When the Singapore Restaurant Week appeared on the dining scene, it ran for just one week. Nowadays, it’s held several times a year, with each edition lasting around a month. Even though the duration has lengthened, the name has remained the same.
The participating restaurants are typically quite diverse, offering a wide range of cuisines from Japanese to Western to Fusion. It has been great for us, and we’ve had many nice meals over the years at very reasonable prices.
This time round, we were in the mood for beef and made two reservations: lunch at Gemma Steakhouse, and dinner at Boeuf. Both were restaurants that we’ve not visited before, and featured interesting menus.
Gemma Steakhouse is located on the fifth floor of the National Gallery, formerly the Supreme Court building. As you come out of the lift lobby and head towards the restaurant, you’ll walk past a quiet open courtyard with a large but shallow pond.
The interior décor is a comfortable mix of maroon, brown and white, with marble and gold accents. It may sound like a jarring combination, but the overall feel was welcoming and cozy. It helped that the curtained glass wall let in plenty of natural diffused sunlight.
We arrived just after the start of their lunch service, so many tables weren’t occupied. But as more and more people arrived, the place started to fill out. There were quite a few groups of working professionals conducting lunch meetings, some young couples obviously out on dates and a large table of elderly folks enjoying a leisurely lunch over copious bottles of wine.
Despite the increasingly large number of diners (or more accurately, lunchers?), the noise level remained comfortable. Coupled with the cosy seating, we could see ourselves enjoying a long and boozy Sunday brunch there. But more on that later.
Our set lunch that day consisted of an amuse bouche, a pasta, some beef, a dessert and petit fours, all for the price of S$48++/person. Unlike most Restaurant Week menus, there were no choices to be made, so we both had the exact same items.
The first thing to arrive was a warm loaf of sourdough bread and side plates with a schmear of butter topped with powdered nori. It was crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside and one of the better sourdoughs we’ve had.
As we were happily munching our bread, the amuse bouche was served. Kush, our warm and friendly waiter, explained that it was beef tartare on a crunchy shell and that we should eat the entire morsel in one bite. He also emphasised that the sunflower seeds were meant to support the shell and not for eating.
Good thing he did, because we would have popped a handful into our mouths. Throughout the lunch service, we could hear the same advice repeated by all the waiters. I couldn’t help but think that they probably should have gone with something obviously inedible instead.
For some reason, despite our love for sashimi, we’ve never gotten round to the idea of eating raw beef. Whenever we have steak, it’s usually medium or medium rare, and beef tartare is a line that we have yet to cross.
The closest we’ve gotten to taking a bite from a mooing cow was “black and blue” steak at Tajimaya at Toranomon Hills in Tokyo. It was very oishii, but it was at least cooked on the outside. After pondering for quite some time, we finally decided to bite the bullet, so to speak. It was just a small blob of meat, how bad could it be?
I’m glad we took the plunge, because it was delicious. The meat was well seasoned and didn’t taste raw at all. The soft but slightly firm texture of the finely chopped beef blended well with the crunchy pani puri-like shell.
We expanded our food boundary that day, even if it was by just one bite.
Thankfully the next dish wasn’t so adventurous, even though it had a long name with many fancy-sounding Italian words. The viola artichoke agnolotti, pisellini verdi, freshwater crayfish and smoked paprika was a delicious pasta which we would have gladly ordered as a main dish.
It was a reminder that, sometimes, good things come in small packages. The artichoke-filled fresh pasta, with cute but savoury baby crayfish and lightly-spiced sauce offered a combination of flavours that were a welcome departure from typical tomato or cream-based pastas.
For a self-professed steakhouse, the artichoke agnolotti was a surprising but delightful find. It made me curious about the other pasta options on their regular menu, and provided strong motivation for a return visit to find out.
But we were there to try their beef, which came in the form of bite-sized pieces of futari wagyu skirt, white asparagus, sweet potato pave and bagna cauda sauce. When we first sat down, I spotted what appeared to be a Josper oven in the back of the restaurant. This was confirmed with a quick enquiry to Kush, and it immediately raised my expectations.
I’m glad to say that I wasn’t let down by what was served. The skirt steak was lean and thinly-sliced, but it remained tender and juicy. The beefy taste was prominent and paired well with the garlicky anchovy sauce. The Wife remarked that the beefiness somehow managed to intensify after each successive chew.
If Gemma’s intention was to provide an enticing example of the steaks that they serve, then they clearly succeeded. Like their agnolotti, these few pieces of wagyu skirt made me want to come back to try out their other offerings.
Halfway through the course though, something felt off. After referencing the menu card, we realised that the white asparagus was missing from our plate. We alerted our waiter, and he came back with the missing culprits, but not after we had finished our meat.
The asparagus would have provided a nice texture and taste contrast with the skirt steak, but having it separately was also quite interesting, almost like an impromptu mini-course.
It was initially served just topped with the chopped chives. We requested for some of the bagna cauda sauce, and our waiter was happy to oblige with some artfully-placed blobs. Or at least that was his intent. I would say “A” for effort though, including the good service recovery.
Dessert was an espresso fondente, Piedmont hazelnut praline topped with Hibiki Harmony cream. There was no way for me to verify the strangely-specific Japanese whisky reference, but there was definitely the taste of whisky in the cream.
The official dessert course was quite nice, but what we were more impressed with was actually the petit fours served at the very end. We were each presented with a yuzu and white chocolate truffle topped with a heart-shaped leaf.
Three things struck me as I popped it into my mouth.
One, this was a really good truffle. Two, how much pain and suffering did the kitchen staff assigned to cutting out those tiny leaves have to go through. And three, what did they do to deserve this cruel and unusual punishment.
We told Kush how much we enjoyed the chocolate and he immediately offered to get us a couple more, which we politely declined. We did ask if they were sold separately, but unfortunately he replied in the negative. He shared that they were a regular offering though, giving us yet another good reason to return.
On our way home, I checked out Gemma’s website and noticed that they had a Sunday Bottomless Cocktail Brunch (S$128++/pax), comprising a selection of 10 sharing dishes and free-flow cocktails. The dishes were described in their usual level of detail, and they all sounded very appetising indeed.
- Appetisers: Challans duck prosciutto, taggiasche olives soil, cassis jam; Yellowfin tuna tartare, fresh green peas, fragole nostrane, cod emulsion; Charred baby romaine, crispy farmer’s bacon, macadamia nuts, green apple
- Pastas: Spanner crab cappelletti, piselli, pickled pearl onion & organic egg yolk; Spaghetti ‘monograno felicetti’ cacio & pepe
- Steak & Sides: Gemma duo steak (Jack’s creek beef tenderloin | Sanchoku wagyu skirt); Magnuli wils broccoli, garlic salmoriglio, pecorino; Whipped agria potato, purple sage, fermented parsnip
- Desserts: Filo pastry cannelloni; White chocolate earl gray ganache; Smoked gelato
- Cocktails: Martini; Negroni; Espresso Martini; Whisky Sour; Apertass
Given how much we enjoyed our lunch (not just the delicious food but also the warm service and cosy ambience), there’s a high chance that we’ll be back again, to spend a relaxing weekend brunch at Gemma Steakhouse.
