A new restaurant now sits in the sweeping 10,000-square-feet colonial bungalow atop a hill at Labrador Park. The historic black-and-white building was once home to Thai restaurant Tamarind Hill, but now houses Asu, a fine-dining concept led by Singaporean chef Ace Tan, who puts forth a unique take on progressive Asian cuisine. The 25-seater is one of three establishments in the building, including Cantonese-Teochew restaurant Shan and a bar.
The space at Asu is often described as ‘monastic’, and understandably so. It’s washed out in white, concrete, and oxidised bronze, complete with simple wooden furnishings. And then there’s the atmosphere as you step in – a curious, calm, yet inviting one, like a prelude to the meditative experience that’s about to follow. The first thing that catches the eye is a sweeping dining table that surrounds the open kitchen like seats in an amphitheatre, almost as if setting you up to watch a performance.
The term ‘progressive Asian cuisine’ is enough to make eyes roll, but Ace is quick to dispel all prejudices. Here, ‘progressive’ doesn’t just mean applying shiny new culinary trends to age-old Asian foods, but also exploring the progress or journeys they undertake over time – their origins and transformations – and then expressing them in creative dishes. To help with that, he’s got a diverse team of chefs from all over the continent who collectively put out two menus (from $188 per person) each season.
A debut menu titled ‘Origins’ puts this all into practice, delving deep into familiar local dishes with ingenious recreations of crystal dumplings, oyster bao, ngoh hiang, raw fish porridge, and more. Meanwhile, Asu’s second menu is all about preservation and the complex flavours that can be achieved with this age-old technique. Expect everything from pickled mussels and 20-year-aged Shaoxing, to red koji wine and a house-aged braise. And the team has got plenty more ideas up their sleeves, toying with various Asian culinary traditions in the menus to come.
But it’s not all techniques and brain juice at Asu. The food here is also steeped in Ace’s personal experiences – early food memories, influences from the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) shop his family ran, his time as a chef in Korea where he learnt how to forage for ingredients, and many more separate instances. And so, like a bricolage, each menu is an amalgamation of references that require Ace’s incisive storytelling to truly pry apart. Sit at the counter where you can, because that’s where you can catch the chefs in action and hear the nitty gritty details behind each dish.