Dessert for dinner? Ami lets you eat cake and more

NEW RESTAURANT

Ami Patisserie 27 Scotts Road Singapore 228222 Tel: 8907 6146 Open for lunch and dinner: 12 pm to 3 pm; 7 pm to 9 pm

AMI Patisserie is a cake shop that upends dining conventions as we know them. One – that you can’t have dessert for dinner. Two – you can’t open a restaurant between an abandoned mansion and a cemetery, and expect the living to go willingly. Ami does both. And surprisingly, it works.

But first, you have to find it. When we arrive, all we see is this empty, dilapidated black-and-white bungalow on Scotts Road. Not only does it have scary movie potential, it leads to a mysterious backyard filled with random statues resembling the faded tombstones of a “terracotta” warrior and his dearly departed pets: a couple of horses, a deer and, weirdly, a crane stepping on a turtle.

Nobody can tell us why they’re there. Maybe they’re lost souls who got off the bus to purgatory on a loo break, and the driver left without them.

Anyway, you can look at them while you have cake and coffee inside the much more cheerful, Zen-like Japanese tea house that suddenly springs up in this garden of gloom.

Step in and it feels like the baked version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The smell of sugary, buttery pastry follows you everywhere, even to the pristine, spa-like bathroom with a faucet that turns on a mini-waterfall. The air-conditioning is set to such a low temperature, it’s possible pastry chef Makoto Arami can’t differentiate people from chocolate – you might need a jacket if you don’t want to end up like a praline.

Ami started out as an online bakery with its signature choux puffs that you could order to cheer yourself up during the pandemic. Now, its physical shop lets you take away pastries or eat them in-house, but only for a maximum of 12 people or three tables in the cafe section. But where you want to be is inside the “Tsudoi” dining room, where chef Arami proves that pastries don’t have to be limited to dessert, with a full-scale lunch and dinner omakase priced at S$118. 

With his Japanese aesthetic and an arsenal of seasonal ingredients, Arami turns cake and cookies into worthy starters, mains and yes, desserts.

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The uncomplicated setup features a clean, unembellished counter, where he alternates with an assistant to assemble eight mini courses, each of which speaks for itself.

Rich hazelnut financiers kick things off, blurring the lines between sweet and savoury as Arami’s assistant chef furiously grates fresh hazelnuts over the chewy, fragrant butter cakes in the same way one would shred cheese or truffles. The pile of shavings even tricks your brain into thinking you’re eating a savoury amuse bouche.

Bread is a course in itself, with an excellent coil of flaky seaweed pastry that peels off in tender, cushiony layers, and somewhat more conventional sourdough bread.

There seem to be more women than men dining in this elbow-to-elbow space, which is a cue that the food is more delicate than hefty. But curb any thoughts of getting a burger later, and just appreciate the little nuances like the layering of textures, the intense flavours of the Japanese fruits and vegetables used, and the polished baking techniques.  Arami’s signature choux puffs, for example, offer a light, whispery crunch before making contact with the creamy egg salad filling, topped with creme fraiche and caviar.

Amela tomatoes – more fruit than vegetable – are a sweet-sour topping for a crisp parmesan cookie sandwiched with fromage blanc. It’s tangy, cheesy and everything nice.

Uni also makes a successful guest appearance on buttery toasted brioche, while the only non-baked main course stars eggplant in various forms. A savoury creme brulee with a crisp sugar shell is topped with vanilla-like miso ice cream and fluffy hot pieces of fried eggplant. With the meaty textures and hot custard, you almost forget there’s no meat in this menu at all.

Then it’s back to Arami’s comfort zone, where he shines with his mastery of fruit and chocolate. There’s a zingy bittersweet gin jelly topped with setoka orange segments and orange granita, followed by crisp cookie layers sandwiched with coffee and chocolate cream.

Strawberries and cream are a no-brainer match with stewed Fukuoka berries and milk ice cream. And for a final hit of sugar, chewy homemade warabi mochi is drizzled with brown sugar syrup.

More subtle than statement-making, Arami shows that there’s more to dinner than crawling out of a restaurant after a surfeit of meat and fish. Of course, he could use a few more dishes in his savoury repertoire to make his Tsudoi menu more than an extended afternoon tea. But by expanding the job description of financiers beyond just petit fours, he’s letting us have our cake and eat it too.  Rating: 7