Another B-DAY for Hubby

Pomelo Basil Bellini

Yes, its another year. Time flies, and its another B-day for hubby. After the big 3-0, the B-day becomes a bad word and the number of candles start lessening on any cake and soon enough, even the cake is not wanted. But, we can't do away without something nice?! After all, its the last number before 35! It's the little nudge just before you go officially over the hill.. (sorry hubby!)

So it's not like we can take a hop and a skip onto a plane to El Bulli in Spain on a whim and fancy to experience one of Hubby's want-to-tries restaurants, so Tippling Club in Dempsey would just have to do.
They opened their doors in August 2008, sharing the premises with House. Personally, I didn't know they existed till now, even when I had paid a few occasional dessert visits to House. They have been receiving mixed reviews since then, mainly being jibe for being pricey for a degustation menu in bite-size portions. I suppose if you are expecting a robust steak and a huge serving of fries or cous cous on the side, I would say, go to Mortons. If you are expecting a fine dining experience, with dishes that sound more like a science experiment rather then kitchen couture, call for a reservation. If you want to factor in the economic recession, make the call for lunch.

It's an open concept with a bar and dessert kitchen dominating the center stage of the restaurant. Diners sit around this "stage" mimicking a school science lab, as the bar tenders, chefs and waiters busied themselves with the fancy equipment. The main kitchen where all the dinner courses are meticulously prepared sits behind the open kitchen.

The Chappelle Brothers

You'll notice that most of the pictures taken are far more artistic and professional then the ones normally featured on my blog. That's cos they weren't taken by me. To allow us to enjoy our dinner, with no fuss and stress on good photography, Joseph our waiter kindly offered to send us all the photos of our courses that night. So, photo credits go to Stephen Black, Thank You. Now please don't sue me.

Before dinner began, we were treated to a 4 course amuse buse. The first was a Parmesan cheese soup served with micro greens on what looked a bit like a glass petri dish. Next was squid ink with calamari rings. The next course was interesting - charred peppers with a soy wasabi sauce of which the charred look was cleverly concocted with a light batter coloured black.
And the last amuse buse was my favourite. Mint grapes charged with a little carbon to make them fizzy to the bite. And to quote Joseph our waiter for the evening, we had a "good chew of it" to indulge in the flavours before our dinner started.

My main dinner started out with breakfast, a 62 degree egg and a Kopi-O.

Fashioned after the typical half-boiled egg easily available at any coffee shop, the dried tomato powder and garlic Parmesan crumbs gave the egg white froth a nice twist. They even served the Kopi-O (dressed heavily with rum) in a glass in a takeaway plastic bag, cute.

Hubby's first course was a little more intriguing. He had a frozen bowl of butternut pumpkin soup served with goats cheese crumb and white chocolate jelly.

One of the highlights of our dinner would have to be the foie gras + / -. Served contrastingly, one portion was deep fried at 37 degree temperature to achieve a liquid foie gras while another was put under -7 degree freeze to obtain the crumbly texture. If eaten together, they compliment each other at the perfect room temperature for foie gras. "Deconstructing foie gras!" as Joseph our wait staff for the evening emphasizes. And easily our yummiest course for the night.


The second favourite would have to be the quail satay with a thai green curry foam.
The little wings just invites the fingers to grab them and bite into the juicy meat. And where is the Satay you might ask? Well it's in the crumbs of course!



The next few courses sounded pretty spectacular as well, but unfortunately, felt pretty ordinary and failed to impress. The pork belly scallop was a 12 hour oven-baked belly of pork, compressed and pan-seared to lock in the juices and to compact all the flavours was served with a spiced pumpkin puree and grapes in a brown sauce.

One of the last few courses was the frog with black pepper sauce served with chicken chips and accompanied by basil jelly. The frog was pretty ordinary, but I couldn't believe the little chips served atop of the frog was not our usual wanton skins, but chicken breast crisps!

The desserts of the degustation menu were also pretty in line with the quirky molecular gastronomy. I asked for a mock tail to accompany my dessert and Joesph readily complied. So my Agave smash was a non-alcoholic version with fresh fruits, honey and a dash of ginger beer.


This accompanied the first of the desserts to roll out - the passion fruit cloud. A home-made basil ice-cream - infused with a chemical to ensure that the ice-cream remains a certain texture and doesn't melt for at least 15 mins during service - is paired with the tart passion fruit moouse and tuille with a light basil crumble. Never thought I would be a fan of a vegetable or herb ice-cream but the flavours came together pretty nicely.

The next dessert on the 10-course menu was the snowball. A white chocolate and coconut moouse sprinkled with orange fizz and Japanese lemon. A little queer at the first taste but the chocolate and coconut flavours grows on you.

Finally, we got to the last dessert course and quite aptly, it was a simple banana topped with soy chocolate and tonca bean ice cream.


We ended dinner with a cute wand of lavender fairy floss each and a small bag of tea leaves to take home.
All in all, I would say that the Tippling Club is certainly an experience. Molecular dining isn't new in Singapore, but I applaud their brave decision to invest in such expensive and high-tech equipment, all for the love of experimenting and creating food fit for the appreciative and discerning diner who shares your equivalent passion for fine culinary execution.
Sad to say, it's probably only a small minority in Singapore who would give up a hearty portion of good chili crab for this.

The Tippling Club

8 Dempsey Road Singapore 249762

6475 2217

www.tipplingclub.com