Eden aims to raise the bar on hotel dining

NEW RESTAURANT Eden Restaurant Level 4, Pullman Singapore Orchard 270 Orchard Road Singapore 238857 Tel: 6603-8888 Open daily: 6:30 am to 11:00 pm

WE WONDER if hotel restaurants go home at night harbouring deep resentment towards their free-living independent counterparts. Do they grumble quietly about how they could be pushing the culinary envelope and redefining the dining landscape too if they weren’t bogged down with providing a daily “buffet breakfast of Asian specialities and beloved international favourites” for guests who book an all-inclusive hotel stay?

With new hotels opening up on a regular basis, the current trend is to create unique identities for the ubiquitous all-day-dining restaurant.

Eden is the latest to spring up at the brand-new Pullman Singapore, bringing fresh hospitality and eating distractions to Orchard Road. It already has a convenient location in its favour, so the next question is whether Eden has enough pull to draw diners through the ground floor lobby and up to the fourth floor.

If Mother Nature wanted to treat herself to a staycation, she would feel quite at home in this “garden” of Eden, with its painstaking efforts to create a conservatory-like ambience. Hanging planters, shrubbery creeping across wall ledges and cleverly positioned skylights to capture natural light and the surrounding city view put you in a relaxed mood.

But it’s not as spacious as it looks when it starts filling up and people start appearing at your elbows and air-kissing in full violation of your personal air space.

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A strong customer turnout is good, albeit overwhelming for the kitchen and service teams. The restaurant staff veer from a “I wanna be your friend” demeanour to “I’m not really sure what’s happening” uncertainty as our food comes in fits and starts and everyone tries their hardest to cope.

There’s little sense of urgency in the large open kitchen as our orders come really slowly even though we’re one of only two tables occupied. We hear a tantalising sound of a wok even before we order, a consistent clanging that strangely doesn’t materialise in any food going to anybody. So we don’t know if someone’s cooking or if it’s part of an anger management course.

There’s only a streamlined menu for lunch so dinner is the best time to check out the full extent of the spread here. It’s encouraging that hotel staples such as burgers and fish and chips have been replaced by a more thoughtful attempt at originality. The food is generic modern Asian, but Thai influences figure strongly with lemongrass as the herb of choice.

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From a price-quality standpoint, Eden performs adequately once you calibrate your expectations. It’s not expensive by normal standards, unless you pick the premium options, ie, a Szechuan T-bone or chilli crab, both priced at S$138 and enough for two. 

Otherwise, the “signature” crab cakes (S$26) offer fair value with three patties of shredded canned crab meat packed with red pepper bits for colour and deep-fried for a crisp crumbed exterior. A garlic aioli with a spike of citrus lends a bit of zing to the mundaneness of commercial crab.

The fixation with lemongrass is manifested in a prawn and clam broth (S$22), a pleasantly piping hot nod to tom yam but without spice or depth, given the very weak stock that holds overcooked baby shellfish and a solitary prawn split in half. We can see how lowering the cooking time and adding more oomph to the broth would raise the potential of this.

Still, the chef has a dab hand with meat, turning out a commendable Crusted Grilled Pork (S$34) that’s a juicy Duroc pork chop just a bit rare on the bone but yielding tender flesh that hasn’t lost its juices. The chop is also dusted with gingery crumbs – a nice touch – and paired with a sticky sweet-savoury onion-wine sauce.

Satay Lamb Rack (S$40) asks the existential question: Am I satay because the peanut butter tells me so? Not really. Just think three meaty if gristly grilled lamb chops, good enough on their own, stacked on gratuitous peanut sauce.

For sides, pick the garlic fried rice (S$12) – finally, something from the wok, and it’s pretty good with bits of fried egg and possibly a smidgen of salted fish. Skip the Asian stir-fry which is Chinese-style sauteed broccoli, carrots and too much capsicum.

For dessert, the chef overdoes the genre-bending with White Sesame Hokkaido Milk Puff (S$16). He takes flaccid Chinese glutinous sesame balls, stuffs them with a sickly sweet powdery Hokkaido milk paste and plonks them on mouth-puckering lemon curd. Order this for someone you don’t like and get the lemongrass jelly (S$12) with artificially-flavoured lychee pearls in a honey-sweet ginger syrup for yourself.

It’s not easy to escape the trope of hotel dining, but at least Eden tries. Know what to expect, and take it from there.

Rating: 6