You may be aware that Curate @ Resorts World Sentosa hosts visiting Michelin-starred chefs, amongst them Mingoo Kang of Mingles (Seoul) and Esben Holmboe Bang of Maemo (Oslo), as part of its contractual partnership with Robert Parker Wine Advocate. But have you ever wondered what the restaurant serves in between chef collaborations?
Since February 2017, Curate has welcomed German chef de cuisine, Benjamin Halat, who was last chef de cuisine of a grill house at Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur before coming onboard the Resorts World Sentosa family. In between four-hand collaboration with chefs, Halat has been working on launching a contemporary German tasting menu, drawing on influences from his growing up years in Munich.
His recently-launched spring tasting menu is a triumvirate of three elements: brozeit (snack time), abendbrot (dinner) and naschereien (sweet things).
Brozeit arrives by way of a parade of snacks to whet your appetite: a roll of smoked char and trout tartare wrapped in pickled daikon to relive Steckerlfisch, a charcoal grilled fish available in beer gardens in spring and summer; a sandwich of chilled foie gras stacked on a bread chip with a wobbly dollop of pickled cucumber jelly reminiscent of Leberwurst Broetchen, pork pate with bread and gherkins; and, amongst other things, a tiny bottle of lemonade infused with 32 types of herbs (some specially imported from the Alpine region) to refresh the palate.
For abendbrot, the fresh green tipsofpine needles in spring find its way into a butter infusion used to poach a fillet of trout served with trout roe, green almonds, smidgens of herbed parsley emulsion with almond cream, pine needle jelly and almond crumble.
Before Halat advanced to his current role as a chef, he worked at a breakfast restaurant in Germany where he was required to cook 200 eggs every morning. This experience may have scarred some but for Halat, it’s all in a day’s work. In fact, the native of Munich has created a signature egg dish in memory of it. Named Soufflated Egg, the airy souffled white of the egg arrives on a cloud of Champagne foam topped with beluga caviar. As you dig in, you discover potato cream and the runny yolk of the egg within.
For his tasting menu, Halat also takes on “Heaven & Earth”, a traditional German dish from Rhineland dating back to the 18th century. Traditionally, this heritage dish consists of black pudding, fried onions, mashed potatoes and apple sauce but in place of black pudding, Halat fields the replacement protein of slow-cooked Atlantic cod encircled with a layer of onion omelette served alongside potatoes, representing the earth element, topped with majoram mayonnaise and an apple bacon ragout representing the heaven element.
Recalling how his grandmother used to make huge strawberry tarts as her friends sat around the table chatting, Halat recreates the strawberry tart, albeit a smaller one, for naschereien. Using wild strawberries from Spain contained in a warm almond crust that breaks open to reveal sabayon and sour cream within, this is the closest yet that we will get to relive Halat’s childhood memories.
The full eight-course menu at Curate costs S$188++. Shorter six-course and five-course menus are also available at S$168++ and S$128++ respectively.
28 Sentosa Gateway, Forum #01-231 & 232, Singapore 098 138; http://www.rwsentosa.com/en/restaurants/curate/overview
BIBIK GOURMAND 