Asian 'omakase' with a twist

MOBOMOGA

#01-58 UE Square 207 River Valley Road Singapore 238275 Tel: 6219 3430 Takeaway/delivery hours: 4pm to 9pm. Closed on Mon. To order: WhatsApp 9652-3999. Menu on its Facebook page

Meta

1 Keong Saik Road Singapore 089109 Tel: 6513 0898 Takeaway/delivery orders: 11.30am to 3pm; 5.30pm to 8.30pm. Closed on Mon. To order: metarestaurant.sg

Paradise Teochew

#03-04 Scotts Square 6 Scotts Road Singapore 228209 Tel: 6538-0644 Takeaway/delivery orders: 10.30am to 9pm daily. To order: paradiseteochewdelivery.paradisegp.com

Hashida Singapore

#01-01, 77 Amoy Street Singapore 069896 Tel: 8129 5336 Takeaway only: 12pm to 7.30pm daily. To order: WhatsApp 8129 5336 or visit hashida.sg

SO there are several, uh, takeaways, from the latest round of restaurant lockdowns besides looking forward to a month of clumpy pasta and wagyu steak with a pale surface of cooled fat. One: Restaurants that wouldn't otherwise give you a seat until after August are now lining up to feed you. Two: This is the only time that you'll get to enjoy designer comfort food from chefs used to flexing their creative muscles at S$250 plus per tasting menu. Three: Despite swearing off takeaway food since the last Circuit Breaker because once reheated, twice blah - restaurants seem better at curating dishes that travel, making us want to eat at our own dining table again.

But if plating or playing chef at home is more trouble than it's worth, and piecing together a cohesive meal from a long ala carte menu gives you FOMO anxiety, take the easy way out with these Asian omakase-inspired sets that offer both variety and value.

MOBOMOGA

A truncation of 'Modern Boys and Modern Gals', this tiny sake bar and its even smaller new sibling Apollon are tough to get into, so being able to dive into their well-chosen menu of small bites to go with sake is a welcome consolation prize.

The star attraction is the appetiser platter, which comes in various prices and combinations and is really a compilation of its greatest hits packed into a disposable Chinese New Year platter with 12 compartments. Priced from a basic S$50 version to its top of the line 'special' platter at S$128 nett, the latter is well worth it because there's enough there to fill up two to three medium appetites. Even if split between two, it's S$64 a person that gets you a combination of raw and cooked seafood that is way more interesting than a chirashi don.

This lucky dip on a tray is a boon for the indecisive - you can nibble on a creamy potato salad with a hint of truffle in the mayo, while a whole soft-cooked egg engulfs the mixture in a flood of gooey yolk. Elbowing for space in the tiny compartment are three slices of bouncy smoked beef tongue. There's marinated sashimi in the form of firefly squid with a garnish of wakame and ikura; two kinds of tuna (akami and chutoro) paired with mustard and slippery minced okra; botan ebi seasoned in shio koji; scallop and salmon tartare.

The platter even manages to squeeze in a whole simmered abalone sliced and stuffed back into its

shell with its own liver sauce and a bit of rice cooked in stock. Not only that, there's sliced A5 wagyu tataki paired with deep orange uni with a slight funk, and the house special - a clever combination of rich confit egg yolk, minced and sliced tuna shaped into a maki sushi.

The platter is a complete meal but if you do need something hot, Mobomoga is also known for its Shizuoka oden (S$30 for six kinds). The seasoned dashi broth is packed with daikon, boiled egg, meatballs and fish cake. It's on the salty side because - sake bar. So if you're planning on a sake session (which they also sell) then go for it. And enjoy this takeaway interlude while it lasts.

Teochew Paradise

For those who bemoan the way food delivery arrives tepid and lacklustre, Teochew Paradise heard you. Its chefs are so obsessive about heat retention that your Luxury Trio (S$158) of soup, main dish and dessert arrive mummified in cling wrap and are snugly tucked into a two level thermal bag with no room to move.

It replicates the fine dining Chinese meal complete with crockery (that you get to keep as a bonus), including a mini claypot to hold a braised 3-head abalone in a thick golden brown braising sauce, and two mini tureens.

When you finally release them from their cling wrapping, they reveal an intense double boiled chicken broth filled to the brim with combs of shark's fin, and a dessert of imperial bird's nest lightly sweetened with rock sugar. They take pains to specify that there's a 150gm worth of the delicacy crammed into the little ceramic pot, which makes this an attractive deal when paired with the other pricey ingredients.

The abalone is a decent size and tender, even if the sauce can get rather cloying. An alternative to shark's fin is a double-boiled fish maw and conpoy soup, with braised sea cucumber as the main course. There are three options available, making a fuss-free set meal for one that hits the spot.

Meta

One of the things we greatly missed after the Circuit Breaker was Meta's home style Korean cooking, which took a back seat when chef-owner Sun Kim devoted his time to more elaborate degustation menus.

Now, those popular comfort meals are back. We zero in on the Korean heritage menu (S$58) - a set meal that serves one, but the portions can easily feed two, although there may be a fight at the end over who gets the bigger bite of the banana cream puff.

Here, your Korean drama dining dreams come true with Miyeok-Guk or seaweed soup (supposedly a birthday tradition) that's a robust broth with lots of slippery wakame in it. A sweetish japchae has all the slippery sauteed noodles with shredded eggs and beef, and a rib-sticking Kimchi Deopbap - a less publicised cousin of bibimbap. Tender-chewy shortgrain rice gets mixed with a spicy gochujang sauce and kimchi (which is previously stir-fried for extra punch) and luscious chunks of pork belly and bean sprouts. We almost forget a little container of rich oxtail stew and potato puree which distracts us as we focus on the other three. The cream puff however, commands our attention so you may want to order extra.

This time, the chef has also introduced takeaway condiments such as white kimchi - a clear pickled cabbage, as well as extra tubs of stir-fried kimchi. There are other sets and ala carte options but if you want to further your drama immersion, stick to the real McCoy.

Hashida Singapore

While Japanese restaurants roll out a slew of sushi bentos, 'Hatch' Hashida goes one further with a takeaway omakase for one that features some of the highlights of his previous pop up which never made it to his current set up in Amoy Street.

If you're a fan of his awabi pie (S$40 ala carte) - a pot pie of tender abalone, shiitake mushrooms and a homemade cashew miso that makes the filling taste almost quiche-like, covered with a flaky pastry puff - it's part of his seven course set (S$200) that's a taste test of his creativity.

Kick off with a cold, delicate chawanmushi that's covered with a layer of crab sauce and uni, and get a nibble of monkfish liver with a caramelised surface that makes it rich and sweet. Things get a little warmer with silky textured black cod in a burdock sauce and shredded leeks, and meaty crab croquettes with a crunchy crust that you dip into homemade tartar sauce. Mixed vegetable tempura - including a whole baby corn presented in its husk - manages one final crunch before they succumb, but still a credible performance. But of course, the star of the meal is still the pie.

For a sweet ending, there's a little tub of wobbly chocolate pudding with a mild smokiness of hojicha, and doriyaki pancakes rolled around cubes of mochi. Musk melon and cherries complete the deal.

Hashida also caters to the sushi-loving set with fat futomaki (S$130) stuffed with fresh tuna, uni, tamago, white fish and anything else that can fit, along with marinated saba (S$95) and anago (S$65) sushi rolls.

Considering that S$200 won't get you anywhere at the dining-in version of Hashida, this might be a worthy investment.