Kubo, Robertson Quay

"Filipino inspired" was the description of the food at Kubo (#01-12 The Pier at Robertson, 80 Mohamed Sultan Road, tel : +65 9645 8436). I could see how 'inspired' was the operative adjective and I thought it was pretty accurate. The chef, a Kurt Sombero, had previously headed Meatsmith Little India and has been part of Burnt Ends and Andre. Those experiences show on the menu.

The menu simply described these as Prawns, seaweed, coconut sambal. Didn't see or taste any seaweed and I think maybe the coconut sambal's the orange stuff. I actually don't know. There was a tomalley-esque cream in the middle of those prawns that were awesome. Nicely grilled these were.

This was Crab fat risotto and tobiko. I don't know where the tobiko were and I couldn't taste the crab fat. We ordered this because we remembered the crab fat dish we had with rice at 7107 Flavours years ago. Reminiscence unfortunately did not happen. 

To go by the name, this dish could have been misunderstood, miscommunicated or a failure. But it tasted good. A lot of coconut and pretty strong calamansi flavour in there. Nice one.

We were told by the staff that their smoked beef tongue was melt in your mouth.

That person was right and this was......I wanted to say fucking good. It's fucking good. 

Loved that sweet caramelized tare glazed exterior that held the tongue in form while the insides were almost pâté tender. There's king oyster mushrooms, some spicy nutty sauce I couldn't identify and....more chopped up bits of stuff I couldn't identify. But hell yeah this was one tongue that needed only tongue. No teeth necessary.

Tried their House-aged duck, pineapple jus, timut peppers. Duck's nice but I couldn't tell it was aged. The leg portion was tender but the breast slices were pretty chewy. I also couldn't tell that the jus had pineapple.

Their take on halo-halo with meringue and crispy rice. Didn't taste bad but I didn't think it was special.

I like the Turon better. That's banana in pastry (filo?) with coconut butterscotch. The menu mentioned jackfruit jam but I couldn't tell. It looked like just a few strips of jackfruit.