The Spot (Marina One)

H O S T E D
Apart from being a delight to eat, the Chargrilled Octopus that’s available on the dinner menu, really showed off Head Chef Lee Boon Seng’s masterful skills.
Wonderfully smoky, the flesh of the octopus was tender and bouncy even though it had never undergone sous vide.
What propelled this dish to a different level though was the Southeast Asian style of sauce it came with. Concocted from red miso, roasted peanut paste and mirin, it had an uncommon but tasty sweet and savoury profile. As if there wasn’t enough happening on the plate, Chef Lee also threw on a housemade coriander oil and preserved green papaya slaw. Surprisingly, all of that harmonised smoothly, and thus resonated with my tastebuds very well.

H O S T E D
Previously of Osia and Curate at Resorts World Sentosa, Executive Chef Lee Boon Seng is proving his mettle at one-month-old “The Spot” with his unique “Contemporary European, Southeast Asian Sauce-centric” style of cuisine.
At the invited tasting this afternoon, I had the chance to try a vast repertoire of his creations that included appetisers of scallop carpaccio with jicama remoulade, a tart buah longlong vinaigrette and green apple strips as well as chargrilled octopus that’s surprisingly tender in spite of skipping the sous vide step. The chorizo-embellished roasted carrot soup was just as lovely as it boasted freshness from orange juice and a subtle heat of ginger.
For the mains, I felt Chef Lee’s fish dishes were really strong, perhaps partly due to him insisting on filleting whole fishes in-house. If you like spicy food, the crispy-skinned red snapper with aromatic green curry emulsion and pickled Thai baby eggplant will undoubtedly tickle your tastebuds. Those who prefer something light should go for the local skate with pearl rice risotto and ikura in a delicate dried sole fish coriander broth.
Meat-lovers have good choices too. From what was served, I found the beef shortribs the most enjoyable personally. It was very tender but had a sexy caramelised finish which was well complemented by the punchy Java long pepper sauce, flavourful aerated chicken stock porridge, arborio rice puffs and pickled oyster mushroom.
The desserts were a clear reflection of Chef Lee’s style of cuisine too. I may not be crazy about licorice but was willing to take a few bites of it as he’d made licorice root into an ice-cream and accessorised it with caramelised candied parsnip, malt molasses and coffee crumble. The sea coconut bruleé was more to my taste. Served with sour cream ice-cream, kaffir lime foam and zest, it‘s the kind of artfully-balanced sweet and sour happy ending that’s a sure crowd-pleaser.