Located in a colonial black & white house in Singapore’s Botanical Gardens, Corner House is one of the country’s inaugural one-star Michelin restaurants. Does the food measure up to expectations? Probably – there were certainly highlights – I like Chef Jason Tan’s seafood dishes and dessert was better than some similar restaurants. The cuisine is probably best described as modern French but some dishes had an Asian accent and the dessert notably had a local twist with the use of kaya.
Diners sit upstairs and the choice tables are those by the window in the “whispering corner” or in the enclosed verandah section overlooking the trees. Service was okay – attentive but not without some minor hiccups. The wine list has some nice choices and was more reasonable in pricing compared to some other fine dining restaurants. We had a St. Aubin to accompany our meal.
Corner House is closed on Mondays. Lunch as well as Dinner is served on other days with Sunday serving brunch instead of lunch. Reservations are recommended – website: http://www.cornerhouse.com.sg/index.html
Because it was our first visit to the restaurant, we opted to go with the full degustation menu – The Discovery Experience – which includes most of the house specialties. Chef Jason Tan was previously with Les Amis as well as St Julien and brings to the menu some of his favourite dishes. There are shorter courses available as well. The Discovery Degustation contains eight courses as well as a four-part amuse bouche.
Our first main dish was the king crab with caviar and cucumber. On the menu it was meant to be green asparagus but we were in between seasons so arguably it may have been a bit more interesting texture wise with asparagus. There seems to be a part two to this item, but in my brain fade, I couldn’t recall or find any notes on this. This was followed by “Interpretation of my favourite vegetables”, which for Chef Jason Tan is the onion. I thought this was a unique idea, with the onion cooked in four different ways, and enjoyed the onion tart in particular. The baked onion was also very good, but then anything with a runny egg is good. What’s not pictured is the Onion tea which was an Earl-Grey infused “emulsion of onion confit and cream”.
After the onion is another specialty, the “botanica” pictured earlier. While I did enjoy this, I’ve recently had or heard of similar vegetable presentations in other restaurants. Regardless, it was very prettily presented. The vegetables were followed by what was one of my favourites for the evening – the Maine lobster that was dressed with riso, squid, nicely charred leek, buckwheat and bottarga. The lobster was cooked just right. I also enjoyed the cod with its scales crisped up. I’ve had a similar dish at Quintessence in Japan as well as Odette (in Singapore) where I believe they both used a kinmedai (golden eye snapper). Nonetheless, the cod was also nicely done with romanesco and cuttlefish. The sauce was crustacean based.
The last main dish was a Toriyama beef (A4 grade from Japan). I thought this was fine but not outstanding. The thing with Japanese beef or any fine beef is that so much rests on the quality of the meat itself. And unfortunately, I’ve had tastier Japanese melt-in-your-mouth beef. So my view doesn’t reflect the chef’s presentation but rather the quality of the meat itself on a relative basis.
I’m not a dessert person but I was very curious about how Chef Jason Tan would interpret what he calls his favourite childhood memory – pandan kaya bread. I’d have to say I enjoyed this very much. I also liked the Pink Guava dessert as well – the sourish granite went very nicely with the Saint Maure goat cheese in my opinion. So both desserts were winners in my book.
