Food review: Cornerhouse

SINGAPORE - Half a year ago, Chef Jason Tan’s Cornerhouse at the Botanic Gardens was a promising new upstart in the fine dining scene. These days, with the debut of his new eight-course Discovery menu (S$248), Chef Tan has shown that his team has finally settled in comfortably and are offering a truly polished dining experience that is set to send Cornerhouse into the culinary big leagues.

What’s most evident now is the tight harmony that was missing in the restaurant’s early days: The service is more polished, the staff more confident and the elaborate multi-component dishes more balanced and pronounced in flavour. Take the Japanese Toriyama A4 Beef that’s a riff on steak tartare. Chef Tan deftly interweaves the variously crisp, mellow, earthy and briny narratives of raw and slow-boiled beets, marinated beef and Kristal de Chine caviar to form a gentle progression of flavours that unravels discreetly.

At the start of the meal, an amuse-bouche of French Royale oysters is served on a bed of polished pebbles arranged on dry ice and water so it provides the aural impression of a gurgling brook. The briny and very cold oysters are brightened by a sharp plum granite and basil seeds, all of which make for the most pleasurable taste sensation.

Tan’s Interpretation Of My Favourite Vegetable, a four-part dish centred around the Cevennes onion, is better than ever, though he was quick to point out that the recipe hasn’t changed at all since he first introduced the dish. It comprises a soft egg served with caramelised onion puree in a baked onion cup, a paper-thin onion chip, an equally fragile onion tart, and an earthy onion broth infused with earl grey tea. They were distinctly sweeter than we remember, a trait Chef Tan attributed to the onions being at the peak of their season.

Other fun facts we learned that evening: A single serving of this delicate quartet uses up to 3kg of French onions and it takes two days to prepare. “Most people don’t realise it, but it’s the most expensive item on the menu,” Tan added.

Another dish on the menu — that is now a de rigueur addition to every fine dining chef’s repertoire — is, essentially, a plate of the season’s best veggies cooked in myriad ways. Chef Tan’s Botanica is made up of 30 different components that include black garlic pesto, grilled romanesco, grapefruit confit, carrots glazed with buerre blanc, among others. It all comes together to form a pleasing, balanced dish that impresses with its deceptive simplicity, finesse and flavours — an inadvertent reflection of how the dining experience at Cornerhouse has evolved.

Cornerhouse

Where: 1 Cluny Road, Nassim Gate, Singapore Botanic Gardens, EJH Corner House. Tel: 6469 1000. Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday noon to 3pm, 6.30pm to 11pm; Sunday 11.30am to 3pm, 6.30pm to 11pm. Closed on Monday. For more details, visit www.cornerhouse.com.sg.