Comfort food, nice chairs at Revolution Wine Bistro

NEW RESTAURANT

Revolution Wine Bistro #0-15 Henderson Industrial Building 211 Henderson Road Singapore 159552 Tel: 8955-8168 Open all day Wed to Sat: 11am to 11 pm. Sun: 11am to 3 pm.

[SINGAPORE] As far as neighbourhood restaurants go, Revolution isn’t one. It sits in an industrial estate, and goods lorries are its friends. Nice public toilets are scarce too. “The third-floor one is the cleanest,” our server suggests helpfully. Heaven forbid what the second-floor one is like.

You don’t come here on a whim. You come because someone said it was good; you’re a devotee of the former RVLT; you go window-shopping at Fritz Hansen next door and stay for lunch because it’s cheaper than one of its chairs. 

Like designer furniture, Revolution is an investment – just not the money kind. If you bought into it before, you’re already reaping the dividends – the kinship of a loyal clientele that’s followed it from Carpenter Street to the unfashionable hinterland of Henderson. 

But it isn’t unfashionable if it’s deliberate, according to the iykyk crowd. Especially when it’s linked to the high-end Danish home retailer that also just moved in. Besides, what restaurant would turn down free Arne Jacobsen Grand Prix chairs and Piet Hein Superellipse tables?

If you’re not part of Revolution’s in-crowd, it feels like you’re late to a conversation that’s already in full swing. You don’t get why a wine bar offers only bottles and token house pours, and nothing else by the glass if you fancy variety. It’s best if you’re a table of drinkers with someone to call you a Grab when you’re done.

While RVLT fancied itself as a serious natural wine bar with token bar bites, it’s said to have upped its dining game at the same time that it decided to spell out its name. Chef Sunny Leong now gets to step up instead of playing second fiddle to a Zinfandel. Here, he bends hawker tropes to his will, but not so far that he goes off-field.

There is an ambitious tasting menu at dinner, but Leong throws out enough lunch nuggets – almost literally – that give you an inkling of where he leans. Think local favourites such as nasi lemak or rendang filtered through a fine dining lens, and vice versa. 

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To start, everybody orders the chicken nuggets (S$20) – not a mere snack but an anti-McDonald’s revenge drama. Golden squares of decibel-breaching crackling crunch give way to steaming-hot minced chicken patties within – chopped up soft bones adding a satisfying chew. It’s just slightly bland, but a hero sriracha sauce comes to the rescue.

Home-cured ocean trout (S$18) is thick-cut sashimi without the raw fish fears – deep-orange, buttery gravadlax that’s pretty but has more texture than taste. It’s a good nibbling partner with some sturdy sourdough bread (S$8) and addictive savoury kombu butter.

They’re out of the “hua diao” clam linguini that we wanted, but it’s not a major sacrifice to settle for the chicken thigh nasi lemak risoni (S$19.80), aka what happens when you give an Italian chef a recipe for sambal but withhold instructions for the rice. Thoughts of “why not just make a proper nasi lemak instead?” linger as you do a note-by-note comparison: creamy risoni pasta that’s good enough on its own even without the accompanying “hae bee hiam” sambal; and a well-grilled flattened turmeric-spiced chicken thigh instead of the usual deep-fried leg. 

We get buyer’s remorse from the prawn and avocado sandwich (S$18) – a thick slice of sourdough spread with mashed avocado and bouncy shrimp hiding under so much Marie Rose sauce, you’d think crustacean loan sharks were after them. Scrape off as much cocktail sauce as you can, and you might be able to taste the shrimp.

Desserts won’t leave you ambivalent. At just S$4, gula melaka parfait stroopwafel is a grown-up version of Magnolia wafer ice cream – delicate crisp waffles sandwiched with rum-spiked gula melaka ice cream that tastes almost like rum and raisin, with cute whirls of cream piped around it.

You can pop baby pandan madeleines (S$6) non-stop – the morsels of freshly-baked sponge cakes are crisp around the edges and fluffy, like little pandan pillows.

Leong’s skills are solid, and that foundation holds even if the ideas lean towards twists for the sake of change rather than reason. There’s a fine line between literal switcheroos and original thinking. A quick glance at the dinner menu looks promising, and at S$98, warrants a second visit.

Maybe that next time will require reinforcements in the form of bottle drinkers – and inching closer to Revolution’s in-crowd.

Rating: 6.5