Parisian dining comes to Table at Pierre Herme
The patisserie’s in-house restaurant is promising, but very much a work in progress
NEW RESTAURANT
Table by Pierre Herme Resorts World Sentosa WEAVE Level 1, #01-234/234A 8 Sentosa Gateway Singapore 098269 Tel: 6577-6688 Open daily: 9 am to 6 pm
GETTING into Pierre Herme is like winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. On the outside, it looks like the candy land of our dreams, with giant macarons stuck to the facade and the kind of rainbow colours reserved more for hallucinations than your living room walls.
Through its looking glass you see staff gliding by on cotton-candy clouds, perhaps on a sugar high from inhaling the confections sitting pretty under delicately pink scalloped glass. From your sweaty spot in the queue outside, you can only imagine the world within, filled with everything dreamy and creamy. Tough decisions await – stay, or give it up for the last loaf of basil tomato bread at Standard Bakery instead.
In your state of hazy sun-addled stupor, you wonder if maybe your efforts to get in are commensurate with their efforts to keep you out. The line is long, but the shoppers inside are few. Booking a table at the restaurant is even harder, with a constant stream of unavailable dates for weeks on end. It’s either a sadistic French thing, or the folks behind Pierre Herme are taking crowd control to the extreme.
But, armed with a lot of patience, you’ll find enough pleasures at this diabetes-warning-ahead temple of sugary gastronomy.
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We’re not so much here for the macarons, but for Table at Pierre Herme – said to be its first full-service restaurant in South-east Asia. It sits above the shop, up a flight of stairs which leads you to a large, very bright dining room dressed in happy eclectic colours. There’s also an alfresco section in an outdoor French cafe style.
Too fancy for a cafe, too unpolished for fine dining, it settles for something in between – casual-fine with proper food. Oddly, it doesn’t serve dinner since it closes at 6 pm. But if you skip lunch, you can have a very respectable meal at 4 pm or 5 pm that will fill you up for the rest of the evening.
Prices are lower than we expect, starting at S$12 for a pissaladiere to S$30 for its most expensive main featuring cod and celeriac. There’s also a full breakfast menu from 9 am to 11 am that we would come back for if reservations weren’t so stressful to make. Afternoon tea is another tempting distraction. Incidentally, walk-ins aren’t allowed.
You know they’re controlling the crowd because, after waiting a good two weeks for our reservation, the dining room is barely one-third full. Even then, service is intermittent and slow, although not for their lack of effort.
When the food comes – which can be all at once – it’s not half bad. A salad of crisp vegetables (S$16) has a mix of zucchini, green beans, baby radishes and cucumber in a refreshing crushed-tomato dressing, topped with a cold soft-boiled egg. It’s artfully arranged, pretty and almost chic looking.
A fresh pea tart (S$13) has a mix of fresh and blended peas on a thin, sable-like pastry crust – anything baked here is automatically good – with tart grapefruit bits and roasted crushed nuts for crunch.
If the starters were like people, they’d be polite but aloof, whereas the croque monsieur (S$21) is an old friend – hearty and warm, comforting buttery toast layered with ham and cheese, with a salad on the side for good measure.
The cod (S$30) is thick and meaty, but overpowered by its mustard-seed vinaigrette and a cornucopia of pickled celeriac and shredded celery. The beef fillet (S$29) is much more satisfying, with tender pink meat and squares of crisp-tender potato layers.
Dessert is straight out of a fine-dining playbook. Sensation Orpheo (S$22) is a large chocolate sphere filled with ice cream, brownie bits, crunchy feuilletine and nuts. Hot chocolate sauce is poured over to melt the sphere, leaving you with a gooey, chewy, crunchy mess that you happily clean up.
For something less fussy and equally enjoyable, Ispahan French toast (S$20) is a smallish square of eggy, fluffy brioche stuffed with raspberry compote and served with lychee, raspberry and rose jam on the side.
Otherwise, just head downstairs and get some pastries to go. From the classic Ispahan macaron to the “trick-the-eye” pastry that looks like toast but features layers of praline and peanut butter cream, they’re all good but over-the-top sweet. A little goes a long way.
It’s probably still too early to visit Table at Pierre Herme, as there are still a lot of kinks to work through. But the product has promise and once it’s settled down, we’ll be back – with or without a golden ticket.
Rating 6.5
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