KU DÉ TA
1 Bayfront Avenue
Marina Bay Sands SkyPark
Singapore 018971
PRICE: $$$$
RATING: ???–

Let’s be honest. You go to KU DÉ TA for the stunning views. Situated high in the sky at the Marina Bay Sands Sky Park, you’re presented with a beautiful and unobstructed view of Singapore. Normally, you’d pay $20 for the priviledge of going up to the SkyPark, but this fee is waived if you’re eating at this Modern Asian restaurant. If you’re now wondering if the food comes at inflated prices to ‘absorb’ this fee, you’d be right. The food is not cheap, even the set menu items. The price itself (ranges from $38-58 for the set lunches) is high but reasonable for fine dining, however the portions are really small.. if you have a hefty appetite, it won’t be sufficient.

That said, they do some beautiful dishes and I thought it was overall a nice place to have lunch at, especially for a celebration – we were there for Mum and Dad’s wedding anniversary 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

The cheaper ($38) lunch set is their Bento Box, which is always pretty exciting because who doesn’t like picking through a selection of little tidbits?! The food it contained was very well cooked and presented, but nothing outstanding. Be warned, too, that this portion size is pretty small..

 

For the Tasting Menu ($58), the food was served in courses. The portion sizes were still pretty petite, especially the ‘main course’. That said, I suppose it will do for a light lunch.

For the starter, the Crunchy mesclun salad with young ginger and citrus sakura was.. well, a salad. Very standard scattering of lettuce and that was about it. I guess you can’t really fancy up a salad 😉

I enjoyed the Chopped hon maguro tuna tartare with soya-pickled wasabi and ginger blossom much more. After all, sashimi anything always makes me happy! The portion was about a table-spoon’s worth, which was a bit sad as this was really lovely.

 

I seriously did NOT like the De raza iberico pork belly steamed with shaoxing wine with braised bamboo shoots and soymilk mustard. To be fair, it’s due to my personal taste.. I don’t like this sort of gelatinous pork belly that is 80%+ fat, which tastes really weird and has a horrific squishy texture to me. I found this absolutely inedible.

 

All was saved with the Norwegian salmon roasted over charcoal with chinese dates, choya and yamasa shoyu. It was OUTSTANDING! The salmon was perfectly seared and charcoaled, with a beautiful brown exterior and a very tender interior.. almost sous vide style. An excellent dish which left me yearning for a portion 3 times larger.

 

The Braised shitake mushrooms with brown butter and fresh thyme leaf was also an absolute stunner. I loved the fat and juicy mushrooms that were bursting with buttery flavour. Gorgeous.

We also were served with a bowl of Northern Japanese organic rice, which is supposed to be really special but just tasted like… rice. Perhaps I am not a rice connoisseur to be able to tell the difference 😛

 

Dessert was a very very small but pretty selection of Orange cake, sauvignon blanc jelly, soya ice cream and coriander mousse. It was cute to pick at the little morsels, but nothing overly exciting.

 

The Bento Box’s dessert proved to be a little more interesting to me.. mainly because it contained chocolate 😉 The chocolate fudge cake was excellent – moist and slightly chewy, but was the teeniest little square 🙁 It was served with a strong Bailey’s mousse, vanilla bean ice cream, and mandarin jelly.

 

 

 

 

 

I think KU DÉ TA is lovely for a scenic and lazy lunch, and the food is really not too bad. However, if you’re after value for money, then you’d be left sorely disappointed. Still worth a visit at least once though, just to enjoy the view!