's coming ahead.
At the same time we were offered some homemade country bread and it was a good one. It was served with three different flavored butter, salted (yellow), herb (green) and seaweed (black).
Scallop - For our starter, all of us went with the timeless combination of scallops and Granny Smith apple to start off the meal.
The live Hokkaido scallop has been thin-sliced (but not to a point of a carpaccio), arranged side by side with the equally thin apple slices and served on a bed of scallop tartare, diced cucumber and apple. The dish was nicely decorated with wasabi oil and cultured milk on the side.
As we expected, the acidity of the apple cut through the sweetness of the scallop pretty nicely. No surprise there. The real surprise came from the lovely crunch of the diced cucumber and apple. A well designed dish although I personally won't mind a stronger kick from the wasabi oil.
Sea bass - Half of us went with the wild Nagasaki sea bass as main course and it looked like a good choice here. The fillet was seared to perfection to go along with a pair of white asparagus, some ginger and spring onion. The spring onion ravioli with diced scallop filling was a pleasant addition to the dish, marrying well with sea bass and fermented white asparagus sauce.
Pigeon - Jelloman had the Anjou pigeon with green pea, morel and bear's garlic.
This came in two servings, firstly the roasted pigeon breast and then a confit leg which was served on a separate bowl. A really rich and tangy pigeon jus provided a strong finishing touch.
Beef - Since the birthday boy is not responsible for the bill this afternoon, he opted to drop a few extra bucks for a premium Omi beef sirloin.
This was served medium (based on my request despite the chef's recommendation of medium rare) with Italian cipollini onion which has been stuffed with black truffle, Korean chestnut and vegetables.
I thought the sauce made with beef jus and peppercorn was a little more spicy than I would like but the Omi beef itself was beautiful. Very nice marbling with the usual melt-in-the-mouth texture. If not for a couple of chewy tendons, it would've been perfect.
Millefeuille - Dessert was a classic mille feuille sandwiched with kaya that was matched with hay glaze and raspberry sorbet.
An interesting Singaporean twist to end the meal on a high note.
Service was flawless until the very end largely due to some miscommunications. Yours truly was handed a platter of sweet bites with a "Happy Birthday" message written in the middle of the plate. I was all geared up to blow off the candles after posing for photos but my little guy beat me to it before I could even make my birthday wish.
Then the incident. I finished off the small bites one by one expecting to have them all to myself. But when the petite fours for the others never came, we quickly checked with the service team and surprisingly, we were told that we were supposed to share the platter among the six of us. How odd was that? This was particularly odd considering that our neighbours all got to choose 3-4 small mignardises per guest but why not us? Because we're celebrating a birthday here so we get fewer mignardises in exchange for a Happy Birthday message? Come on...
Anyways, they finally got it right.
I was telling Jelloman last week at L'Envol that some of these French fine-dining restaurants need to start getting more adventurous with their main dishes. For whatever reason, even some of the top-tier restaurants in the world make the same mistake of being really creative with their starters but when it comes to the main courses, they go the safer route with tried-and-true combination of ingredients and flavors. Why I suddenly brought this up? Well, because I was happy that Saint Pierre didn't make that mistake. They kept the same contemporary approach with their starter, and followed through with their main course all the way to dessert, which was the reason why the meal was so much fun and exciting at the same time.
Food Rating: 7.5/10
Price: $$$
Address: #02-02B, 1 Fullerton Road, One Fullerton, Singapore
Closest Metro Station: Raffles Place
Tel: +65 6438-0887
Website: www.saintpierre.com.sg
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