SINGAPORE — Back in the day, Chef Emmanuel Stroobant and his Saint Pierre restaurant at Central Mall were synonymous with fine dining in Singapore. In 2013, however, he packed up the starched linen and straight-backed service, and re-opened Saint Pierre as a casual-but-still-upscale restaurant in Quayside Isle. Earlier this month, Stroobant packed all that in again to open the restaurant’s latest incarnation at One Fullerton.

The recent years have brought many changes for the Belgium-born chef: He is now a father and a vegetarian, and has embraced a healthy and spiritual lifestyle — all of which shows in his food.

The new Saint Pierre, which is a return to formal fine dining, may hold all the accoutrements of its genre — a formal dining room, trolley service for aperitifs and dessert, and service staff that would impress even the most fastidious of Michelin inspectors. But the food is distinctly lighter, with far more Asian influences and a focus on distilling the natural flavours of the ingredients he uses.

There is less of such things that are generally deemed bad for your body (cream, butter, etc); which means fans of Stroobant’s signature foie gras with green apples, for example, will only find it as an amuse bouche here.

There are more vegetable-centric dishes such as cauliflower puree served with seawater, kohlrabi and chlorophyll, dotted with germinated wheat, edamame peas, and little dollops of caviar. In another dish, carrots are prepared several ways — pureed, roasted and dehydrated — and flavoured with cocoa nibs and tonka beans that imbue it all with a whisper of vanilla pudding-like warmth.

Offerings such as line-caught local sea bass served with a tamarind and tomato-infused shallot confit, and poached Japanese eggplant and scallops in a dashi broth are starkly Asian — it is almost a shock to find those dishes in such French-style fine dining surrounds.

Given Stroobant’s pedigree and experience, there is naturally finesse, technique and good taste behind almost everything he puts on the plate here. But anyone expecting the modern French fare to be similar to what you get from the likes of Odette, Jaan, Les Amis and Joel Robuchon, is likely to be disappointed.

Stroobant’s food does not fit into the zeitgeist of fine dining in Singapore. His feels like the food of someone who is expressing who he is at this point in his life — in the confines of a classic fine dining restaurant — and perhaps that is where some might find discordance in the dining experience as a whole.

That said, it is still a spectacular experience — what with the waterfront view, fantastic service and a delightful petit fours trolley that rolls around to your table at the end of the meal. At S$158 for a six-course dinner and S$178 for 10 courses, it is a more than splendid dining experience that will not mark the end of your monthly restaurant budget. ANNETTE TAN

Saint Pierre

Where: #02-02B One Fullerton, 1 Fullerton Road. Telephone: 6438 0887. Opening hours: Lunch Tuesday to Friday 11.30am to 3pm; Dinner Monday to Saturday 6pm to 11pm. Closed on Sunday