SMALL’S BIG FLAVOURS
After a rocking 12-course meal at chef Bjorn Shen’s new four-seat micro restaurant, we kick around some ways to describe what we just had. Doughmakase is my contribution. My colleague Eunice Quek has a better one – doughgustation.
Small’s, which occupies a pocket-sized space at Shen’s restaurant, Artichoke, celebrates dough. He ferments it at least four days, then works it into gutsy, robust dishes and pizza. He cooks and tells stories through the meal, which you eat in a very confined space.
The 37-year-old chef is riffing off 1990s pizza restaurants, where he had pies loaded with toppings, garlic bread, meatballs and Caesar salads. But we are in the 2020s and no groups of four are going to pay $500++ for this sort of food.
So the meal has to be upscale but also fit in with his fun-loving, irreverent public persona, which the chef makes work.
The Neapolitan-style pizzas are superb. We start with Pizza Aglio Olio, the flavours of that ubiquitous pasta dish transferred onto puffy, blistered dough, wedges of which we drag through a dip made with roasted oysters pulverised with fried eggs.
I do not like pizzas that flop in the middle. Shen’s are positively swampy, especially the Pizza Vongole, topped with juicy sunset clams from Lombok, chunks of fiore di latte cheese, cherry tomatoes and, crucially, lemon zest and juice. Oh and a shower of grated cheese.
Octopus, squid ink, fiore di latte, and basil top the Pizza Black Octopus, together with more cheese and shavings of cured octopus roe.
But nothing prepares us for Pizza Alla Banh Mi, which is in the running for my best dish of 2020, despite it being only January.
The dough is shaped into a square and shoved in the surprisingly small oven, which reaches a temperature of 500 deg C, and then stuffed with Vietnamese sandwich fixings – Vietnamese and Italian mortadella, pickles, cucumber, coriander leaves, scallions and a louche spread of Vietnamese pate mixed with mayonnaise and condensed milk. It is doused with Maggi seasoning sauce, the not-secret weapon of many a banh mi purveyor.
Then the sandwich is folded up, skewered and cut into four hefty chunks. It has all the flavours I love in a banh mi but the bread is better. It even tastes good out of the fridge the next day.
In between the pizza are other delights – maitake balls with pizza bread crumbs and an Alfredo sauce, blistered padron peppers with aioli and a sprinkling of sakura ebi, and a second contender for best dish 2020 – Caprese salad served in a skull-shaped glass, featuring mozzarella blitzed with cream, tomatoes macerated in elderflower liqueur, drizzled with Thai basil oil and sprinkled with dehydrated rose petals.
Dessert is a hot chocolate cookie with a Reese’s peanut butter cup smashed into the middle, topped with three scoops of Hokkaido ice cream.
Small’s opens properly early next month. Groups have to take all four seats, book online and pay upfront. The menu will change, but I hope the banh mi is never taken off the menu.
WHERE: Small’s, 161 Middle Road MRT: Bras Basah OPEN: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays for dinner INFO: Make reservations at smalls.as.me. Available dates are released one week before the new month, announcements are made at and on Instagram at smalls_sg
LATE NIGHT EATS
So you’re out drinking with your buddies and you get a craving for a hot bowl of ramen and more drinks. Head to Torasho Ramen & Charcoal Bar in Tras Street.
It was just this sort of night that inspired the owners, Tora Widjaja, 21, and chef Sho Naganuma, 40, to open their restaurant.
While the idea was conceived over drinks, the attention to detail tells me the plans were executed in the cold light of day. Hip-hop music plays at just the right volume, the restaurant’s logo is printed on the sheets of nori garnishing the ramen, there is a house sake and a condiments bar with boiled eggs, spicy ikan bilis and cabbage.
The food, too, is well-curated. Ikura Nachos ($12) – papadam topped with mayonnaise and salmon and flying fish roe – is designed to go with drinks. Miso Black Cod Collar ($12) is for the low-carber in your party.
I will go back for three things.
Chicken Neck Karaage ($6) comprises pieces coated in a spice-herb blend and then battered and deep fried. Who knew chicken necks could be so meaty and delicious?
Then there are two of the ramen offerings. Uni Tsukemen ($16) comes with thick, springy noodles and a umami-rich dipping sauce made with uni paste. It coats the noodles beautifully and the flavour just will not quit.
Tonkotsu ($12) features thinner noodles in a rich, thick pork broth. Both bowls are topped with charshu, gelatinous slices of pork belly finished on a wood fire so they are smoky and charred in all the right places.
Currently, the restaurant is open late only on Friday and Saturday nights. I can’t wait for the charcoal grilled steaks and donabe – Japanese claypot rice – to be added to the menu and for the extended hours to run through the week.
WHERE: Torasho Ramen & Charcoal Bar, 32 Tras Street MRT: Tanjong Pagar OPEN: 11.30am to 3pm (Mondays to Thursdays), 11.30am to 11pm (Fridays and Saturdays), closed on Sunday TEL: 6970-5055 INFO:
LARDY NOODLES
When a friend asks me to meet him at The Milky Way in Tanglin Halt, I am struck by deja vu. A check shows I wrote about the ice cream there in 2014.
This time, I am really there for noodles. The cafe has new owners, who sold bak chor mee in the hawker centre nearby. Because of kitchen limitations, there is no mee pok or mee kia.
Owner Terence Aw recommends the kway teow and we order the Signature Noodle ($5.80) with the rice noodles. It’s a hefty serving, with pork balls, minced pork, fish dumplings, mock abalone, egg and spinach served separately from the noodles, in a light pork broth.
But the main attraction for me is in the other bowl. My lard sensor lights up instantly. I can do without the soup and other things bobbing in it, the minced pork and mushroom topping, plus the fried wontons, on the noodles. Just give me lard-slicked kway teow, with flavour boosts from kicap manis and fish sauce.
Other savoury offerings include Curry Chicken, Fish Maw Beehoon and Braised Pork (available in two sizes, $2.80 and $5.80). There is also Mama Tom Yum ($5.80), instant noodles with prawns, meatballs, mock abalone, shredded chicken and egg.
But really, the Signature Noodle steals the show.
WHERE: The Milky Way, Block 48 Tanglin Halt Road, 01-333 MRT: Commonwealth OPEN: 10am to 9pm (Tuesdays to Thursdays and Sundays), 10am to 10pm (Fridays and Saturdays) INFO:
