The Tippling Club

The Tippling Club opened its doors in 2008 with a major focus on food and drink pairing. The restaurant is situated towards the rear of a complex of buildings containing a number of different restaurants and food businesses on Dempsey Road; out to the west of the Orchard Road shopping area. The restaurant looks onto tropical rainforest although if you get there early in the evening you are given a seat at the main dining area that was conceived as an extended chef’s table. This means that you get to see the dishes being plated and each item is brought to you, and described, by one of the many chefs, including Ryan Clift, the Head Chef.

Ryan Clift was born in Devizes and following stints in Claridges with Marco Pierre White, Peter Gordon and Emanuel Renaut he emigrated to Australia. In conversation, the time with Emanuel Renaut was hugely influential and his dishes reflect a huge amount of thought that goes into their construction. Modern techniques are to the fore without losing sight of the blend of flavours and textures that combine to make a good dish.  

As you enter the restaurant the first thing you see is a wall-high window looking into a test kitchen featuring the type of apparatus that I used in my chemistry undergraduate days. As an example, where I’d use a rotary evaporator to evaporate solvents from a synthesised chemical, the kitchen here used it to distil carrot juice to produce an intense concentrate that tasted phenomenal but was too cost prohibitive to be practical. 

This sultry July evening provided my first lesson of visiting Singapore. No matter how close the restaurant seems to your hotel, think very carefully before walking. Google Maps listed the distance as 1.9 km and that would ordinarily be an insignificant distance but the early evening humidity ensured that by the time I arrived at the restaurant I was in desperate need of air conditioning to help cooling off. The staff at The Tippling Club were great in supplying damp cloths to help bring equilibrium back. Once settled it was time to look at the menu.

The evening menu has two options. The classic menu has 7 courses and has an optional pairing menu. The gourmand option is a 12-course menu with optional pairing. I’d been advised by @hungryhoss to go for the gourmand menu and chose to go for it after a lot of dithering. It’s not a decision to take lightly because the prices here, as in all of the top restaurants in Singapore, are not cheap.

The first course listed as amuse bouche but actually featured a succession of several different items. The first set the tone nicely for the evening. A flattened glass tube was filled with vichyssoise and topped with a cube of confit potato, caviar and fennel blossom. This was eaten by placing your mouth over the potato cube at the end and then drawing the vichyssoise into your mouth. The vichyssoise was wonderfully smooth and creamy with intense leek and potato flavours.  I desperately tried to suck the residual soup out of the straw but really I just wanted another hit.

Next was a chicken curry mousse with deep fried curry leaves and crispy rice. The mousse provided a subtle burn that lingered after each mouthful. The crispy rice gave a satisfying crunch that livened up the feel of each spoonful in the mouth. The rice was my favourite component, although the brittle curry leaves were pretty damn good too.

The third amuse bouche was one of the highlights of the night. A slate with a brown pool of liquid at one end and what looked liked two pieces of burnt embers. A pair of tweezers accompanied the slate. The embers were “charred” green pepper where the pepper was deep-fried in squid ink batter. The sauce was a wasabi soy dip and the combination of the pepper with the sauce was phenomenal.

This was followed by a lidded glass jar. The lid was removed to reveal a smoked and pickled quail’s egg on seaweed. The smoky taste of the egg was great but the flavours stepped up even more when the yolk burst into your mouth.

The fifth amuse bouche was a potato crisp encompassing tomato confit and capo di bellota ham. This was another lovely mouthful, with the tomato giving a bright, fresh contrast to the salty ham and crunchy potato.

Next up a palate cleanser that was similar in approach to the deconstructed tomato bread from Alkimià. Freeze-filtered gazpacho had wonderful intense fresh tomato flavour. The straw contained essential oil of basil that adsorbed to the straw walls so each time the gazpacho was drawn through the straw a hit of the basil oil came up too. This was a brilliant approach to a classic taste combination.

Every single amuse bouche was superb, each exploding with little bursts of flavour and every one had you wanting to try them again before going onto the full tasting menu.

The first course proper was a freshly shucked Brittany oyster stuffed with apple tartare and topped with microherbs, apple olive oil. Parsley infused champagne was poured onto the dish as it was served. The fresh marine burst of the oyster and acid apple were delightful together but the champagne added a fresh vibrancy to it all. This was another lovely dish.

The next course of smoked eel was spectacular to look at as well as being my favourite dish of the night. The gently warmed smoked eel was served with braun bread crumbs, shallots, mustard ice cream, fennel fronds and coiled cucumber shavings. The whole dish was topped with a shallot net. There were a lot of different components that all worked together well but the stars of the dish were the eel and the mustard ice cream that combined spectacularly. The dried fennel was a really nice touch and the pickled then fried silver skin onions were excellent too.

First meat course was billed as foie gras Gluhwein.  Another visually impressive dish particularly when you cut into the foie gras and the mulled wine flowed out. The foie gras was presented on a heap of spiced brioche crumbs and served with gluhwein meringues and sliced plum. I found the cinnamon in the gluhwein too strong particularly as it’s a flavour that I really don’t like. That said, it was much nicer in the gentler meringues. The plum and foie gras were really good together. If the foie gras filling had a more subtle spice then I think this would have worked much better for me.

The following dish was the one that was least successful for me. First of all I hated the serving bowl. The deep narrow bowl made it difficult to eat from. The langoustine came with mussel, chorizo, white beans, toasted hazelnuts and parsley. For me, the langoustine struggled to stand up to the other strong flavours in the dish. The tomato base to the sauce was lovely but the white beans were mere bystanders in the dish. It wasn’t all bad but did not measure up to the dishes that preceded it.

The next course was meagre, also known as wreckfish or stone bass. The fish was poached and served with braised salsify, porcini mushroom mousse and roasted porcini mushrooms. The whole dish was topped with buffalo mozzarella milk skin with pea shoots and black truffle was grated over it as it was served. The salsify was pickled and was superb. The whole dish was intensely mushroomy so it could overwhelm the fish, although the meager had a lovely flavour.

The next meat course was another high in the meal. Sous-vide Kagoshima wagyu was served with scallop, cucumber, sea grapes and sesame seeds. Dashi broth was poured on after the dish had been served. The tender beef had superb flavour that sat well in the smoky dashi broth. The scallop provided an intensely sweet counterpoint. The whole dish was really delicious.

The beef was good, and then the pigeon turned out to be even better. Slow roast pigeon breast and confit wing were served with Jerusalem artichoke, lemon vinaigrette, caramelised onion purée and nasturtium leaves. A light dusting of black olive powder garnished the dish. The lovely pink pigeon breast was delicious but the revelation of the dish was the Jerusalem artichokes. The skin of the artichokes was burnt and then it was braised to give a deep smoky flavour. The sweet purée and acid vinaigrette also helped give the plate a nice balance of tastes.

The cheese course varies daily depending on the whims of the pastry chef. Unfortunately I got so carried away eating I forgot to take a picture. The cheese was a fairly strong tasting Spanish cheese (didn’t catch the name) served with smoked potato, wild chive flowers and puréed onion leaf. Extra virgin olive oil was poured over the dish. This was another nicely balanced dish with a classic combination of flavours.

Before desserts, there was a fun interlude with a couple of small tasters. The Fizz bomb had strawberry sherbet in an edible paper wrap and the black meteorite was a chocolate shell containing blood peach sorbet although it seemed to me that the shell was white chocolate based despite its colour. 

First of the two desserts was the Tippling Club’s take on Bassett’s liquorice allsorts. The most identifiable variant on a liquorice allsort, were he cylinders of homemade liquorice filled with mandarin sorbet. This was served with smoked yoghurt, coriander, nitrogen frozen mandarin and raspberry and this all topped a liquorice smear on the plate surface. The dish should have included freeze-dried grapefruit. However, when I mentioned that I could not eat grapefruit as the completed dish was described in front of me the chef was very obliging about taking it away and re-prepping it. Overall this was a lovely dessert with the mandarin sorbet & liquorice combinations and the intense freeze-dried fruits the standouts.

Unfortunately, I was so intrigued by the description of the next dish I didn’t take any photos. Textured milk presented a mix of different treatments of milk. Coconut milk sago was in the base of the dish for the sweetest element. This was accompanied by a sheep’s milk sorbet that had a flavour akin to yoghurt but was just wonderful. The dish was topped with shards of full cream milk and wood sorrel. The milk shards had been a challenge to develop and as far as I could gather where made with whipped whey protein, stabilised with xanthan gum before dehydration. The wood sorrel was the restaurant’s token acknowledgement of foraging and came from the grounds round the restaurant. Full of rich flavours contrasted by the acidic sorrel, this was a clever end to a superb meal.

As a final hurrah, a box was presented ahead of the bill. This contained three chocolates. My favourite of the three was the white chocolate with yuzu where the citrus fruit worked well with the rich chocolate. The second was a rosemary ganache and the third a light salted caramel i white chocolate.

Overall verdict.
This was a fantastic meal, full of real highs. Even the couple of dishes that were less to my taste still had lots of positives to them. The food was technically inventive but never lost sight of the fact that balance of flavours in each of the dishes was most important.

Although sitting at the kitchen bar may not suit most people, it’s great for the solo diner. Based on this experience, the Tippling Club is right up there amongst my favourite restaurants.

Would I revisit The Tippling Club?
In a heartbeat. A truly sensational place. I just hope I can find a way to get back to Singapore soon.


Overall Rating - 4.5/5