Sage The Restaurant

C says:

Wow. Sage has broken our recent spate of bad meals, and we owe mad props to S. She was appalled when she found out that we’ve been living within a stone’s throw of Sage and still hadn’t tried it. To be honest, we’d walked by many times but found it too intimidating, but since we’re moving out of the area soon, we decided to come here before leaving.

Now I completely regret not having that conversation with S sooner. To think that we’ve wasted 3 months of proximity to Sage’s awesome food. Turns out the ambience inside isn’t as posh and intimidating as we feared; just a simple, understated appeal. Run by Chef Jusman So and his wife Kimberly who takes care of front of house, Sage serves a modern take on French cuisine.

In order to try as many dishes as possible, A had the 6-course degustation menu, and I ordered off the a la carte menu. The meal was off to a good start, with good home-made bread and a fabulously thick balsamic syrup for dipping, and an amuse bouche of arugula vichyssoise with lemon cream and caviar.


To start with, I had the much lauded Mushroom Cappuccino, which was served with truffle-infused scrambled eggs with asparagus and morel mushroom. Best mushroom soup I’ve had in ages – smooth, complex and extremely flavourful. Paired with the headily-scented truffle eggs, this was another hint of good stuff to come.


The Duck Confit was served on top of a savoy cabbage parcel stuffed with mushroom and foie gras. The cabbage parcel had a slightly acidic tang that helped to cut through the richness of the duck. The skin of the duck was ridiculously crisp, but I personally thought the duck could’ve benefitted from a little more fat. The meat was flavourful but a tad dry.


Before I go on to dessert, let’s move on to A’s degustation menu. He started with a crab salad with avruga caviar, tomato and fennel cream. I actually wasn’t too taken with this, because I couldn’t quite get used to the flavour combination, which was both sour and licorice-y.


However, the meal picked itself up after that and kept getting better and better. The next course was Quail – grilled quail breast with quail leg confit served on Jerusalem artichoke cream, Swiss chard and ricotta tortellini and a quail egg. This was good – there was actually a distinction between the different quail preparations, and the perfect sunny side up quail egg rocked.


The Hokkaido Scallop was next – seared scallop on crab cake with smoked salmon parfait, a dill sauce and a parmesan tuile. This dish was the reason that A chose the degustation menu, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The scallop was meaty and perfectly seared, and the various components came together really well. This dish made A really happy.


Next up was the Foie Gras dish, which was all mine save for a bite that A had. I don’t know how they did it, but the foie gras was perfectly seared with a crisp crust yet meltingly soft and runny inside. The foie gras was paired with an apple and raisin crumble, and the fruitiness went well with the foie gras.


The Veal dish sealed our opinion that this was the best meal we’ve had since our US/Vancouver trip. The veal was wrapped in smoked bacon and roasted to a medium rare, and served with a porcini mushroom risotto. The veal was insanely tender and infused with the smokiness of the bacon, and the risotto was nothing short of amazing.


A’s dessert was a chocolate soufflé with amaretto ice cream and crème anglaise. This was like a light airy chocolate fondant, and pretty good. I had the strawberry crumble – oven-dried strawberries on crumble dough, served with clotted cream ice cream. In contrast, mine was quite heavy but really up my alley, flavour-wise.

Front of house was excellent as well, thanks to Kimberly’s friendly yet professional service. The waitstaff were polite and not condescending, and after a string of (frankly unwarranted) dismissive behaviour at other less impressive restaurants, this was a refreshing and welcome change.

We were so impressed with Sage that we’ve already made another reservation in a fortnight, because one meal simply didn’t allow us to try everything that we wanted to on the menu. This has broken our bad meal curse, and I hope it bodes well for our anniversary meals next weekend.

A says:

The best meal I’ve had in Singapore in months. I’m adding this to my list of favourites. It’s a bit pricy but definitely worth it. Excellent service and amazing food. I loved everything except the crab salad and dessert.

Sage, The Restaurant
No. 7 Mohamed Sultan Road
Tel: 6333-8726
Lunch: 12noon – 2:30pm (Wednesday to Friday)
Dinner: 6:30pm – 10:30pm (Tuesday to Sunday)
Closed on Mondays & Public Holidays
http://www.sagerestaurants.com.sg/