whine & dine

Ever since Chef Gary Kwang disappeared from Universal, my good friend and food buddy, Uncle P, who hunted him down and tracked him to Capella has been urging me to visit the restaurant with him. Yesterday, 5 of us finally managed to get it together and made it down to the restaurant for lunch. Capella is located in Chijmes, and sports a sleek dining area and one of the few open kitchens which isn’t A) a pretend open kitchen (i.e. only featuring the patisserie or garde manger stations), and B) incredibly neat and pretty! In fact, it looks pretty much like what my dream kitchen would be like. Thanks to this design concept, diners have front row seats to watch Chef Kwang in action while he prepares your meal.

Chef Kwang came out to ask if he could prepare a special menu for us, and boy am I glad that I went for it! To start, we had an Egg Cocotte with Avruga Caviar, and Salmon Tartare with Dill [right]. Both were crazy delicious, and while I am not generally a fan of runny eggs (and especially not runny egg yolks), the cocotte – which had a raw egg yolk buried at the bottom of the eggshell it was served in – was a very promising start to the meal.

Next, we were served a velvety velouté of leek and potato, with grilled scallop, mushrooms and truffle oil [left]. Again, the flavours were very well controlled in this dish and had us scraping the bottoms of our bowls in minutes. For the main course, all of us chose the grilled tenderloin, which was served with breaded sweetbreads, morel sauce, cherry tomato confit and beetroot purée [pictured at start of post]. While I felt that the plate was a little cluttered – which is something I’ve noticed that Chef Kwang has a tendency to do with his main courses – every single item on the dish was faultless, taste-wise. I especially enjoyed the sweetbreads, which really aren’t that common in our local dining scene. These were done to perfection, with a crisp, flavourful crust and an almost-creamy interior. I could have eaten far more than the 3 pieces I was served. In fact, I’m even a little inspired now to try cooking them on my own at home.

To close the mind-blowing meal, Chef Kwang served us his home-made cannelloni with chocolate mousse and brandied cherries [below]. The silky texture of the mousse paired beautifully with the crunch of the cannelloni. While I love this Italian dessert, I’ve also found that too often it ends up ridiculously heavy and overpoweringly rich, which – thankfully – was not a problem with this dish.

I had an excellent meal at Capella, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just because I was there with a friend of the very talented chef. I’m definitely going to go back again really soon – in fact, I’ve already booked several friends for lunch there when I’m back from Beijing. Reservations are encouraged for dinner, but on weekdays it seems pretty safe to just pop in for lunch.

Capella
30 Victoria Street
#01-29 CHIJMES
Singapore 187996
T: +65 6334 9928
F: +65 6334 9927
E: capella@starworth.com.sg