Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Food review: Boca

SINGAPORE — If all you know about Portuguese food is that cheese-laden dish of baked rice, then Boca will surprise and delight in so many ways. Possibly Singapore’s only Portuguese restaurant (no, Nando’s does not count), this casually elegant establishment succinctly showcases all that is good about the nation’s rustic cuisine and its libations.

SINGAPORE — If all you know about Portuguese food is that cheese-laden dish of baked rice, then Boca will surprise and delight in so many ways. Possibly Singapore’s only Portuguese restaurant (no, Nando’s does not count), this casually elegant establishment succinctly showcases all that is good about the nation’s rustic cuisine and its libations.

Chefs Luca Bordino and Francisco Vaz have distilled the menu to a one-page list of starters, seafood and meat dishes and desserts. Naturally, bacalhau (Portugal’s ubiquitous dried and salted cod) is rife across the compact menu, in the form of crisp cod fritters (S$15) with a creamy, potato-rich interior as well as other offerings such as Luca’s Codfish (S$42), featuring semi-cured cod loin with a smoked paprika sausage crust and smashed potatoes.

We saved our highest praises for the Bacalhau a Braz (S$28), an irresistible tangle of thinly shredded potatoes that are first deep-fried and then mixed with the flaked cod, fried onions, green olives and egg to form a hash-like cake. Think intensely caramelised flavours of fried potatoes and onions, amped up by the savoury, briny flavours of cod and olives — it was nearly impossible to put our forks down.

There are other homespun classics like chourico sausages — made with pork, wine, garlic, salt and paprika — flambeed at the table over a ceramic brazier (S$25), and a comforting shrimp or bacalhau porridge (S$28). The latter is really a rich bread stew made by steeping two-day-old bread in the cod or shrimp stock before it is all braised to yield a velvety, flavour-packed porridge.

Speaking of bread, there is a S$7 bread basket loaded with fresh bakes such as squid ink, sweet potato and strawberry bread. Each boasts a thin, crackling crust with moist, loose crumbs that had us munching away. If the restaurant chose to turn itself into a bakery selling these breads and its peerless Portuguese egg tarts (S$4.50 each, order them as soon as you sit down because the restaurant only makes 20 a day), it would probably be an instant success.

Boca is also great as a bar as it is a restaurant. Its first floor, painted a comely shade of powder blue, features a bar by the open kitchen where petiscos or small plates of Portuguese snacks are served alongside a more than 50-deep list of wines and spirits from the motherland. A full-scale dining room is spread over the second floor while the third level houses a wine cellar. ANNETTE TAN

Boca

Where: 6 Bukit Pasoh Road. Telephone: 6221 0132. Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 7pm to midnight, closed on Sunday.

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.