Magic Square comes full circle

NEW RESTAURANT

Magic Square 7 Portsdown Road Singapore 139298 For bookings, go to magicsquare.sg Open for dinner only Tues to Sat: 6pm to 8pm; 8.15pm to 10.15pm

THERE was a time when mod-Singaporean cuisine had the authenticity of a made-in-Singapore English movie. Deconstructed chicken rice was like stage-trained actors speaking caricatured Singlish, while crab quenelles with freeze-dried chilli sauce were about as real as heartlanders articulating in Queen's English.

While made-in-Singapore movies now find their voice by speaking in languages other than English, the path is still open for Singapore chefs who continue to walk the fine line between reinventing their origin story or creating a completely new one. In other words, they're caught between a rock and a hard place - damned if they veer too close to glorified hawker food, and damned if they become progressive to the point of a wannabe Noma with fermented buah keluak.

Even as Singaporean chefs try to figure out their identity, they've now found a willing audience to tag along on their journey, and the new Magic Square is one of the latest platforms for them to strut their stuff.

It's certainly come a long way since it first appeared three years ago as a fledgling incubator for young chefs to try their hand at running their own restaurant. It was done cheaply and the chefs were eager but green. Fast forward to 2021 and its standalone colonial building in Portsdown Road is the freshly scrubbed new kid on the block next to the rough-and-we-like-it Colbar. Add a built-to-specifications kitchen and a matt black counter with overhead lamps for Instagram-ready photos, and you have yet another hard-to-book eatery to test your fastest-fingers-first skill on.

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Because of its incubator status, Magic Square falls into a neat and forgiving experimental genre, with the freedom to explore without being overly judged. But this time, the young chefs have a mentor to fall back on - alumnus Marcus Leow, who has since graduated to head chef status at Naked Finn. Now, he leads his proteges on a merry journey of culinary influences that somehow add up to something totally original.

Until the end of this month, you get to taste Leow's menu, which owes its strength to several elements - his exposure to different cuisines, a knack for balancing textures and harmonising flavours, and a palate that tunes everything to suit local tastes.

The first bites are an indication of what's to come - slippery raw squid on a crunchy rice cracker with a surprise spiciness of green chilli sambal; a tart of wet-aged aji cubes dusted with curry leaf powder; and an excellent pea tart with sweet peas balanced on salted kaya that's a stroke of genius. You can pretty much discern the inspiration - Japanese, nordic, aging accents with his Asian input.

The fundamental premise is not so much about presenting familiar Singaporean hawker-inspired tropes but using familiar ingredients - kaya, kway teow, buah keluak, curry etc - as ingredients in the way any other cuisine would make use of tomatoes, vinaigrette, lemons and so on.

The mild astringency of starfruit and belimbing figure in the next dish of botan ebi in an unlikely match up with stracciatella cheese dressed in laksa leaf oil and tart slices of belimbing. You don't taste the raw shrimp so much as appreciate the texture with the creamy juice and the refreshing starfruit juice, all combining into a creamy fruity whole.

Another winner is the chawanmushi-inspired slippery tofu custard aka tau hway, with braised cabbage, crispy tempeh bits, scallop strips, all in an intense chicken broth flavoured with black bean paste.

A fancy wok seems wasted when the roaring fire is used just to fry up some brussel sprouts leaves, but the wok hei is what makes the tender crunchy leaves, crowded on top of a truffle-like emulsion of buah keluak and olive vegetable.

The remaining dishes in the S$168 9-course offering follow in the same vein, as what started out as novel takes on a predictable pattern. Thick homemade rice noodles are dressed in green curry sauce with crunchy puffed buckwheat, dungeness crab and candlenut foam. Think a mild Thai-influenced green curry with crab and noodles.

Confit of John Dory, still firm and almost raw-like, is a fussy composition with Jerusalem artichoke puree, a tiny piece of very salty liver you're supposed to nibble on together with the fish, and an intense reduction using Chinese wine.

A pork rack we mistake for sous vide is actually cooked through on charcoal, with a spiced peanut butter and smoked eggplant puree, and a fermented jackfruit curry.

Pre-dessert is a refreshing granita of white achar, pickled cucumber and an espuma of kedondong fruit - never mind what's in it, and just enjoy this better-than-celery sorbet palate cleanser.

The main dessert of corn salat is great for Instagram but otherwise quite polarising. Some may enjoy the corn custard on glutinous rice served with a roasted candlenut ice cream, others may compare its aroma and taste with freshly churned old cupboard. It's interesting but there's a reason why people eat macadamia nuts and use candlenuts as a thickening agent. A tea of corn husk tastes like well, husk-flavoured water.

All in, it's a rousing debut for Magic Square, where the next chapter of the mod-Singaporean story begins, and keeps growing from here.

Rating: 7

WHAT OUR RATINGS MEAN

     10: The ultimate dining experience9-9.5: Sublime8-8.5: Excellent7-7.5: Good to very good6-6.5: Promising5-5.5: Average

Our review policy: The Business Times pays for all meals at restaurants reviewed on this page. Unless specified, the writer does not accept hosted meals prior to the review's publication.