Today we visited Candlenut at Dempsey Hill Singapore. It’s a one-starred michelin peranakan restaurant. In fact, it is the only peranakan restaurant with michelin star.
This restaurant share the building in a high ceiling old-style triangle roofed building with 2 other restaurants. The flooring is tiles and feels quite homey. High ceiling feels quite nice although I would prefer if we can have more clear separation from other restaurant dining halls to make it feel more special.
We ordered the “Ah-Ma-Kase” set, which is the tasting menu. It is noted that this menu is more of a slightly modern take of the peranakan cuisine, instead of authentic traditional style.
Starting off, we get 3 appetizers:
- Kueh Pie Tie
- Ngoh Hiang
- Pork satay
The Kueh Pie tie starts off with a very nice warmth & crunch with various flavours. This particular one has cuttle fish as the main filling. It is quite little, but otherwise very nice flavour and light to start with.
Together we are served the Ngoh Hiang. Main difference than normal ngoh hiang is that this one has crispy skin, yet very light and hearty flavour. I think that serves as the main theme as well. I have experienced most of this dishes in its usual setting, and sometimes it’s not always easy to eat for me becasue it has strong garlic or shallot smell. Here, they lean back a little bit on strong aromatics and appreciate more of the subtle tastes, which I really appreciate.
Next let’s take a look at the pork satay. It’s pork jowl with buah keluak sauce. The meat is rendered very soft with nice aromatics. Again, not overly powerful smell. The pork is not too fatty like pork belly as well.
Oh as a complimentary side we are also served the fish crackers with kecap manis. Seems like they make it themselves and you can defenitely taste more of the fish than the usual fish crackers. However, texture-wise it’s slightly on the thicker side.
As the main entree, we are served “Bakwan Kepiting Soup”. It has meat balls made of crab meats and mushroom, with toppings of sliced tofu puff and bamboo shoots, served in chicken soup. This dish was quite confusing at first since as Indonesian, bakwan has meaning of vegetable fritters. But turns out in peranakan / Malaysian context it means more like meat balls. The soup is very comforting and the textures combination is very good. I would make something like this at home, maybe with prawn ball instead of crab meat. This dish does have fried shallot mixed as topping but it’s not too strong.
Next comes the main dishes. We are served 5 dishes served with rice:
- Wing Bean Salad
- Nyonya Fish
- Semur Beef
- Prawn Curry
- Cincalok Fried Egg
This dish is one of my favorite. It has fried ikan bilis and it’s very fresh and very crunchy, and not too salty too. The wing bean itself is nice and looks cool. The calamansi drizzle sauce is one idea that I will use more for my home cooking. It also has crunchy cashew nuts which adds nicely to the texture.
The nyonya fish is cook with tomatoes. They use barramundi as the fish. Personally, it is not my favorite type of fish. It has more of oily & soft texture, similar to seabass. I prefer either more flaky (mackerel/salmon) or more bouncy (snapper/grouper) fishes. The sauce itself is nice but not too special compared to usual nyonya cooking.
Sadly, it’s a pass for me. The beef is very soft and high quality, however, the stew is just too sweet to my preference. It has potato and carrot as well which is quite traditional. We still finished it though.
This prawn curry has chopped up prawn. The most interesting part of this dish is the shredded turmeric leaf, which I thought was dill at first. It also have “spiny gourd”, which has nice texture and I haven’t tried before. Overall it’s nice, albeit a bit heavy due to the coconut milk.
Last main dish is cincalok egg. It is fried sunny side egg with chilli minced meat on top. The fried egg is done well with very airy and crispy whites yet very runny yolk. I have no idea how they manage that, perhaps just dropping the egg in oil directly? The cincalok is hearty and adds a nice topping. Although they could have lean slightly heavier on the chillies / tomatoes for more spicy / tangy flavour. Overall its nice, comforting, and cannot be skipped for this meal to feel whole.
Next come the desserts. I just say directly that the desserts are very nice, light and refreshing. I was expecting it too be too heavy or too difficult to eat. Yet, in the enjoy until the last bit of it.
We are served two desserts:
- Bubur Pulut Hitam Sorbet + Taro ice cream + sweet potato cakes + shaved iced coconut water
- Banana apam cake + banana compote topping.
I started with the banan cake (sadly I didn’t take a clear photo). It was warm and very nice banana taste. It is slightly too strong on butter for my liking, but it’s otherwise very comforting.
The bubur pulut hitam overthrows my expectation. Usually this dish is served warm, and usually I find it quite hard to finish due to it’s sticky texture + fatty coconut. However, Candlenut instead presents it in a very refreshing way. Served with shaved ice, and very light taro ice cream. It’s not too sweet at all and super refreshing after a rather heavy meal. 10/10.
Lastly we are also served happy birthday cassava cake. I wasn’t quite sure if I did include it in the reservation note but it is my birthday month. So it was confusing at first but we celebrate it in the end. The cassava cake is nice and not too sweet. I think it’s nice to have it instead of the tradional cakes which is more heavy.
Overall, I think Candlenut offers very high quality dishes and ingredients. All of the dishes feels that it is made from scratch with very carefully selected ingredients and preparation. Service is also good, food is served at the right time with very minimal waiting time. Food portion is also manageable and doesn’t make us feel too full. It might be slightly small for some other. If I could change anything, I might swap some of the main dishes with more small bites and dishes to experience more flavor and textures. Price wise (108 SGD++ / pax for lunch set), it won’t be really a regular affair but I’m glad we went and it was a nice & worthwhile experience.
