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For Ladies Who Lunch EVEN in bad times, we girls need a little pampering to get our endorphins going and make ourselves feel good. Handcrafted chocolates, massages and champagne are usually high on the list. Now, add one more worthy indulgence: Ladies' Kaiseki at Restaurant Suntory. Since its reopening at Hotel Inter-Continental (it was formerly at Delfi Orchard), the restaurant has been drawing a consistent stream of diners to its welcoming and stylishly unfinished-looking interior, fashioned out of Japanese wood, bamboo and stone. The Ladies' Kaiseki menu, available for lunch daily, has been a hit since it was first introduced over a year ago. It isn't difficult to see why. Despite a reputation for being expensive, Suntory has priced the menu at $38+++ a person. You get eight courses - including appetiser, soup, sashimi, simmered dish and sushi. They are so beautifully presented that you would think they had just fluttered out from the pages of Gourmet Traveller. Also, no run-of-the-mill dishes randomly pulled out from the main a la carte menu here.
A well-chilled beancurd, speckled with red bean, made an apt and much-appreciated starter, given the sweltering weather. A cold shower of the gentlest soya sauce dressing was all it took to give the sweetish tofu an edge. With our palates duly assuaged, we were ready for more. As if to break the calm that the starter gave, the next dish was a warm fish soup, suffused with a dense, smoky aroma (proof that top quality bonito blocks were used to make the stock). In the soup, a slice of red snapper sits preciously on a lock of noodles, looking like a bejewelled pin securing a chignon. Slivers of seabass sashimi on a bed of shaved ice followed, accompanied by a refreshing plum soya sauce. This sequence of cold-hot-cold dishes, plus the degree of aesthetics lavished on food presentation, ensured that our palates were constantly piqued. I also sampled a simmered dish of chilled yam, octopus, pumpkin and eggplant (one taste, different textures); deep-fried minced crabmeat wrapped in soya skin, with a little mound of grated radish, spiked orangey with chilli paste, on the side; a trio of sushi, the fish lightly seared and still raw in middle, polished off with a comforting bowl of miso soup. All were commendable in their own ways, but the dish that drew most wows at my table was the Specialty Selection - actually a composition of six different morsels on a platter. I won't spoil the surprise by divulging more, save to highlight one item - a cherry made of a slice of raw salmon wrapped around a little ball of egg yolk. Kawai-i! ('cute' in Japanese.) The Ladies' Kaiseki menu changes every month and undergoes a full overhaul at the start of each new season. I've been told that the upcoming autumn menu promises to be another spectacular treat, so no prizes for guessing where I'm headed the next time I have a craving for kaiseki. Restaurant Suntory is located on the lobby level of Inter-Continental Singapore, 80 Middle Road, Bugis Junction. For reservations, call 64311064. Opening hours: Lunch - noon to 2.30pm, dinner - 6pm to 10.30pm. Closed on Sunday. |
The
menu is seasonal, and each course complements the next. Hence, an
obviously summer feel to the dishes I sampled a few weeks ago.