Renga-ya, CHIJMES

Renga-Ya's a yakiniku joint (#01-11/12 Chijmes, 30 Victoria Street, tel : +65 6352 1966) that opened up a little over a year ago. These guys import wagyu from Kagoshima and Hokkaido in Japan along with some from Australia. There's pork from also Kagoshima and Iberian pigs from Spain along with lamb from New Zealand too. Basically the what's what of meats which you can put onto charcoal grill.

We had a ika yuzu jelly watercress salad to start. A clean slate of sweet citrus and vegetables to prime our palate for the meats to come. This was enjoyable actually. Possibly because of the yuzu jelly.

The first of the meats was cube cut wagyu of origins of non clear indication. Most of the bovine flesh and parts have their region of origin stated but this one just simply mentioned Japan. I'll go with Kagoshima. It was pretty good though. We fumbled a little due to the shape of the cut.

Pro tip against pro tips : don't believe in that "if you can easily remove the meat from the grill, that'll be the correct time to change sides/flip the meat" thing for this. By the time you can easily remove them from the grill, they'll be burnt. Check once in a while for these.

If you get the proper doneness, you'll be rewarded with a cube of meat clad in a nice grill aroma and a crusty exterior that will burst into an explosion of rendered fat once your teeth clamps down on them.

Their sliced gyutan was from Australian wagyu. Delicious stuff.

We ordered some Australian wagyu intestines just to see what they were like. Those intestines were covered in fat, sizzled and melted furiously before shrinking into little crumpled pieces. At that point, they tasted like deep fried intestines. Honestly, we were not sure if we got grilling these this right.

While we weren't actually surprised, we didn't see the lamb chops coming at us, expertly catching us unaware with how kickass delicious they were. Awesomely tender, properly grilled medium with respectable char and sufficiently flavourful with the requisite gaminess without being excessive. One of the better grilled lamb I've had for some time. 

The lamb came with some sesame buns that's served with some airy maple butter thingy. I could have mowed through more of those.

Seafood is definitely on their menu but it's not exactly what one should be shooting for at Renga-Ya. We had a go with the mentai king prawns which were succulent and crustacean-ily aromatic bolstered by torched mentai mayo.

And to end - a beef nininku chahan for carbs. I wouldn't recommend this. It was a regular garlic fried rice simply topped with some beef which was the worst of meats that were on our table tonight. A shocking departure in the form of chewy blandness compared to the wagyu and lamb earlier. 

There's a dessert called strawberry snow Hokkaido. That'll be ripe strawberries from Hokkaido, frozen and then thinly shaven, served with strawberry ice cream and condensed milk. Refreshing.