While my recent meals at Iggy’s have not disappointed, they’ve not entirely wowed me either. The good thing is that it’s not gimmicky and food is nicely cooked and tasty. With reliable service, I still see Iggy’s as a good (and safe) place to bring clients but not necessarily a restaurant I would rush back to on my own time. However, with a good set of friends, it’s still a nice evening out.
The one thing that’s nice about Iggy’s is their effort to change up the menu for their regulars. I went to the restaurant recently with some friends who do frequent the place more often than I and we were presented with different dishes. However, they did give us the option of substituting some of their suggestions with their signature items. This flexibility is nice for customers especially since they only serve a degustation / omakase (no a la carte) menu. Also, it gave us the opportunity to swap our beef for lamb as owner Ignatius had mentioned it was especially good that night (which was true).
We started with eight appetisers, generally bite sized, of which one I would probably describe as a potage. This was followed by four mains, mainly seafood based until the last one which for us was either a beef or lamb. We ended with two desserts and chocolates. The good thing is that the food is not gimmicky – much of the meat is grilled and ingredients are fine. Seafood is primarily Japanese – in keeping with the overall Japanese-European cuisine and Chef Masahiro Isono’s origins.
We brought our own wines – I’m not sure our Michele Chiarlo Cerequio Riserva Barolo 2006 was the best wine to go with our starters – we should have had a white given the seafood. We ended with a Brane Cantenac Margaux 2001. Iggy’s has got a decent wine list, but we opted to do a BYO.
If you’re visiting, Iggy’s is located on the 2nd floor of the Hilton Hotel on Orchard Road. Although it’s fine dining, dress code can be classified as smart casual so jackets or ties are not required. For dinner, two degustation menus are provided at SGD235 and SGD275. Lunch menus are either SGD85 or SGD150. Vegetarian options are available. Reservations are recommended. Closed on Sundays.
For contact and more info on Iggy’s: http://www.iggys.com.sg
More from our meal:
We started with a course called Stone. This actually is a nicely and crisply roasted potato and just simply eaten with a mayonnaise based sauce. I could have eaten a lot more of these.
Stone was served alongside Corn – essentially a thin corn fritter accompanied with a cold corn “gazpacho”.
Next came the platter of four starters shown in the feature photo and also at the beginning of this article. The four comprised of Sakura Ebi – the thin wafers made of crushed small shrimp from Japan; Somen – a fish; Hokki – a clam; and Mustard – essentially a minced pork ball. Somen is not pictured below.
The next starter was the Burnt Scallop – a blackened crusted scallop accompanied by Iggy’s version of sambal belacan (a local chili paste). The belacan actually had a decent kick.
The final starter was a small “potage” – I enjoyed this – comprising foie gras, mushrooms, egg and gingko nuts.
We then moved onto the mains with the first titled Crab and is actually crab meat on white asparagus with beetroot and freeze dried burrata.
Next came Kinmedai – golden eye red snapper covered in an onion skin and accompanied with green peas and kinome. That’s sea urchin on top of the onion. I think I would have preferred this without the onion. But, it photographs nicely.
The next item is the pasta dish, which would normally be Iggy’s signature angel hair pasta with sakura ebi. However, I opted to try something different and had a spaghettini with tai (sea bream), shirako (cod sperm/milt), kuo-neghi (leeks) and orange. While it wasn’t bad, the signature pasta is better.
I ended with the lamb, which was excellent.
The two desserts started with melon in Moscato, milk and camomile. I don’t have a picture of this. The taste was underwhelming and generally reminded me of the honeydew sago dessert you find in some cantonese restaurants. The second dessert was better – essentially ice cream in a chocolate layer (that’s the red ball) with strawberries and dressed with a chocolate sauce. It’s a decent dessert for chocolate lovers. But it was the pomegranate sprinkled around that I really liked. A nice tanginess to cut through the sweetness.
The petit fours is basically a box of different chocolates, macaron and fruit jelly.
