This experiential, degustation-style dining spot in the CBD serves up fresher-than-fresh dishes in an incredibly creative style
Tras Street is fast becoming one of Singapore’s foodiest areas; the trendy Chinatown strip is littered with unique cocktail bars, edgy cafes and classy eateries (just you try to walk down the street without getting drawn inside; like a moth to a flaming cocktail!).
The buzziest new joint on Tras Street is Chef’s Table; an exciting modern European restaurant that serves up gob-smacking, ever-changing degustation menus. It was formerly known as My Private Chef, a popular cooking school run by the innovative Chef Stephan Zoisl. However, Stephan recently decided to swing open his doors to the public and transform the space into Chef’s Table. Lucky us!
As you step into the stylish restaurant, your eyes are drawn to the huge, dreamy kitchen, which takes up a good portion of the sleek, intimate space. The atmosphere is relaxed and casual, yet it fast becomes clear that these guys are serious about excellent grub.
For Chef’s Table is no ordinary dining experience – guests are given the option of 3, 4, 6 and 8 courses and presented with a list of 30 or so ingredients. The concept is essentially that Chef Stephan will create an innovative, totally original dinner based on the freshest produce available in Singapore that day. All you have to do is check out the ingredients he has to work with and tell him what you do and don’t like – plus if there’s something you haven’t tried that you’d like to investigate! The staff were incredibly helpful, and talked us through the bites we’d never heard of (blue foot mushroom, oyster leaves, yuzu and hamachi) – plus took note of what we loved (scallops, beef, cheese, raspberries and chocolate!).
We’d recommend taking a seat next to the incredible kitchen, so that you can watch Chef Stephan whipping up the mysterious dishes with a glass of wine. Speaking of which, Chef’s Table imports seriously yummy wine from Austria; try the Gebesbuber Spaetrot, a Cuvee white, at 68 SGD for a whopping litre!
Each dish is paraded out of the kitchen to a series of ‘oohs’ – they’re not just filled with jazzy ingredients, but they look pretty too! To give you an idea of the plates you can expect, our favourite dishes were the cod fish (with cod brandade, braised octopus, saffron sauce, char-grilled capsicum sauce and rocket breath) and Black Angus beef sirloin (with 48-hour braised cheek, fermented grains, blue foot mushroom, pickled shimeji muschroom and nasturtium leaves). Each dish is a delightful surprise, with elements of lightness and richness, plus crunchy and soft textures. You can absolutely tell that Chef’s Table pick up the best ingredients available each day – and focus on showing them off in beautifully startling ways.
Finally, we can’t go without exclaiming about the ‘chocolate test’ – five textures of chocolate on one jazzy plate. You move around the dish, gobbling low-percentage to high-percentage chocolate (served with raspberries) until you get to a well in the middle of the raised plate; where liquid nitrogen freezes chocolate ice cream before your very eyes! That’s some crazy Heston Blumenthal action right there, folks.
Fancy enjoying a bit of amazing Heston Blumenthal action yourselves? The experience is pretty affordable, with a pricing structure of 75 SGD for three courses, 95 SGD for four courses, 128 SGD for six courses and 150 SGD for eight courses. It’s worth mentioning they do have another menu with creative bites including fried pigs ears with chili aioli (14 SGD), but we recommend trying the experiential option.
Chef’s Table is located at 61 Tras Street, S079000. Give them a call on+65 9128 3058 or check out the website.