Numb Restaurant at Marina One spices things up with fiery Sichuan fare

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Numb Restaurant #01-12 Marina One 5 Straits View Singapore 018935 Tel: 9460 1960 Open for lunch and dinner Mon to Sat: 11 am to 3 pm; 5 pm to 10 pm. Closed on Sun.

DINING at Numb is a bit like going to prison and choosing your own punishment. Full flogging, gentle lashing, slap on the wrist, what’s it going to be? Whatever it is, you know by the name that a meal here is not going to be a languid, delicately poised affair. In fact, the challenge here isn’t about getting off as lightly as possible, but to see who can suffer the most. 

Numb dishes up tasty torture in the CBD office tower of Marina One, part of a cluster of semi-casual eateries wrapped around landscaped greenery and a water fountain – which looks increasingly more inviting the further you sink into the chilli oil depths of Sichuan cooking that it’s created.

A large bar takes the spotlight as Numb styles itself as a place to set your palate alight and put it out with booze. You can nurse an after-work craft beer and nibble on Numb Numb truffle fries while you contemplate the interior decor, which looks as if a bunch of slate tiles, some cement screed and wicker chairs got together and didn’t know how to coordinate with each other. 

But what it lacks in design polish – you order by QR code too – Numb makes up for with some gutsy, tongue-tingling Chengdu-inspired fare that hits you where it hurts. But you don’t hold it against them. There’s nothing subtle or sophisticated – just bold, in-your-face flavours that prove there are so many ways to cry. 

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Still, Numb doesn’t go for the kill. It offers enough mild options for you to calibrate your suffering. But no pain, no gain, because the hotter it is, the tastier. 

Proof of the pudding is a simple-yet-super-punchy pork belly with classic garlic and chilli sauce (S$18.80). Cold slices of boiled pork belly with ample bounce and marbling are layered with cucumber slices and doused in garlic chilli oil. This one comes with a two-chilli (medium) warning. There’s enough heat to make your throat protest, with that familiar mala tingle creeping up on you. But you won’t stop dousing the pork and cucumber duo with the sauce until it’s all gone. 

If you like your spice journey in baby steps, the intriguingly named mashed pepper with century egg and eggplant (S$16.80) combines just a bit of heat and some showmanship.  Two wooden bowls appear with a pestle for you to mash an odd combination of jellied black eggs, meltingly soft eggplant, garlic, green and red chillis into a savoury, but not spicy, spread. There’s something about the century eggs that lends a rich umami to the pepper-eggplant mix, but falls just a little short.

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The staff are really friendly and helpful, even if they have no concept of spacing out your dishes. Maybe they don’t like seeing empty spots on a table, so ours are very quickly covered by everything we order, all at once.

A cloud of smoke clears to reveal a mountain of shredded applewood-smoked chicken (S$33.80), tossed in a jumble of preserved vegetables, chilli, caramelised onions and peanuts. It’s more smoky than spicy, and more mala-numbing than chilli-spicy. It’s fine for some short-term chewing of jammy onions, crunchy peanuts, salty pickle and dry-ish chicken bits, but the novelty dies very quickly.

We much prefer fishing for smooth, slinky slices of sea bass (S$39.80) in the deep, murky, evil-looking depths of mala-infused chilli oil. With its three-chilli warning, this is the real deal, where your tongue dies happy from the melt-in-the-mouth oil-poached fish, alternated with enoki mushrooms and soya bean sprouts. The bones left from filleting the fish are deep fried and dunked in too, but aren’t really worth the trouble to gnaw.

You can resuscitate your tongue with balls of sweet sour pork (S$32.80) shocked by an ice bath into crunchy cold nuggets – more sharp than sweet – and nestled with fresh strawberries and blueberries. Pretty, but nothing more.

Numb may know how to spice things up, but it doesn’t do too badly in the sweet department either. Brown sugar ice jelly (S$6.80) is a quivering, refreshing treat of clear jelly, shaved ice, peanut powder, cubes of hawthorn and raisins. Another offering, brown sugar mochi (S$13.80) are crunchy-chewy deep-fried sticks dipped into brown sugar syrup, like you tiao and mochi in perfect matrimony.

It isn’t often that you choose to eat out and suffer, but at Numb, there’s a perverse pleasure that comes with it. Maybe not too often, but this is one punishment we’re almost happy to get.

Rating: 6.5