During the 25 years I have known my brother-in-law I have never doubted a word he has said (despite the fact that is a passionate Liverpool supporter). But I have always thought that his tales of quite how food-obsessed Singaporeans are bordered on hyperbole.
Every time he returns from a trip to this verdant city-state to visit his wife’s enormous family, the tales of what he has eaten in their company grow more enviable – of enormous gatherings round the table whether they are visiting friends, going on numerous shopping trips or on longer trips to play the casinos in the hotels of neighbouring Malaysia.
But during less than 24 hours in Singapore I have come to realise that none of these tales is in any sense overblown. While there may have been nothing to nibble on and no more than water to drink in the car during the 20-minute journey from Changi Airport, no sooner had we turned into the entrance to the hotel than the driver was listing all the restaurants in the hotel where we could eat later that night.
And that would only be after we had polished off all the food that waited for us in the room. There were a couple of baskets of fruit sitting on top of the television which we barely had time to study before the bell went and in walked a waiter bearing two dim sum baskets with warm, sweet pastries to see us through to dinner. These were set next to the plate of hand-made chocolates that awaited our arrival.
Although we were not planning to eat in any of the Conrad Centennial’s numerous restaurants, it was hard not to be impressed by its overall efficiency and the politeness of all of its staff. Reservation requests by email had been greeted by an immediate response while the 10-minute delay it took to satisfy the request for a forgotten computer adaptor was heralded by abject apologies. Best of all, for me anyway, was the vigour of a 30-minute back massage (Singapore $60) from a diminutive masseuse which seemed to restore all the muscles and nerves in my neck ready for the onward flight to Sydney.
It also reawakened my appetite for the dinner at Coriander Leaf, recommended to me by Vikram Aggarwal, who runs www.eat2eat.com, an online restaurant reservation booking service that could prove extremely useful for anyone travelling in Asia. Eat2eat.com is now growing strongly throughout Asia, so much so that I was unable to catch up with Vikram as he was away on a business trip to Shanghai.
Coriander Leaf is situated in Clarke Quay, a modern development about a 10-minute taxi ride from the hotel which overlooks the river and is packed with shops, cafés and restaurants: Japanese, Indian, a Moroccan place with a Persian restaurant due to open shortly; a Chinese seafood restaurant overlooking the water and at least two Haagen-Daz outposts within 100 metres of each other.
Although the much-garlanded Coriander Leaf overlooks the water from a first floor, its air-conditioned cool is screened from the steamy exterior by glass despite what looks like open windows from below. Coriander Leaf’s founder Samia Ahad must be an extremely energetic woman as the restaurant doubles as a cookery school (separated by a large glass partition). We could see it being used that evening for a large Singaporean gathering, each person taking it in turns to coo over the very young, latest addition to the clan.
Samia’s aim is to make her restaurant a culinary hub for the cooking of the Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia. We passed over the numerous Middle Eastern first courses in favour of more spicy Asian ones, crab cakes, peppered Szechuan beef and, best of all, Vietnamese rolls with a really tangy peanut sauce. There were fewer Asian dishes among the main courses than I had expected, one reason why two of us chose khao suey, a bowl of egg noodles in a rich chicken and coconut broth with diced green chillis, topped with a small, grilled slipper lobster tail that was very good. But where the kitchen showed its dexterity was in the more humdrum braised shank of Australian lamb on a mound of mousseline potatoes. This dish has now become so widespread that many wonder not just how there can be enough to feature on so many menus but also what happened to them before they became so popular. But one consequence of this dish’s popularity is that it tends not to be cooked long enough, so the meat stays on the shank rather than sliding away from the bone as soon as you put your fork into it. Here was a precise example of just how it should be done, with some hint of Asian spices too. Our two desserts, chocolate Baked Alaska and what was described as a peanut butter parfait but was more like a scoop of ice cream, were sweet enough to satisfy Singaporeans’ obviously very sweet teeth. With a bottle of Chapoutier’s 2005 Condrieu (S$95) the bill came to S$290 for three including taxes and service.
Coriander Leaf is fun but I left hoping that Samia might in the not too distant future log on to Nick’s Food News and read my interview with Alan Saunders, the acoustics expert. Every surface in her restaurant is hard and as a result the noise level is extremely and unnecessarily high, with even our 15-year-old daughter complaining that she could not hear our conversation. Happily, we were on the way out before the table of 10 in the centre of the restaurant had got too many beers inside them.
Coriander Leaf, 3A River Valley Road, #02-12 Clarke Quay, Singapore 179020 tel 6732 3354
Conrad Centennial Hotel, 2 Temasek Boulevard, Singapore 038982 singaporeinfo@conradhotels.com