It’s a rare occasion for a restaurant to have absolute mastery over both meat and seafood. It just so happens that Bedrock Origin is a natural at both, with a thoughtfully-planned menu that melds together the best of both land and sea.
This restaurant in Oasia Resort Sentosa is a lighter, cleaner take to the original Bedrock Bar & Grill steakhouse that’s in town. Not just in terms of the menu: it has natural light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows and is dressed from tip-to-toe in classy decor. A quiet, effortless charm drapes over it all – exactly what we expect from a sophisticated Sentosa restaurant that doesn’t bore us silly with a cast-iron dress code.
From now to August 18, Bedrock Origin is onto their second edition of the Great Beef & Reef Series, a wine pairing menu that pays heed to the freshest of produce. It starts at $188 per person for the six-course tasting menu, with an additional $108 add-on for wine pairing. Those who drink, it’s an obvious choice: say yes. The menu showcases new world award-winning wines, from the Californian vineyards of Orin Swift.
But the crux of any tasting menu, no matter what wine aficionados might say, is the food itself. It starts with a trio of shellfish: Sakoshi oyster with scattered sherry pearls, pickled mussels dressed with a chimichurri sauce, and pickled Korean flower clams. Displayed beautifully on a curved stone bowl, this makes for a light appetiser, but one that tastefully shows off the chef’s culinary skill. This is paired with an Orin Swift Mannequin 2018, a chardonnay with the sweet notes of apples and pears.
The menu stays true to the tried-and-tested standards of any degustation dinner with a soup course, but it’s far unlike soups we’ve had in comparatively more staid restaurants. This comes as a cold corn soup, textures of creamy corn jus coming through, topped with a generous mound of Japanese king crab.
With that, all appetisers are done and dusted with, and it’s time to move onto the start of the main courses. Good news for small eaters: as a diner who needs to consciously limit myself to a sliver of free-flow bread, I’m still left happily ravenous at this stage.
The following three mains though, are significantly more sizeable. The pan-fried aged grouper is where Bedrock Origin inches ahead from other surf and turf joints. Dry-aged steak isn’t necessarily commonplace, but it’s still a culinary method that’s been replicated all around the world. But dry-aged fish? It's a novel technique that only select restaurants offer, including fine-dining Marguerite and Edomae-style sushi restaurants, meant to deliver a stronger, more intense flavour.
Here, the three-day aged grouper sits atop an egg white custard that’s oddly akin to a firm chawanmushi. As a mark of all decent pan-seared fish, the skin is delightfully crispy. The added slices of Jamón ibérico doesn’t detract – but works together harmoniously with the grouper. This is paired with a full-bodied Orin Swift Grenache 2019.
The next course, a chargrilled smoked octopus, doesn’t leave quite as strong an impression. Granted, grilling an octopus tentacle over apple wood promises a smoky flavour and coveted black bits of char – decent when paired with an Orin Swift Machete, a Californian red blend with black fruity notes. A tasty seafood dish but still outshined by the final main: a hefty slab of A5 Satsuma Wagyu.
This was the true star of the show. First seared then grilled with a wraparound nori layer, this comes served with an eggplant purée and crisp potato pave that’s tossed in beef fat. With Satsuma Wagyu being a prized meat whereby cattle is grain-fed for over 650 days, it comes as no surprise that this course was our favourite of the lot. The wine pairing, an Orin Swift Palermo Cabernet Sauvignon, is far from bold and offers a mellow contrast.
End the six-course menu with a mille-feuille, a flaky, layered treat piped with yoghurt mousse and studded with fresh raspberries. The last drink of the night is an Orin Swift Zinfandel, a red with lingering raspberry notes.
Head chef Isaac Tan juggles his time between both Bedrock kitchens, but had plenty of sway in designing this particular menu. Trust his palate – he has years of experience under his belt, and been with Bedrock since 2008. He believes in treating ingredients with utmost respect, and says that “fresh produce, whether it is meat, seafood or vegetables, are at the heart of every dish I create”. When a chef is as capable of deftly searing a dry-aged steak as he is chargrilling fiddly octopus tentacles, that’s when you know that you’re in good hands.
The six-course wine tasting menu at Bedrock Origin might not be exceedingly experimental, but still very solid in its quality and respectful treatment of produce from land and sea. Those curious about the usual wine list, know that the restaurant carries close to a hundred fine wine labels and their in-house sommelier is well-versed in mixing and matching different grape varietals.
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