On the natural-wine pioneer that refuses to be precious about the thing it pioneered. It pairs serious biodynamic bottles with house-made Chicken McNuggets in a disco-ball room, and the anti-reverence turns out to be substance, not pose.
Natural wine tends to carry reverence and pretension. RVLT, the pioneer, refuses to be precious, pairing serious biodynamic wine with house-made McNuggets that turn out to be a genuinely serious dish.
On a Tokyo sushiya's first overseas outpost that went viral on $1.99 nigiri and a $19.90 'omakase', where the value turns out to be real, the Edomae genuinely democratised, and the omakase label the one thing it oversells.
On a just-opened cocktail bar inside one of Singapore's restored Four Grand Mansions, where the program has been built to compete with the room rather than accompany it. A clay-aged whiskey cocktail does the choice in one glass.
On a viral Neil Road dessert house that sells itself as elevated tong sui, the humble Cantonese sweet soup. It quietly gives itself away in the gap between what it does brilliantly and what it fumbles, which is the gap between a dessert café and the heritage it advertises.
On a loud Bukit Pasoh party wine bar that won't pick a side in the war wine culture insists on. It pours the avant-garde natural and the classical canon from the same 2,000-bottle list, treats wine as pleasure instead of doctrine, and runs a serious kitchen that proves the irreverence isn't careless.
On Singapore's first dedicated sake-cocktail bar, where the showpiece is a glass of sake whipped to look and taste like beer. The quieter trick, a carafe described in plain words instead of jargon, turns out to be the better one.
On a thirty-year-old Tanjong Pagar shophouse that kept making Peranakan food the traditional way while the cuisine was modernised around it, and an ayam buah keluak that proves the heritage dish was always finished.
On a Tanjong Pagar flagship that has been the bar everyone else measures themselves against for long enough that nobody actually measures it anymore.
On a Bangkok viral brand's Singapore debut that sells one product, pre-order only, with no walk-in and no impulse, where the narrowness turns out to be the quality.
On a music-centric North Canal Road bar that treats taste as something to share rather than something to weaponise.