One year older, none the wiser 😉

 

I had a pretty relaxed birthday with family this year. A chill morning, a family lunch, and more family time. But, for dinner, Chris arranged a dinner date at Spago, which opened in Singapore just a few weeks ago. I was super keen as I’d been to the Spago in Beverly Hills, and loved it!

 

Spago here is located at the top of Marina Bay Sands hotel, on the 57th floor. Yep, it’s right where the famous infinity pool is, and yep, the view is pretty spectacular. The menu here is allegedly still Californian, but in truth it has strong Asian influence, leaning in particular to the Japanese side.

 

I’ve been known to immediately fall in love with a restaurant that offers a selection of warm breads to choose from. Love this touch and can’t understand why all nice/fine-dining western restaurants don’t do this here.

So, of course, Spago had me at ‘hello’.

 

We were given two butters – the pyramid one was a plain unsalted butter, and the cylindrical one was a seaweed salted butter. They were both served at room temperature, but I would have preferred them every so lightly chilled to off-set the warm bread.

 

I couldn’t say no to the Hokkaido Scallop Sashimi ($34). The portion size is tiny – think six thin slivers of scallop – so don’t expect to share this one. It arrived looking like a piece of artwork; a pretty garden on a plate.

What can I say? It was sublime. The scallops were fresh and beautifully chilled and plump. The other items scattered on the plate was tosa soy, myoga, young shiso, sea grass, and avocado wasabi mousse.. and all complemented the scallops perfectly.

 

It was Spago’s cutlery that really got me. I love black rhodium jewellery, so their cutlery really captivated me. The dark metal is gorgeous, and the cutlery was pretty weighty which made it feel luxurious. Luxury cutlery – hah!

This is their Frutti di Mare Risotto ($39, half portion shown) which I’d order again in an instant. The risotto was creamy and had the perfect punch of flavour, and was generously studded with Maine lobster, shrimp, scallops, calamari.. and finished off with preserved lemon, Spanish saffron and basil. It was absolutely sublime.

 

I decided on the Holland milk-fed veal chop ($75) because it sounded like it’d be a bit different to the standard red meat (ie. steak) dishes on any restaurant’s menu. So glad I did, because it was excellent. The chop comes in at around 300g, which, even if you factor in the bone, is still a pretty sizable chunk. In comparison, the steak on their menu is under 200g and same price or higher.

The veal is so succulent and tender we could cut it with a butter knife. The flavour is light, and goes very well with the black garlic, preserved lemon, rosemary natural jus. The Kohlrabi-orange puree is delicious, so it’s a shame there’s only 3 little smears of it.

We also shared the Hand cut french fries ($18) because – hello – when have I ever said no when there’s fries on the menu? I regretted it, though. The fries were pretty dry and weren’t special, and we left most of it behind. Disappointing.

 

My other weakness apart from fries – a cheese selection. Spago’s is air-flown from Fromagerie Antony, featuring a selection of their artisanal favourites.

 

You pay for each incremental cheese that you pick. So this is a 3-cheese platter ($37). which I personally felt was a bit eye-popping for just a scattering of cheese, no matter what!

At least it was presented beautifully, with half a loaf of toasted fruit & nut bread. There was also honey comb, walnuts, and moustarda on the side. I loved it, but then again, I love my cheese platters.

 

A little surprise at the end of our meal – a trio of sorbets and summer berries to cap it all off. It was the perfect touch, since it was light and refreshing, and we left feeling very full indeed.

 

My dinner date and I. It’s a real treat for us to have a nice meal just to ourselves, so I loved it 🙂

 

The MBS rooftop infinity pool. It was still packed with swimmers at 11PM when I took this photo! Shame about the haze right now, or the view would have been spectacular.

 

No prizes for guessing which one I picked for my birthday present, at least not to anyone that knows me well!

 

Hunter decided he would unwrap it for me on my birthday morning… the Prada ‘Inside Out’ bag – my new work horse bag 🙂