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Singapore, August 16, 2010 Garage The restaurant formerly known as WineGarage has had its name shortened, its dining room carved up and a new menu installed, but diners who had an affinity with its previous incarnation should not feel particularly short-changed by the bistro concept that has taken its place. The just-open Garage still occupies more or less – make that less – the same corner space that its predecessor did, but parent company The Menu Group, which owns microbrewery Brewerkz next door and deemed it necessary to revamp the original restaurant, has turned a large chunk of the former dining room into an event/private-dining space, leaving Garage with a dining room the size of a large one-car parking lot. The restaurant can still accommodate about a hundred customers, with most of the dining tables located outdoors. Customers now have nice riverfront views but are deprived of what was once a cosy, casually chic interior space. Opening hours are restricted – at least for now – to between 5pm and 2am. The current open-air layout is perhaps more conducive to simple bistro fare combined with a high concentration of wine and beer – something that the folks at Brewerkz are particularly adept at – but if a recent night out at Garage is any indication, new chef de cuisine Tim Ross-Watson might have something to say about that. The 26-year-old chef was born in London but is more than familiar with this part of the world – when he was a young boy, his parents were based here and in Indonesia. He spent the last two years as an instructor of classic French cuisine at Shermay Lee’s cooking school and before that, honed his culinary skills at a number of restaurants in London. He describes the current offerings at Garage as progressive French bistro food with some of it being "slightly pretentious", which is another way of saying that under the classic French cooking background and beyond the innocuous-sounding menu, there is an inventive young talent poised to spread his culinary wings. The Menu Group’s forte lies in creating variations on the basic Brewerkz theme, but Ross-Watson might be just the chef to break with convention and lead them into uncharted territory. The launch menu at Garage is clearly intended to ease diners carefully down this new culinary path, comprising a list of appealing and easily-digested dishes, but with some interesting modern twists thrown in. The bar menu portion of things is a good way to get started, with dishes such as crab fritters ($12), smoked ocean trout blinis ($14) and a selection of different-flavoured keropok crackers with a sweet chilli dipping sauce ($10). Starters include items such as salads, soups, terrines and mini wagyu burgers, to be enjoyed perhaps while you plough through the multiple beer options and 50-page wine list – a welcome legacy of the WineGarage days. Mains comprise several sous vide and slow-cooked items, such as beef cheek ($33), cooked for 18 hours at a precise 82.2 degrees (the collagen in the beef breaks down at 80 degrees says the chef) and Berkshire pork belly ($35). Meanwhile, the Welsh lamb rump ($34) is cooked for two-and-a-half hours at 55 degrees. Both the lamb and the beef cheek were perfectly cooked, tender and wonderfully flavourful. The chef’s flair for the dramatic is evident in off-piste items such as a crab tempura served with home-made bacon and corn puree and an exciting dish he calls textures of pork, which features pork in various unexpected forms – pork-flavoured meringue, crisp and soil, among others – with nothing resembling actual meat on the plate. "I like to keep it simple and get the natural flavours where each ingredient has just one taste – otherwise you get a confused taste," says Ross-Watson, who has a current fascination with avant garde techniques. "If you don’t understand how to get the best out of your ingredients you’ll never have a clear palate." The traditional summer pudding has also been deconstructed and transformed into a very different kind of culinary experience involving a sphere of English tea on a spoon, raspberry puree aerated custard and dehydrated sponge. A soon-to-be-signature dessert named Poached Pear William – pear slices housed in a flourless chocolate fondant – is also worth saving some appetite for. Ross-Watson is proficient at traditional French cuisine but naturally enough, he also seems keen to put his personal stamp on the still-evolving menu at Garage. To realise his full potential, they might just have to give him a bigger parking lot to work with. Rating: 7 out of 10 Garage
30 Merchant Road
30 Merchant Road,
01-07 Riverside Point
Singapore 058282
Tel: 65333188
