For our belated 3rd anniversary and Fourth of July party, we checked out this intimate and small chef's table restaurant which serves a tasting menu inspired by local flavours.

Chef Gan is an alumni of Candlenut and Goto Kaiseki and this showed in the Peranakan flavours and Japanese-style cooking.

He started off with a luffa & scallop chawanmushi. Inspired by a local dish, stir fried luffa, eggsi with Hokkaido scallops is steamed in a dried scallop stock, and topped with charred luffa. We love the intense and flavourful chawanmushi and the plump juicy scallops.

Chef Gan followed up with my favourite dish of the night, summer salad with sambal matah. Seared squid and prawns, and seasonal vegetables is topped with raw Balinese sambal and finished with calamansi juice. I like that Chef Gan made slits on the squid so that it will retain its soft tender texture during the cooking process. The sambal was piquant, flavourful and appetising. I love the melodious blend of sweet, sour and caramelised flavours.

For the crab dumplings in broth, the consomme-like soup was prepared using chicken and live flower crab stock. The crab dumping is essentially a giant meatball made of fresh crab meat and pork belly. The soup was warm and soothing. I loved the use of lime zest to give it a slight acidic note. The dumpling was full of sweetness and umami. They definitely did not stinge on this!

This was definitely a great start to their 8-course tasting menu!