Candlenut oh my near calamity
We’re five courses into Candlenut’s “ah-ma-kase” tasting menu and the general consensus is this could be the best meal of our lives.
A charcoal grilled chicken mid-wing satay with a moreish homemade peanut sauce is delicately flavoured and an initial favourite while a small morsel of Margaret River beef cheek Kapitan curry is sublime with its gentle flavour of chitose shishito pepper sparkling on the palate.
It’s not comfort food as such but all the flavours including the sweet-flavoured Boston lobster in a turmeric curry with candlenut travel from the palate to the brain and release a magical dopamine hit of pure unadulterated dining pleasure.
The first Michelin-starred Peranakan cuisine restaurant in the world, Candlenut at five courses in is magnificent. As for the restaurant itself set inside a former British army barracks on Singapore’s lush Dempsey Hill, it’s a gorgeous cool, open space filled with local art – a quiet cool haven away from Singapore’s occasionally enervating heat and humidity.
I’ve eaten here before on numerous occasions as it’s my go to in Singapore whether it be with friends, a former wife or for business. Peranakan or Nyonya cuisine comes from the earliest Chinese migrants into Indonesia, Malaysia and Indonesia who not only married local Malays but also melded the cuisine of China with local Malay spices as well as many of the other nations on the old spice trail of south-east Asia.
It’s a mash-up of cuisines I loved from the moment I first tasted it in Melaka in Malaysia over two decades ago. Put bluntly, it’s a favourite and in fast-paced Singapore a Grab ride up to the more languid pace of Dempsey Hill is a welcome addition to any trip.
So, what went wrong? Five courses in and everything’s magical yet 10 courses in I’m not questioning my life choices (which are often bad) but I was wondering what’s happened? I suggest to my dining partner that our pathetic western palates don’t understand Peranakan but that doesn’t wash as I’ve had numerous wonderful experiences at Candlenut.
I ask the staff how the menu was put together and they tell me 31 chefs from owner Malcolm Lee’s two Peranakan fine diners, with Pangium in Singapore’s Botanic Gardens being the other, join together to create and vote for the items on the monthly tasting menu. It sounds like a wonderful idea but… somewhere along the line we lost some flavour.
The flavours of the Soto Bakso comprising deep-fried snakehead fish with silver sprout and sawtooth coriander were too subtle as was the Buah Keluak Beef Rawon made up of beef short rib, salted egg, shallot coriander and deep-fried organic tempeh.
As for the final slow-cooked Iberico pork jowl with shitake mushrooms, soy, chili and coriander, the flavours just didn’t punch through. The pork itself was unctuous and melted in the mouth but you found yourself waiting for a flavour bomb that never arrives.
Unfortunately, it did arrive with the desserts. While mostly bland palate cleansers, the Mao Shan Wang Durian Crepe roll with gula melaka cream was a real punch in the face. While the cream cut through the Musang King Durian flavour, that initial burst of Durian confirmed a lot of most people’s Durian prejudices. The stench of an open bin filled with all manner of rotting garbage on a hot summer’s day that grabs the back of your throat is something that can’t be washed away with a nice glass of Nebbiolo. It lingers and unfortunately left a bad taste in the mouth at one of my favourite restaurants in the world.
I’ll be back again because I’m sure the latest iteration of Candlenut’s “ah-ma-kase” is a glitch and not the future direction.
