New Ember plays it safe

RESTAURANT REVAMP

Restaurant Ember

50 Keong Saik Road

Tel: 6347-1928

Open for lunch and dinner

Mon to Fri: 11.30am to 2.30pm; 6.30pm to 10pm. Open for dinner only on Sat. Closed on Sun.

THIS may sound a little weird, but have you ever been to a restaurant and felt like slapping the menu?

This inexplicable urge comes about while scanning the selections at the freshly re-painted Restaurant Ember: carpaccio of ocean trout; burrata cheese and tomatoes; duck confit; bouillabaisse; slow-cooked Angus short rib; tarte tatin ... all that is needed to round off Lesson One in Menu-Planning for the Risk-Averse Chef would be chocolate lava cake. There isn't, but hang on - there's chocolate brownie instead.

Although we fight the urge to snap at our exceedingly nice server with a withering, "Is that it? Isn't this supposed to be a new menu?", it must be said that there is nothing wrong with the classics. Not everybody can do the classics well. Entire reputations have been built on a chef's way with bourguignon and saucisson. It is a skill to be respected. But when a respectable restaurant, which has been serving the same food - in the same interior decor - for 12 years, decides to change chef (and colour scheme) and start a new journey, you wonder if "more of the same" is the right way t…