Lollapalooza, Keong Saik Road

This new open-kitchen restaurant (1A Keong Saik Road, tel  : +65 6221 3538) was brought to the world by the people from Lolla. It's kinda obvious while not being so. The vibes from the food felt like a mix between Burnt Ends, Lolla and Wolf sans the counter seats.

Was it important that I mentioned open kitchen? Well, the smell does linger. Anyway, these guys are going the "season" route for ingredients so the menu is expected to change on a daily basis for a small part.

The first to arrive unexpectedly was their wagyu (Gunma Prefecture, A4) ribeye cap. The meat was a marriage of flavours from rare melting fat and the Malliard's reaction. Yes, basically what one would reasonably expect from such meat. We loved it. Of course I would have liked more of it.

The other dish which came up pretty quickly was their lamb shoulder and oyster stew. It's our first time with this combination of surf and turf and there's nothing that didn't work. Truth be told, I was initially wondering how does oysters work out with lamb as well. It's a lamb stew with an injection of brine from the fat oysters. That's it. Not bad as it was still tasty, but it was not mind blowing. 

Here's roasted black figs wrapped in bacon. The figs were stuffed with merguez; which I just found out is an African based spicy sausage of lamb or beef. This one's lamb. There's a tangy element to all the fat and sugars which is the sauce.

To kill the suspense of any who cannot recognize the rune like piece of organic matter, it's veal tongue. Corned veal tongue from them to be precise. My first time possibly, having so much tongue in a seating.

That's a slice of Perl Las which is a blue cheese made from the Caws Cenarth dairy in Carmarthenshire. The name means 'blue pearl'. The texture was creamy and the pungence was robust without being overpowering. What made this platter of grape and cheese different was that the grapes were oven roasted. Meaning that the fruit was hot and that heat accentuated flavour and sugars. Which led into a different flavour game versus the regular cool citrus of grapes with cheese. We liked it.

This was lemon semolina cake with rosemary ice cream. Cake was soaked in some citrus which didn't quite taste like just lemons. But the citrus was vibrant, not overly sour and very very good with the hot crumbly cake and rosemary ice cream. I hope this becomes a regular item.