Started as a year-long pop up back in 2018, Magic Square has since grown and blossomed into a permanent space for young budding chefs to explore ingredients, experiment with techniques and to create flavors which resonate with their cultural identities.
Each month features a menu created by rotating chef. For May, I was lucky to try the one by Chef Jonathan Gan who was from Odette. I can't pinpoint a particular style to the menu. You can say it's Asian-Japanese-Western-Peranakan, but I guess the undefinable rojak characteristic is what made the May menu so unique, full of surprises and intricacies.
For example, the two desserts were bold, adventurous and unpredictable. One dessert featured a red chilli sorbet with tomato confit in pandan and the other one, a black garlic gelato with pulut hitam, gula melaka hazelnuts.
I love how the chef plays with local ingredients and does it so well that one can't help to question why are ppl still chasing those luxe ingredients like caviar, truffle, Foie gras when simple asian ingredients shine no less in the hands of talented local chefs. One of my favourites was the Yam with candlenut and crispy pork lard.
If I didn't rmb wrongly, the theme this month was fish and the chef was challenged to use 3 out of 4 fishes.
The other fish was Stingray and it was interestingly served as a main course. It was a 3-part dish where you get the stingray cooked with browned butter and tang oh on one plate, rice on the other to be poured with a sake-infused stingray bone broth. It's like a local fish ochazuke and really made me 吃到很爽 😄
The Venison was probably the most western dish but the sauce has so much oomph to it thanks to the use of buah keluak, dark chocolate and longans.
Overall, we had a very satisfying dining experience at Magic Square and are already contemplating the next visit. In fact, I thought the dishes excelled even better than some michelin starred restaurants here (though I might not have tried enough to do a fair comparison). But one can be certain that the amount paid for the 9-course meal is definitely very reasonable and value for money. Hopefully they can continue to operate at this scale and help local talents ascend to greater heights!
7 Portsdown Road Singapore 139298
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