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| Agua Fresca |
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ingapore's cocktail bar scene has been exponentially growing over the
past couple of years, and one bar that's been gaining traction is
Anti:dote at Fairmont. Head bartender, Tom Hogan has been manning the
bar since it first opened, and he unveiled his brand new cocktail menu this month, designed and hand-drawn by himself. Did you know that he is a fine arts graduate?
For a start, we had the Agua Fresca,
made of Mezcal, parsley, sweet turnip, lime juice, and suze liqueur. A
clean, crisp concoction with a welcome tang to whet our appetites.
Working closely with Hogan is the Spanish head chef, Carlos Montobbio,
who's responsible for the bar bites, designed to complement the new
cocktails on the new menu. Along with the new cocktail menu comes an
array of new dishes as well. This plate of
braised eel coquettes with teriyaki sauce and kimchi mayo may
look unremarkable from the outside, but each ball certainly packed a
punch, especially when dipped in the piquant kimchi mayo. The eel
filling wan't minced, it was chopped into little pieces, so I got a nice
bite of fish with each coquette.
Chef Carlos has been working in Singapore for close to two years now,
and it's the first Asian country he had ever been to before leaving
Spain. He's developed a passion for Asian flavours which he infuses in
his dishes. This is
a serving of
oysters with warm ginger sauce, red curry, and celery cress. Each morsel of oyster still retained its ocean freshness, with the slight heat from the dressing tickling my tastebuds.
This was a pleasant surprise for me, because it isn't what it looks like, Nope, not sushi.
It's actually salted cod brandade topped with tuna sashimi.
Those tiny orange balls on top of the tuna aren't salmon caviar.
They're sesame oil spheres. How clever! If you're worried that fish on
fish would be too overwhelming, this is actually pretty subtle, with the
sesame oil spheres lending it a delightful aroma as they pop in your
mouth. However, the cod was so finely blended and emulsified with the
potato in the brandade that I could barely taste it.
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| Monte- Cachaca, fine sherry, homemade falernum, lime. |
Mixed reviews all around for this cocktail that could be a little herb-heavy for those who are averse to um, herbs.
Ah, the famous
crisp parmesan pizza topped with tomato flakes, fresh pesto olive oil caviar and sweet basil cress ($16)
.
It's been on the menu from the start as well as a hot favourite of
Anti:dote's patrons, and I could see why. While thin and tiny and a
little pricey for its size, it was robust in flavours-- sweet, salty,
and herbaceous. An elegant mini version of the classic margherita pizza.
Replacing the typical bread crust with only parmesan cheese is a genius
move, methinks.
The
paleta iberica Joselito, Italian burrata, cristal bread, with tomato essence shabu-shabu
is again, another delight of a dish. The iberico ham needs no
introduction, everyone knows it's good. What needs highlighting is the
cristal bread, a Spanish style ciabatta with a light and airy centre
reminiscent of a
youtiao. Eat this with chopsticks. Pick up a
slice of ham and burrata along with a piece of bread, and dip it into
the tomato essence emulsion and you have a party in your mouth. The
crispness of the bread combined with the general softness of the other
components of this dish make for a wonderfully textured mouthfeel.
Here's another new dish, the
braised beef Cannelloni with Spanish onion, black truffle, and cepes bechamel.
Visually unappealing, but you can't go wrong with braised beef. Thankfully, it wasn't dry, and the black truffle really came through.
One of the best dishes of the night was definitely this crispy suckling
pig with cherry miso caramel and sherry soaked cherries. A perfectly
crispy crackling with very tender meat.
The much-raved-about
black truffle bao with braised beal cheek, foie gras and caramelised shallots with Madeira
was sadly a little disappointing for me. I could barely detect a hint
of foie gras, and the sea salt sprinkled on top of the buns harshly cut
through and overpowered the flavours of the filling as I felt myself
chewing on grains of salt with each bite.
Another brand new item on the menu, a twist on the
pork adobo, coated with a thin dough crust topped with thin slices of garlic.
This was the winner. I love a dish that has contrast in textures and the
buttery crust with the juicy pork won me over. Unlike the vinegary
Filipino PorkAdobo, this one let the natural flavour of the pork shine through while the vinegar was just there as a supporting character.
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| Dainty little cakes. |
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| Seger Seelbach- Bourbon, hum, peychaud bitters, angostura bitters, Champagne. | |
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| The Tragedy of Tom Dooley |
I know I haven't talked much about the cocktails in this post, but
this is important: there's one thing you need to order before you leave
Anti:dote, and it's
The Tragedy of Tom Dooley. Everyone at the
table unanimously agreed that this was the best drink of the night. Made
of Tequila, aperol, lime, lavender syrup, and egg white, it's inspired
by
Tom Dula, who was
framed for the murder of his girlfriend. Some speculate that it was his
ex-girlfriend who murdered his girlfriend, and then committed suicide,
leaving Dula as the main suspect. A tragic backstory for an utterly
lovely drink. It went down so smoothly. Don't the red dots on top of the egg white foam remind you of blood splatters in a gruesome murder scene?
The new cocktails
and new dishes complimented each other wonderfully, and were every bit
an exciting journey through a fusion of Spanish and Asian flavous, each
dish more intense than the last. It got a bit overwhelming at some point
that a palate cleanser of sorts would have been nice. But the next time I come back, I'd go straight for the pork dishes, and the crisp parmesan pizza for variety if you must.
Anti:dote
80 Bras Basah Road, Level 1, Fairmont, Raffles City, 189560
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