Food review: View to a grill

SINGAPORE — What was once Checkers Brasserie at the Hilton Singapore has been transformed into a posh wood-lined grill restaurant, with everything on the menu treated in some way over hot embers, including a selection of smoke-tinged cocktails with flavours such as tom yum, durian and miso soup.

Not all the drinks went down smoothly (the tom yum cocktail tasted too much like a cold, spicy soup), but the kaya toast cocktail, infused with coconut, kaya and a splash of Baileys, went down like a treat. Drinks aside, the other pride of the restaurant is its custom-made, meat-aging cabinet tiled in Himalayan salt. In it are Angus OP rib eyes from Australia’s Rangers Valley, dry-aged for 30 days, which you can have for S$110 for two people.

Australian beef dominates the steak menu, though there is a 220g Kobe Wagyu rib eye with a marble score of six (at S$92) for those who want a richer cut. This was cubed, seared and served with a hearty drizzle of red wine jus. Accompanying it was a delicate portion of smoked risotto and a disc of crusted bone marrow. While the marrow was a creative touch, it was unfortunately too rich a complement for the fatty beef. So too the rather dry risotto that weighed down the otherwise deftly cooked meat.

A better choice from the meat menu would be the 36-hour pork belly (S$36) lacquered in a sweet-salty and sticky glaze. The incredibly tender meat threatened to collapse under the weight of our forks and was well matched by the leaves of simply cooked Chinese greens. The only component that jarred the dish’s harmony was a halved lychee painted with a bitter, tar-like coffee sauce.

Our servers constantly impressed upon us the fact that the restaurant had been awarded the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) Chain of Custody certification (which means that the seafood served here is bought from sustainable MSC-certified fisheries), but at present, only three dishes on the menu feature MSC-certified seafood. These include the toothfish or Chilean sea bass (S$47), which was deliciously swathed in a rich and foamy brown butter dashi; and the sweet grilled Hokkaido scallops (S$23) sitting on a puddle of miso espuma and counterpointed by crisp, paper-thin discs of shaved chorizo.

Since this is a grill restaurant, it is ironic that our favourite dish here was dessert. Our martini glass of Coconut Sago (S$14) was filled with ambrosial layers of smooth mango gel, white chocolate mousse and a light coconut cream, all further lightened by a refreshing mound of coconut granite. For a meal that didn’t quite hit the high marks, this was a sweet ending indeed. ANNETTE TAN

Opus Bar & Grill

Where: Lobby Level, Hilton Singapore, 581 Orchard Road. Telephone: 6730 3390. Opening hours: 6.30pm to 10.30pm daily.