Alma by Juan Amador

Chef’s homecoming

Brave is the chef who spurns a cushy job overseas to come back and deal with all the problems that plague Singapore restaurants. You know what they are: manpower crunch, rental woes, the high cost of ingredients.

Brave is chef Yew Eng Tong, back on home turf after four years in Hong Kong. The 45-year-old is now the executive chef and general manager of one-Michelin-starred Alma by Juan Amador and has already put his stamp on the menu. The food is modern European, with Asian accents and lots of fruit and vegetables. Tasting menus are priced at $198++ for six courses and $248++ for eight courses. 

The chef is used to cooking under pressure – he has represented Singapore in many culinary competitions, including the Culinary Olympics. He led the Singapore National Culinary Team in that competition in Germany in 2014 and it took the top spot. He has also represented Singapore at the Bocuse d’Or from 2013 to 2017, notably coming in tops in the Asian selection part of the competition in Shanghai in 2012.

At Alma, he is harnessing the skills he has honed to put out food with a lot of finesse.

One of the snacks in the eight-course menu looks rather too large to be an amuse bouche. A larger and shorter version of a kueh pie tee tart shell is filled with chopped cauliflower and cream, raw prawns marinated in white shoyu and topped with a triangle of crisp fish skin. How does anyone eat it elegantly? Surely it will shatter into pieces when bitten into? But no, the tart shell is thin, crisp and resilient. It takes two bites to demolish it, but there is no mess, only deliciousness.

The chef builds in pops of acidity in each course so the diner never feels overwhelmed by richness. Arctic char, a pretty fatty fish, is paired with a dollop of caviar. But the chef wraps the fish in thin slices of pickled radish, which, together with sushi vinegar jelly and passionfruit gel, give plenty of brightness.

A main course of Miyazaki beef is, likewise, not too rich. The meat is coated with leek ash and served with a cocoa jus, both of which have hints of bitterness to offset the extravagant marbling in the wagyu.

The same attention to balance extends to dessert. Poached pear is lightened up with soursop sorbet, salted buttermilk sago, sakura espuma and purple shiso salt. Anyone who has ever had rose apples with sliced chillies and dark soya sauce, or guava with chilli and sugar, will appreciate the sweet, tangy and salty vibe of this dessert.

Alma, like other high end restaurants, takes bread seriously and chef Yew’s offering is a memorable one – multigrain mantou, steamed then fried to order and very fluffy. The rolls are topped with a blend of chia, flax and sesame seeds, with smoked Bordier butter and crab roe espuma served alongside. I will gladly power through carbo coma for these rolls.

Chef Yew, it is good to have you back.

Where: Goodwood Park Hotel, 22 Scotts Road
MRT: Orchard
Tel: 6735-9937
Open: Lunch – noon to 2.30pm, Dinner – 6 to 10.30pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays), closed Sundays and Mondays. For the New Year, the restaurant is open on Dec 31, but is closed on Jan 1.
Info: alma.sg

Ju Xing Home

Comfort food

The weather outside is frightful and all I want at every meal is something – anything – piping hot. Double-boiled soup. Hotpot with all the trimmings. Sauerkraut fish. Buckets of pho and bak kut teh.

Now that I have discovered the Poached Fish in Sichuan Chilli Oil (from $45.80) at the newly opened Ju Xing Home, it is all I want every time it rains. Which, as you well know, is often.

The restaurant, the overseas outpost of a Hong Kong tai pai tong (cooked food stall) that celebrities love, also has Sichuan Fish With Pickled Mustard (from $45.80) but I urge you to pick the Sichuan chilli oil one.

Why? The soup is just way better. It is made with fish and chicken bones and has the sort of oomph that red chillies and green peppercorns cannot obliterate. In contrast, the pickled mustard version tastes wan and plain. The pickled mustard leaves are not tart enough either.

Both versions come with crazy springy slices of fish and I am so glad it is not some version of catfish, which many restaurants use. At Ju Xing Home, it is carp.

I would be happy with my carp and a bottomless bowl of rice, but then I cannot not order the Sweet & Sour Pork (from $16.80). The chunks of pork have just enough fat that they don’t dry out in the fryer.

But the best thing is really the sauce that coats them. It is made with hawthorn berries rather than ketchup and vinegar, giving it a more gentle tartness.

Another dish worth ordering is Tiger Prawns With Crispy Vermicelli & Signature Sauce (from $35.80), one of chef Ng Kong Kiu’s signatures.

Singapore has chao tar beehoon, rice vermicelli seared in a hot wok until crisp. The 47-year-old takes beehoon to keropok level crunchiness. If you drizzle the sauce over the crackers, you get different textures – crisp, slightly soaked and completely sodden. All good.

There is only one dessert on the menu – Almond Cream ($6.80). Thick, creamy, not too sweet and shot through with ribbons of egg white, it is a soothing way to end the meal, especially if your tongue is burning after the fiery fish.

It seems weird that the likes of Taiwanese Mandopop idol Jay Chou and Hong Kong star Alan Tam would go for the kind of comfort food that chef Ng puts out in his restaurant in Hong Kong, and now, in Singapore. I guess celebrities need comforting too.

Where: B2-36A Takashimaya Shopping Centre, 391 Orchard Road
MRT: Orchard
Tel: 9666-1357
Open: 11am to 10pm daily
Info: @juxinghomesg (Instagram)

Sunnychoice

New year reset

Years ago, I stopped making New Year’s resolutions. It is a pointless exercise because I always lose steam around mid-February. Instead, I try to make small, sound decisions every day.

Getting out of bed when the alarm sounds instead of sleeping in. Resisting the urge to binge-watch whatever series I am into. Many of these micro-decisions revolve around food. Fruit instead of ice cream. Making sure I get enough fibre in my diet. Looking after my gut.

After all the feasting over Christmas, it is frankly a relief to go back to normal programming. Lei cha fan is my way of giving myself a reboot. The Thunder Tea Rice ($10.50) at Sunnychoice, a chain of vegetarian cafes, is enduringly good. I have been a fan for years now and the quality has never faltered.

Organic red rice is heaped with cabbage, long beans, mani chye, cashews, firm tofu and crisp mushroom stems that simulate ikan bilis. Delicious already, but the “tea”, made with sesame seeds, mint and other herbs, is what ties everything together.

Sunnychoice is generous with it too. I drench the rice and vegetables with the entire bowl of tea, and savour every spoonful.

With my cold, not-too-sweet Lemongrass drink ($4), I toast to 2024.

Where: 01-158, Block 125 Bukit Merah Lane 1
MRT: Queenstown
Tel: 6272-3138
Open: 11am to 3pm (Mondays), 11am to 9pm (Tuesdays to Sundays)
Info: www.sunnychoice.com.sg

Correction note: An earlier version of this story said that the six-course tasting menu at Alma by Juan Amador is priced at $168++ a person. The restaurant has clarified that the price is $198++ a person.